The Games News

During Microsoft’s recent adventure to E3, the computer giant posted a new high score for bandwidth used: Over 600 Terabytes. Not 600 Megabytes or 600 Gigabytes, but a whopping 600 Tera (or Trillion) bytes. Microsoft posted these totals based on the seven million game demos, trailers, videos, and other content downloaded from Xbox Live during the week of E3, with the Halo 3 trailer covering over 2 million of those downloads. The sheer numbers alone (which I will remind you again was OVER 600 Terabytes) is such a staggering number, that I couldn’t even begin to think of how to fill 600 Terabytes worth of space. However, here are a few things that could possibly fill 600 Terabytes worth of space: 600,000 copies of Lord of the Rings or 200,000,000 copies of a single average mp3. This means that you would need about 200 iPods to hold that data. I think Apple would love the idea of Microsoft purchasing 200 iPods, but we won’t hold our breath for that day.

Oklahoma, Louisiana, and now Minnesota seem to be great places to raise your children, especially if you are raising video game playing teenagers. Due to recent signings of the “Inappropriate Games” bill, minors who purchase M-rated (Mature) and/or AO-rated (Adult Only) video games will levy a fine of $25 dollars, instead of fining the retailer who sold the game to the minor. This poses a paradox of sorts: Why fine the minor who bought it when it was the retailer who failed to ask for ID that sold it?

Minnesota Representative Barb Gordon, however, tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill so that retailers would get fined as well. “It’s the retailers that buy the games or rent the games that know what they’ve got there. If they choose to rent those to children then they ought to pay the fine,” said Gordon. That’s one statement, if you’re a state government that is trying to pass a bill of this sort, which you need to heed to. If you are going to punish one, then you should punish all. Fine the minor who bought it, the retailer who sold it, and the company who made it. There should be no fine line anywhere in this equation. If you’re going to punish someone, don’t be biased.

Bungie Studios is releasing a Windows Vista version of its first person shooter, Halo 2, still wildly popular after two years on the market. The game is slated to ship after the December release of the new Microsoft operating system. With the Xbox 360 release of Halo 3 slated for Fall 2007, you have to ask yourself, what’s the point? Why release the dated game on the PC platform around the same time the new version is being released? There are plenty of reasons to get this enhanced port. Halo 2 Vista supports a 16 multiplayer mode like the Xbox (although interplay between PC and Xbox is not possible) and overall gameplay is expected to be similar to the Xbox version. However, Bungie points to massive improvements in visuals. Halo 2 Vista will support DirectX 10, which brings with it nearly photorealistic enhancements. And the game will take advantage of next generation video cards and computer hardware. (more…)

With the release of a compatible driver for the Xbox 360 controller onto PC-based systems, someone decided they would make the bulky 360 controller dual-compatible with both PCs and Macs. As an ongoing project at tattiebogle.net, the initial release has been slowly revamped twice in the past 5 months to allow for directional pad controls and the ability to recognize extra vendor/product ids.

One of the most interesting parts of this story is that Microsoft didn’t develop this first. With everyone pushing to develop anything and everything for the 360 and its accessories, one company that has seen the short end of the development has been Microsoft. Even though Microsoft didn’t develop the Mac compatible driver for the 360 controller, they still have many secrets up their proverbial sleeve that they will unleash when the time is right.

The driver can be located here

For the individuals that purchased the Microsoft Xbox 360, some of the things they were buying the next-generation system for were the great graphics, the games set to release for the system, the updated online play, and the HDMI capabilities. However, most fans were somewhat displeased with the HDMI capabilities of the Xbox 360 when there wasn’t even an HDMI capable available for the Xbox 360. How did Microsoft fix this? With announcing the soon release of an HDMI cable for the Xbox 360.

While the cable hasn’t been released yet, buyers of the Xbox 360 are placing themselves on the list to purchase one. Seeing that this cable is an official Microsoft product, the cable should come sooner than later and will most likely be offered in cheaper varieties through 3^rd Party companies. No official release date has been announced yet, but the HDMI cable should be available by the time the HD DVD drive is released.