Halo 3 receives mixed reception

WHILST WE FOCUS on the glut of Halo 3 news this week, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert is heavily focused on delivering the new Penny Arcade game - 'On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness'.

Be sure to check out the first trailer over at Eurogamer if you haven't already.

Xbox
A mass of Halo 3 videos, shots, and details were leaked this week, with mixed reception.

First up is an official Bungie video from an internal Microsoft tester, entitled 'Mr Jukes Betalicious' vid, which is interesting viewing.

Brighton based Eurogamer.net, based seconds away from the INQ's Brighton HQ, has provided a variety of shots from the closed beta, available here. The static screens show of the quality of the graphics a bit better than the videos floating about, but still seem slightly off next-gen visuals. We'll have to wait and see.

Eurogamer staff also give their opinions, as did a flurry of people over at msnbc - reporting from the invitation-only preview, gamers again gave mixed reviews.

And if anyone from Bungie would give this hack a beta key, it would be much appreciated...

Until then we'll have to console ourselves with a Halo 3 Zune, available zune. Sorry.

Microsoft expects the launch of its upcoming "Halo 3" video game to surpass that of "Halo 2", which pulled down $125 million in sales in its first 24 hours, an executive said last week.

"I definitely believe that 'Halo 3' is going to be bigger than "Halo 2". Retailers know what 'Halo 2' did and they are not going to want to be caught out of stock," Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Game Studios, told Reuters.

The Xbox 360 Spring Update was issued over Live this week, and a variety of improvements were delivered.

The first major update to note was the integration of Windows Live Messenger into the Xbox 360 Dashboard, allowing gamers to text chat while gaming, listening to music, or watching videos. This should be even more useful once the QWERTY-keyboard based Xbox 360 pad is out later this year.

Secondly, the murky video through the 360's VGA connection has been belatedly quashed, with vast improvements to its video delivery.

A new Xbox Live Marketplace blade has also been added to better focus on downloadable game content, TV shows and movies. It's still not quite as nice as Sony's offering though.

New on the side of Xbox 360's video playback is support for H.264 and MPEG-4 codecs but still no Divx support though.

Fortunately for purveyors of HD content, Xbox community site Xbox Circle reports that in a recent interview with Japanese website Itmedia, Peter Moore admits that the Xbox 360 could see an add-on Blu-Ray drive for movie playback, should the Blu-Ray standard win the DVD format wars.

Still fed up of being the only console in town without some kind of motion feedback? Try Bestilt 360, out in US retail stores for $37.99 with seemingly no developer support what-so-ever.

PS3/PSP
Further amazing footage of Playstation Home has leaked on to the interweb, which can be seen over at Joystiq. A few arcade games a playable, a huge LCD screen showing game footage is viewable, and a sneak peak at the PSP-based interface can be seen. It does truely look like Sony will have a huge winner on its hands.

Inquirer chatterings to some dev-types recently, confirmed that development studios will have a foothold within the game, where they can demonstrate and sell their warez to Home denizens.

Digitimes reports that Sony's blue-violet laser diode manufacturing plant will increase production and this could, "according to Taiwan-based makers of game consoles and components," drop the PS3 price by $100. Further reductions could be made by other cost cutting and re-sourcing, similar to Microsoft's efforts with the 360.

This hasn't come in time to fend off a report from Lazard Capital Market. Sony should not expect a boost in its fourth quarter sales for the Playstation 3 unless it cuts the price of the new console and delivers a stronger software line-up, according to the analyst firm's Colin Sebastian.

Similarly to Sebastian's later claims, Wedbush Morgan Securities has issued a report on the video game industry for 2007 and beyond and expects huge growth. Differently to Lazard Capital Market, analyst Michael Pachter at WMS, believes that the PS3 will ultimately win thanks to the Blu-ray format, which he expects to defeat HD DVD.

In a massive 207-page report on the interactive entertainment industry for 2007, Michael Pachter notes that while "the main driver of console hardware sales is the quality and quantity of the underlying available content," the high definition format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray could be a key factor in determining the console war outcome.

A VOIP service called Jajah has tailored its interface to the Playstation 3 browser, allowing gamers to place voice calls via the console.

As the Playstation 3 currently lacks a service that's comparable to the Microsoft Xbox's Live service, which allows for voice communication via a USB headset, the Jajah interface at least allows gamers to communicate with one another. PS3 voice chat has also been enabled on a game-by-game basis.

Jem Alexander, a new writer for PS3 Fanboy and the owner of a US PS3 living in Europe, recently picked up a European copy of F.E.A.R. only to get a discouraging message: "This game not supported (80028F10)" - PS3 games are generally region free.

It seems Jem simply has to purchase a HDTV to get it working - NTSC to PAL conversion isn't built in, unlike the power conversion built in to all PS3s.

Wii/DS
One of the most important weeks of sales figures in Japan has been completely dominated by Nintendo titles. The entire top sixteen places were held by Nintendo-based games. Pwned.

This amazing news is coupled with research from Famitsu (via Eurogamer) stating that the Nintendo DS Lite has sold more than 10 million units in Japan alone.

Total sales of the DS Lite worldwide are now more than 22 million following its launch just over a year ago, and combined sales of the Lite and original DS unit are well over 40 million.

After Microsoft's Robbie Bach mouthed off about the 'underpowered Wii', N'Gai Croal at Newsweek has come back with an interesting take on the actual performance of the device - and finds Bach not too far off...

Electronic Arts is going to be bundling a microphone with its Wii game Boogie when it ships sometime around the holidays. Although this will be the first Wii mic, it will unfortunately be USB based, meaning the cable-free Wii is soon to be left in a tangle of wires. So 1999 guys.

Google has launched a version of its Reader product specifically designed to work through the Wii's web browser. Accessible at www.google.com/reader/wii/, the Wii Reader is an aggregator that allows users to check in with the RSS and Atom feeds they use to keep track of updates on websites.

If you're a Wii owner feeling left out at the cooling systems offered for the PS3 and Xbox 360 look no further. The cooler, pictured here, is powered by the Wii's USB ports, and there's a pass-through USB port so you won't lose any of those precious openings. µ

See also
Sony PS3-based PSX appears on the horizon
Games industry flashes wad, swaggers
Microsoft gaming labelled a "disastrous endeavour"
Xbox handheld and solid PSP2 rumours