By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

This weekend I introduced yet another round of visiting friends to the addictive wonder that is Guitar Hero. (If only Harmonix had a rewards program like TiVo.) Turns out this is quite the week for Guitar Hero-themed announcements.

First up, Guitar Hero 2 is now available for the XBox 360. $89 gets you the game, a white guitar, and 1,800 XBox Live points ($20 value.) Source: Circuit City via Gizmodo

Then comes the announcement that Hands-On Mobile has signed a deal with Activision to create a mobile version of GH. Alice Says: Not sure that sounds even remotely viable, considering how hard it would be to play on a tiny screen, but we’ll kick the tires (if) when it does come out. Source: Kotaku

Finally, the best news of the day is piece I saw on Reuters. Electronic Arts announced that it was partnering with Viacom’s MTV and Harmonix to develop “Rock Band,” the eagerly awaited follow-up to Guitar Hero.
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By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

I wrestled long and hard with the XBox 360 vs. Playstation 3 decision and it basically came down to this: I’m not paying insane markup prices for a 1.0 release. True, the Xbox 360 still has issues, but at a fraction of the price, and with many many more great games, and a compelling online experience, I decided to save my green and go green and white for now.

Or you could let the gang in the Microsoft games marketing department say it better with this handy beer photo. In the end, it’s a tad heavy-handed, but the assessment is right on the money. Save your money! Source: joystiq

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

It’s official, Microsoft announced the release of the Zune, Microsoft’s music and entertainment platform, and some accessories to go with it, like the The Zune Car Pack, The Zune Home A/V Pack and the Zune Travel Pack.

Available this holiday season in the United States, Zune includes a 30GB digital media player, the Zune Marketplace music service and a foundation for an online community that will enable music fans to discover new music. The Zune device features wireless technology, a built-in FM tuner and a bright, 3-inch screen that allows users to not only show off music, pictures and video, but also to customize the experience with personal pictures or themes to truly make the device their own. Zune comes in three colors: black, brown and white.

Every Zune device creates an opportunity for connection. Wireless Zune-to-Zune sharing lets consumers spontaneously share full-length sample tracks of select songs, homemade recordings, playlists or pictures with friends between Zune devices. Listen to the full track of any song you receive up to three times over three days. If you like a song you hear and want to buy it, you can flag it right on your device and easily purchase it from the Zune Marketplace.

Zune makes it easy to find music you love — whether it’s songs in your existing library or new music from the Zune Marketplace. Easily import your existing music, pictures and videos in many popular formats and browse millions of songs on Zune Marketplace, where you can choose to purchase tracks individually or to buy a Zune Pass subscription to download as many songs as you want for a flat fee. Source: Microsoft

We Say: Can’t wait to try one, wonder why no pricing information has been released yet?

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

From the company that gave you a game where you can literally kick prostitues to death, comes the hotly anticipated “Bully.” Rockstar Games announced today that Bully would be hitting store shelves in October 2006.

First a bit about the game:

The game’s main character is 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, who must defend himself against school bullies at a fictional U.S. boarding school called Bullworth Academy, while dealing with characters ranging from nerds and jocks to authoritarian prefects. Weapons included baseball bats that break after several blows, stink bombs and bags of marbles that when strategically thrown will lay flat most pursuers.

Now the controversy already a brewin’:

In March, Florida’s Miami-Dade County School Board called on retailers not to sell the game to minors and required the school district to warn parents about potentially harmful effects of playing violent video games. In a recent demonstration of “Bully”, which Rockstar said has not yet been rated, the fighting scenes did not include blood or result in the death of characters. Source: Reuters

We Say: What else? Can’t wait till October! Seriously, after the Hot Coffee scandal, you can bet that Bully will be a much tamer game than was originally planned. Not quite as tame as the Table Tennis game Rockstar also announced not long ago for the Xbox 360, but definitely no Columbine gore.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Further proof the Blu-ray and other DVD technologies are just a quick stop on the road to even higher density DVD storage, an Indian scientist today announced a breakthrough that could someday boost DVD storage to a whopping 50 terabytes and make the hard drive obsolete. By coating the disc surface with a light sensitive protein, the capacity boost from the small genetically altered microbe proteins could eventually make a disc surface capable of holding 50,000 gigabytes

Professor V Renugopalakrishnan of the Harvard Medical School in Boston has claimed to have developed a layer of protein made from tiny genetically altered microbe proteins which could store enough data to make computer hard disks almost obsolete. “What this will do eventually is eliminate the need for hard drive memory completely,” ABC quoted Prof. Renugopalakrishnan, a BSc in Chemistry from Madras University and PhD in biophysics from Columbia/State University of New York, Buffalo, New York as saying.

