Hacking the PSP Blog

Off Topic: XBox HD-DVD comes at a heavy price

STARTING TODAY, we'll be rounding up the weekend's gaming news with a feature-length article posted on every Monday, in the hope of cheering you up and attempting to relieve the Monday-morning doldrums.

Xbox 360
An interesting post appeared on the official Xbox Team blog as the week fizzled out, concerning the amount of development the team endured to ensure HD-DVD drive compatibility with the Xbox 360.

The add-on drive has apparently meant a staggering 4.7 million lines of code have been added to the 360's OS in an attempt to bring the Microsoft backed HD-DVD standard to the Xbox. This software-update driving the Xbox's HD-DVD implementation apparently utitlises the full 'six hardware threads' of the triple core CPU, and is claimed to push the system harder than any game currently available, ensuring for some considerable fan noise one would imagine.

It's also cost Microsoft 'millions of dollars' to add. Lets hope it's all worth it and Xbox fans don't end up with the runner-up in the re-run of the VHS/Betamax war.

The HD-DVD software was included within the fall system update which was released for download last Tuesday on Xbox Live. Immediately problems with the update were reported, with some users claiming the upgrade had bricked their consoles. Microsoft quickly responded acknowledging and admitting to the problems, and released a further update to resolve the issues, but not before around 1% of the installed base was infected.

A big plus for Xbox 360 users once the issues were fixed was the inclusion of 1080p support, something that Sony have been purporting as the PS3's major advantage over the Xbox.

In other 360 news, it has been announced that the highly anticipated release of Halo 3 will come in three retail packages. A regular and collector's edition will be priced at $59.99 and $69.99 respectively, and a 'legendary' edition priced at $99.99 which will come bundled with a Halo Spartan Mjolnir Mark VI Helmet replica. Useful.

Read the full text here...

Dean Pullen
November 6, 2006

Source: The Inquirer

iR Shell Special Edition Coming Soon

Some of you may already know that Ahman, the developer for iR Shell, has continued updating his very poopular shell past the final release of 2.2 as a special edition but, only to beta testers. Over this time iR Shell has built up some very nice new features, and you thought it couldn't get any better! There is not an exact release date for this but he does say it will be soon! So, stick around for the very latest updates on this.

There were far to many updates to add them all here so I've included a few of the really juicy ones to get you going. You can check out a change log for each of the 10 SE releases by following the link at the bottom of the page.

iR Shell SE Features

• Allow the use of the 4th brightness setting (maximum) on the LCD. Normally, you can only set the 4th brightness when connected to a power adapter. This new version allows you to activate the 4th brightness anytime by pressing "Left Trigger + Brightness". The setting will also carry over to Devhook firmware emulation when iR Shell is active. To return to normal brightness, press "Brightness" button.
• iR Shell Restart key (L+R) under devhook will reset your PSP back to iR Shell under fw 1.5, provided you've installed the iR Shell custom firmware mod.
• Allow redirection of PSP keypad to PC Keyboard or PC Joystick via USB. Devhook 2.71 fw emulation is also supported which means you can use a PC Joystick for Socom or Syphoon Filter.
• Updated the launch XMB function, so you can leave the game disc in the UMD drive when launching XMB. It will now detect your disc type. If you've a UMD Video disc, it will launch the movie automatically. If it's a UMD Game disc, it will skip the auto-launch and just goes to XMB.
• This version allows you to choose a bitmap image or pmf movie as splash screen. The included sample is a xbox360. You can try to make your own splash movie. However, it seems pretty complicated.
• Use iR Configurator to choose startup splash type.

Source: xmb-psp

WMS: 10% Growth Forecast for October Game Sales

Wedbush Morgan Securities has issued its latest NPD preview report, forecasting that U.S. console software sales for October rose 10 percent year-over-year to $401 million.

Contributors for the month include Vivendi's Scarface: The World is Yours (PS2, Xbox, PSP, PC), Midway's Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (PS2, Xbox), and Ubisoft's Splinter Cell Double Agent (360, PS2, Xbox, GC, PC) as well as continued strong sales of LucasArts' Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and Nintendo's Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. WMS expects 11 titles sold over 100,000 units for October (up from eight last October).

Although 10 percent growth is solid, the numbers may be limited because of the NPD's calendar. Analyst Michael Pachter explained: "We note that due to the timing of the NPD retail calendar, three major October releases (Take-Two's GTA: Vice City Stories (PSP), Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII (PS2), and Electronic Arts' Need for Speed Carbon (360, PS2, Xbox, PC, PSP, GBA, DS, GC)) will fall outside the NPD October reporting month (October 1 - October 28). We believe that this will limit growth this month, but should drive significant growth next month."

Overall, the WMS estimate reflects a decline of $94 million in current generation software sales (PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GBA), which is expected to be offset by an increase of $130 million in next generation and portable software sales (Xbox 360, PSP and DS). Total next-gen software sales are anticipated to be $173 million with current-gen software sales coming in at $228 million (a 29 percent decline).

WMS noted that growth over the last four months has averaged 20 percent. Looking ahead, Pachter stated, "Given recent sell-through strength at retail, we believe that moderate declines in current generation software sales will be more than offset by contribution from next generation software sales. PS3 and Wii software sales are expected to contribute $576 million to overall sales growth for the year, and given that launch timing and quantities are getting clearer, we expect overall 2006 U.S. sales to be at least 4% higher than 2005 levels."

James Brightman
November 3, 2006

Source: GameDaily

Painkiller developer bought by giant Austrian publisher

From PSPUpdates:

It was the 2nd quarter of this year when we first reported that Painkiller is coming to the PSP. Well, it is already November and no word was further heard from this hellish first person shooter. Today, we came across an article saying that its developer DreamCatcher is being acquired JoWooD Productions Software.

We don't know if this has something to do with the delay or the lack of news. However, something like this should be a good news of some sort especially for DreamCatcher. As the Austria-based JoWooD CEO Albert Seidl puts it: "Acquiring DreamCatcher perfectly aligns with JoWooD’s strategy to deliver high-quality computer and videogames globally. We are looking at DreamCatcher as our North American counterpart and there are numerous and important synergies waiting to be exploited by all of us."

DreamCatcher on the other hand has a very good track record when it comes to adventure games and the North American market is definitely most profitable. After all these jazz, or so they say, there is still no word for Painkiller. We hope they go back immediately to making games once they've all settled down.

Source: PSPUpdates