Gaming

With the world going a little nutty Wednesday over Microsoft's announcement of the pricing for its forthcoming Xbox 360 consoles, Sony and its equally exciting and equally forthcoming PlayStation 3 were mere afterthoughts.

Most people had thought pricing for the two consoles would still be secret for some time, but Microsoft dashed those expectations with its revelation in Germany Wednesday. That leaves Sony--and Nintendo, of course, whose Revolution console will launch next year--as having products over whose pricing everyone can still play the speculation game.

But according to the video game blog, Joystiq, the PS3's pricing may have … Read more

Sometime this holiday season, the Xbox 360 will hit the market and usher in the next generation of video game consoles. In the lead-up to that yet-to-be-determined date, there will be never-ending speculation about the pricing of the 360, as well as of its brethren, the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Revolution.

One of the chief elements of the pricing discussion surrounds the specs of the various machines. And while there seems to be pretty good understanding of the basic specs, many have mused about the possibilities that Microsoft and Sony, at least, might futz around with those specs. … Read more

For years, concerned parents and opportunist politicians have clung to the assumed truism that violent video games begat real-world violence. Never mind whether it was true or not, it always made for great sound bites and gave a crime-fearing public something to mutter under their breath about.

But now word comes from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Dmitri Williams that a long-term study he helmed has concluded that, in fact, there is no currently provable link between games and real-world violence.

According to the study, which looked at players who devoted an average of 56 hours over a month … Read more

PC gadget maker Logitech took the wraps off a box of new goodies for PC game enthusiasts, including a programmable keyboard with an LCD display and two mice with laser tracking technology.

All three products are designed to tap into a video games industry (hardware, software and accessories) that The NPD Group estimates just reached $4.1 billion for the first half of this year--June to July. That's an increase of 21 percent over the $3.4 billion the analyst firm found in the first half of 2004.

Logitech's new G15 keyboard ($79.99) features a built-in LCD … Read more

An Alabama jury took just one hour to convict a 20-year-old who had killed three police officers, and whose lawyers claimed that Grand Theft Auto made him do it, the Associated Press reports.

Good for the jury, I say. It's an absurd contention that game players relinquish moral responsibility for their actions, because they've somehow been hypnotized by playing. More dangerous is the assertion made in the police officers' civil suit against the Grand Theft Auto creators, seeking to hold Take-Two Interactive Software responsible for the deaths, however.

Yes, the boy played the violent game. Yes, he apparently … Read more

Playing video games shouldn't be a way to qualify for the Darwin Awards, but thanks to a South Korean man, that seems to no longer be true.

According to Reuters, the man, identified only by his family name, Lee, died after a 50-hour binge in which he played online battle simulation games almost nonstop. Police in the southeastern city of Taegu said the 28-year-old man died of heart failure nearly three days after sitting down for the first time at a cybercafe there.

The only times he got up, apparently, was to visit the bathroom, eat or take a … Read more

When Nintendo first released its much-anticipated handheld game device, the DS, last year, it excitedly promoted many things about it. The dual screens, for example. The stylus. The fact that it was released before Sony's mini-wonder, the PSP.

But one thing it didn't talk too much about was that the DS has built-in Wi-Fi capabilities, and in fact one of the basic DS games, "Pictochat," incorporates that feature so that many players can play together wirelessly when in close proximity.

But even as Nintendo was staying largely mum about Wi-Fi on the DS, a lot of … Read more

For some time, Blizzard Entertainment, which publishes the massively popular massively multiplayer online game "World of Warcraft," has had its many people under two roofs.

It had a Blizzard North operation in San Mateo, California, where games such as "Diablo" and "Diablo II" were developed, and a Blizzard South location in Irvine, California, where WoW and "StarCraft" were done.

Now, Gamasutra reports, Blizzard is getting all touchy-feely and uniting its disparate PC development teams under a single Irvine roof.

"We're looking forward to having our PC development teams together in … Read more

Since the releases of the next-generation game consoles are many months away, there's not much for those of us interested in the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution to do but speculate and bandy about reporting from informed inside sources.

Thus, this space is happy to report that PSM Magazine has an article in its September issue in which it writes that Sony plans to upgrade the PS3 hardware even beyond the super-machine it showed off at E3 in May. The article says the PS3 will get even more system memory than it originally said.

In addition, the … Read more