The new protein-based DVD will have advantages over current optical storage devices such as the Blue-ray as well, because the information is stored in proteins that are only a few nanometres across. “The protein-based DVDs will be able to store at least 20 times more than the Blue-ray and eventually even up to 50,000 gigabytes (about 50 terabytes) of information. You can pack literally thousands and thousands of those proteins on a media like a DVD, a CD or a film or whatever,” he said. Source: Yahoo News

We Say: Only downside I see is the inevitable ultra-extended director’s cut. King Kong was just not long enough! And what on earth would a single disc cost? $1,000? not to mention the player. Sounds interesting, but don’t hold your breath on seeing this anytime soon.

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Microsoft has figured out what we’ve known all along, even hardcore gamers like playing the old 80’s arcade games. Microsoft will be adding a new game every week for the next five weeks, the first of which will be Frogger, with updated graphics, co-op play with friends in the room or across the world, versus speed mode and it will include all new bonuses as well as an all time high score that you’ll want to beat.

Enjoy the classic game Frogger, revitalized and brand spanking new on your Xbox 360™. With enhanced artwork building on the original title’s style, modernized sound and music, and all new play modes, this is an Xbox Live Arcade title you won’t want to miss out on.

Whether you’ve had your hands on the original or not, Frogger’s fast paced and addictive game play is ready for it’s latest incarnation on Xbox Live. Source: Xbox.com.

Many people initially thought the Xbox Live Arcade, with its focus on less complex games, would be a draw for children, women or older players who don’t fit the young male demographic traditionally associated with Xbox 360 owners. But Canessa said they’ve found that even the so-called hard-core gamers are interested in the arcade games and willing to pay for them.

Microsoft now has 20 arcade games available for sale to people who own an Xbox 360, the second iteration of Microsoft’s video game console. Canessa said they hope to have about 50 titles available by the end of the year. Source: Seattle Post

We Say: Another reason to get my son and I an Xbox Live account. Future games include Pac Man and they hope to have up to 50 games online by the end of the year, but I could not find what any of the other games were going to be.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Now this is a pre-pre-order. The Playstation 3 is not due out in Japan until Nov. 11, with the U.S. and Europe to follow on Nov. 17. Online site play.com is offering to take orders online from Europeans, right now.

The next generation consoles are on offer as “pre-orders” to Europeans for £550 ($1,020) at online shop, play.com. The website says that because of an expected European shortage, it cannot guarantee delivery before Christmas. The model for sale on play.com is the 60Gb model. When Sony announced prices earlier this year it said that gamers would pay about £425 ($785) in the UK for the top end version of the machine. Source: BBC News

We Say: Overpriced, even for early adopters? Hey, they can’t even guarantee delivery before Christmas, and I don’t think the games included (Formula One 06, flying game Warhawk and the karaoke-themed Singstar) are worth the extra cash.

Alice Adds: So let me get this straight: if I act now, I get to experience an expected shortage vs. an actual one, a non-existent console, no killer ap games, no hope of a pre-Christmas delivery, and a $1,020 price tag. Yeah, that sounds like a great deal. Thanks play.com. You’re all aces.

Unbelievable.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

The console wars have not even begin to heat up, but here is the latest salvo from Microsoft. 125 new tweaks. We Say: Sounds great but releasing the news on 6/6/06 is slightly creepy.

NEW FEATURES
* “Download manager” - Marketplace items now download in the background, queue up to six pieces of content
* DVD bookmark support will remember the film’s timing and location when resuming viewing
* Fast-forward and rewind now offered at 2x -16x for any videos saved to hard drive
* “Boot to Dashboard” setting will bypass the loading of any disc in the drive and open directly to Dashboard during power-on
* Begin slideshows from any photo
* Music player saves “shuffle” setting
* Much player save “repeat” setting
* Music player now displays which file is currently playing in the playlist
* Music volume level persists between game / reboots
* 8 new locales added (Chile, Brazil, India, South Africa, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia)
* Separate settings now offered for Game and User volume controls
* Themes can now be set from the “System” blade on the Dashboard
* User-selected music continues play when switching from Dashboard to game or game to Dashboard
* “All Arcade Games” added as a selection in the Xbox Live Arcade area
* Personal gamer pictures allowed as Gamertiles – displayed only to those on your Friends List
* Added support to disable sound effects when navigating Dashboard
* Instantaneous “Change Theme” option added upon downloading new Dashboard themes
* Preserve folder structure of source when viewing photos
* A / B labels now provided to identify memory units in Dashboard
* Online status set to “Away” when screensaver becomes active

SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS
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