Is your Xbox 360 red in the face? No, not that kind of red, but facing that painstakingly loathsome red ring of death? Well, if group product manager Aaron Greenberg knows anything about the situation — and we’d imagine he does — then it looks like the guys at Microsoft have finally found a solution to many gamers’ worst nightmares. In an interview with Edge Online, Greenberg said that through repairs they’ve done as well as updated technology, the guys in Redmond are pretty confident that afflicted consoles should be nonexistent in the not so distant future and that they’ve “put the worst behind us on this.” So, breathe easy obsessive gamers, you needn’t worry about getting an infected console any more — we hope.
[Via Yahoo! Games]
Filed under: Gaming
Xbox 360 red ring of death problems (finally) solved? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Igor Hardy writes “I’ve conducted an interesting interview concerning a new episodic indie adventure game series called Casebook. What’s quite uncommon, especially for these kinds of independently developed and published productions, is that they include professionally created FMV — all of the footage is filmed in real locations. Yet what’s even more interesting is that the games use an innovative photographic technology which recreates a fully explorable 3D environment through the use of millions of photos instead of building from polygons. The specifics of how it works are explained by Sam Clarkson, the creative director of the series.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Strategy, baseball, airplanes and a pretend doctor simulator–this week’s got it all.
Go ahead and hit up the full list, or, if you’re looking for a particular system, skip right to the PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS and PSP sections. Should you want to check out any past release lists, scope out our handy archive.
Barring any delays, most of…
Sorry to have left you all without a new chatty for Saturday, I know how messy those things tend to get after Friday night. And I know that the weekend is almost over for some of you, but hey, best to celebrate the time we have left before Monday rolls around.
I do hope everyone that attended last night’s Shackmeet extravaganza in Dallas/Frisco had a good time. I’m quite bummed that I had to cancel at the very last minute, but given that I’ve done nothing but sleep for the past two days, I think it was the right call. Plus, I didn’t want to infect any of you with this exotic Indiana illness. That’s just not cool 
Anyways, please do your best to enjoy the rest of the weekend.
adeelarshad82 writes “CNet reports on a bizarre comment from Sony’s Computer Entertainment CEO in response to complaints from developers on how hard it is to develop games for the Playstation 3. ‘We don’t provide the “easy to program for” console that (developers) want, because “easy to program for” means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?’ Given that games heavily drive console sales, and the fact that the PS3 is already 8 million units behind the Xbox 360, I think making a developer’s job harder is the last thing Sony needs.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Eurogamer is running an opinion piece suggesting that innovation and creativity have been on the decline for years within the games industry. Now, with the threat of the economic crisis looming, game publishers are shying further from new projects and ideas, instead choosing to rehash popular IP in order to minimize the risk of failure. The upside is that their reluctance, along with technological improvements that make game distribution easier, is allowing independent developers to gain exposure like never before. “This revolution will give us a new wave of developers who see games through very different eyes to those of their studio-bound compatriots. Forced to consider the financial bottom line, the technological bleeding edge and the whims of Metacritic at each turn, big studio development is by no means uncreative, but certainly has to follow certain set patterns. … The studio system couldn’t have created a game like Flower, the utterly beautiful PSN title which came out earlier this month; but more than that, it couldn’t have created a persona like Jenova Chen, the mind behind Flower, who happily talks in interviews about evoking emotions, moving past primal feelings and ‘maturing’ the industry in ways that don’t involve sex, blood and swearing. He talks about making games that don’t empower gamers, but instead make them experience other things, other emotions. It’s spine-tingling stuff. It’s also commercial suicide — or would be, to a studio working in the traditional development context.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
GameSetWatch has put up an article about the characteristics that give games in the survival-horror genre the ability to unnerve, startle, and scare players in ways that most games don’t. The genre has seen a resurgence lately, with titles like Dead Space, F.E.A.R. 2, and Left 4 Dead posting strong sales numbers. What triggers your fight-or-flight impulses in games like these? From the article: “Being visual creatures, humans are most comforted by sight because of our ability to discern objects, action and consequences based on a picture. As a result, cutting visual stimuli and sticking purely to audio or speech is one of the best ways to keep a player on their toes. Even with weapons, it’s very hard to find what you cannot see, and what you do not know. Even if visual stimuli is used, limiting or obfuscating the player’s view can enhance the horror in a game, especially if the player sees it for an incredible short time. This can hint both at the difficulty of an upcoming encounter, or even allude to matters earlier in the narrative that the player will soon have to face.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
