Gamed

Appalachian Student Ambassadors

2005-12-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

The Appalachian Student Ambassadors Program has launched their new website, http://www.ambassadors.appstate.edu

The Student Ambassadors Program is a group of 40 members that help to serve Appalachian State University. We work with the Office of Admissions, the Alumni Office, as well as the Office of the Chancellor.

WIsh Cancelled

2005-01-10T01:19:00.000-08:00

"Dear friends of Wish:
Unfortunately we have bad news. After careful consideration of all the facts and analyzing all the data which we have gathered from the Wish Beta 2.0 test so far, we have decided to cancel the Wish project. Our Beta test will end this evening at 6pm EST, and at this time our Beta forums will close as well.

We enjoyed working together with our fans very much, and we are very sorry about this development. We wish you the best of luck in the future, and hope that you continue to enjoy online gaming, even with Mutable Realms and Wish not being available anymore. We also wish the best luck to our competitors, and hope that they will not suffer the same fate as us.

Best regards,
Your Mutable Realms Team"

Taken from Mutable Realms

It's a sad day for MMO fans as the first attempt at a single server model appears to be dead. I personally played the beta of this game and found it mediocre, but with great potential. At the same time of my sadness it makes sense as the US market seems to be focused on party and small group play. I wouldn't doubt that sometime in the mext 2 years we see some sort of middle level MMO with a few 100 people on each server.

Either way I'd personally like to wish the Mutable Realms team the best on whatever endevours they move to in the future.

EA and Vivendi to support Blu-Ray Discs

2005-01-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

You want more graphics? You want better quality sound? You want a more complex gaming engine? Well everytime you push either three of these you create a larger game. It's not very hard to imagine a 3-5 disc game on PC now. However for console games, where does that leave them? They are forever confined to a mono-disc universe to never escape again!!! Or they could fit more on the discs I guess...

We had the CD-ROM, the DVD, now the Blu-Ray Discs. EA and Vivendi are both expected to announce their support for Blu-Ray technology at the CES this week. These little babies can hold as much 50GB if they are dual-layered. Now mind you there are still the limitations of your television and the actual game console itself, but with that much room I would expect some amazing graphics and sound from games on these discs.

http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/domestic/games/news/40908.shtml

"Pro-Gaming", Digital World is so far off it's mind boggling.

2005-01-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

This really gets to me, when magazines and the general public feel they can merely write up an article, do a little research and suddenly they have the eSports world pegged and can tell us what is next.

In the upcoming issue of DigitalWorld - February 2005, they publish an article named "Gamers Go Pro". It was posted on PCWorld.com and I feel it is just another big generalization towards the eSports community. They never touch on the thousands of gamers who are struggling to go pro but can't because of lack of funding and sponsorships, they merely jump right in Fatal1ty and the select few Korean gamers who are big stars and can live off their winnings.

I frankly believe the article was written very poorly and without proper research. Tim Gantek who wrote the article should probably stick to writing technology articles for the New York Times.

http://www.pcworld.com/digitalworld/article/0,aid,118922,pg,5,00.asp

So your a retired CEO from Nintendo? What do you do? Call Kirby gay!

2005-01-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

In an interview with Wired magazine, former CEO of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi let's everything go. He touches on Nintendo's new CEO, Japanese business policy and goes on to bash the PSP which he considers "the worst concept for a handheld device I've ever seen". In one moment during the interview he proceeds to call Kirby, which has been one of, what I consider to be Nintendo's most useless characters "homosexual". Read on...

http://www.gamerah.com/noticias.php?bias=180

The French Fight For Ubisoft

2005-01-05T17:33:00.000-08:00

"The head of Europe's largest publisher Infogrames, Bruno Bonnell, has said that his firm could be ready to help French rival Ubisoft to fight any takeover bid by industry leader Electronic Arts.

Speaking to news agency Reuters, Bonnell expressed his hope that Ubisoft will remain independent - and rubbished EA's claim that its recent purchase of almost 20 per cent of the firm's stock was merely an investment."

GameIndustry.biz

It's interesting to see how much of an escalating situation this has become. EA seems to be making some very aggressive moves, pursuing sports franchises and purchasing shares in rival companies. We may have the first microsoft of video games being built. At this point, where innovation drives the industry, this could be incredibly detrimental to the evolution of gaming.

Xbox 2 Goodness

2005-01-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

"Hey all,

So in my travels this weekend I came across a Microsoft employee and talked him up about Xbox II... here are the facts I found out.

1) Hard Drive... Yes! There was some speculation that MS was going to take the HD out to make it more difficult to Mod.

2) Flash based HD... Yes!!! It was told to me that the HD was going to be flash based... small size fast access... BAM!

3) No Stupid Dongle DVD playback... Yes!!! The reason that the first Xbox didn't have built in DVD playback is a simple one, Sony owns the Intellectual Property rights for DVD playback. Nuf said...

4) Xbox II at E3... Hell Yes!!! There will be an Xbox II maybe more at E3 this year...

5) Xbox II release date announced at E3... another Hell Yes!!! MS will be announcing a release date for Xbox II...

Now this is not like the "rumors" about IBM before these are hard cold facts from the horses mouth...

- Alex"

Alex Albrecht

My only question about this is with a flash HD we will have great load times, but what about downloadable content? I smell a SATA HD addon for around $100 bucks...

Dancing to Solid Snake?

2005-01-03T22:18:00.000-08:00

"Original music videosThe show is “Video Mods,” and it centers on original music videos that feature animated characters from popular video games dancing, singing and acting in vignettes based on hit songs. I stumbled across “Video Mods” while flipping channels on the treadmill at Chicago’s Hard Rock Hotel (note the subtle smoothness with which I inserted references to a lifestyle both hip and healthy), and was immediately hooked.

“Video Mods” was introduced in September and airs on MTV2 on alternate Saturday nights (production complexities have limited the number of shows to date). " -AdAge.com

It's interesting to see the evolution of video games into mainstream culture in ways you wouldn't expect. Maybe we will all be dancing to the tune of Eiffel 65 with Solid Snake on the screen...who knows?