God Of War 3 Coming Soon

God of War III is a forthcoming installment in the God of War video game franchise, to be exclusively released on the PlayStation 3 in 2009. It is the fifth chapter in the series chronologically, after God of War: Chains of Olympus, God of War, God of War: Betrayal and God of War II.

Although little is known about the game at this point, it was confirmed to be in development by Cory Barlog at a God of War II launch event. He revealed that the game would run at full 1080p HD resolution, and the game would support SIXAXIS tilt and vibration functions. This was stated before the DualShock 3 controller was announced; therefore causing confusion as the SIXAXIS controller did not support rumble. Barlog also expressed an interest in adding a cooperative mode “if we can do something unique with it”.

God of War director David Jaffe has said that, “God of War explains, or ultimately will explain, why there are no more Greek myths.” Though Jaffe and Barlog left Sony for other opportunities, they are still credited for the series and will possibly be involved in this installment. Jaffe, who co-founded his own development studio, Eat Sleep Play has recently expressed interest to be involved in development for God of War III.

An advertisement for God of War III has appeared on the back of instruction manuals of the retail version of God of War: Chains of Olympus, stating below that the game is ‘coming soon’.

Next Xbox 720

While Sony already admitted to be thinking about the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo are no doubt developing a Wii 2… In an interview with the head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division, Peter Moore, EGM magazine asked him when their next video game console would come out, and also asked if they’d drop support for the Xbox 360 like they did with the original Xbox. He said that they were going to support it “as long as it sold.” Possibly because they saw the Xbox sell well into 2007 despite not producing the console after October 2005.

He said the production team from the Xbox 360 is working on the next Xbox 720 [our pet name], and their looking into what kind of CPUs will be available on the market in 2011-2012. That would put the Xbox 360 at a lifespan of 6 or 7 years, a far cry from the Xbox’s 4 years. After spending $1.26 billion in losses launching the Xbox 360, they’ll want to get the most out of the system by lengthening its lifespan. As the longer you get into the cycle, the more profit you can make due to stopping being a loss leader, analysts always remark.

PS3 vs XBOX 360 Elite

LOOK AND FEEL
Our initial response to the Playstation 3 is that it has a more elegant look and feel than the Xbox 360 Elite. It is glossy black with a slicker user interface than that of the Xbox 360. The startup sound reminds you of when the lights go out at the opera house. Very classy. Advantage: PS3

PROCESSING POWER
The CPU of the Playstation 3 is a 3.2GHz Cell Broadband Engine with up to 8 “synergistic” processing units. The Xbox 360 sports a custom 3.2GHz G5 with 3 dual-threaded cores. The Playstation 3 has 512K of L2 cache while the Xbox 360 has 1MB of L2 cache. The PS3 has 256MB of main memory plus 256MB of video memory while the Xbox 360 shares 512MB between the CPU and GPU. Plus it has 10MB of very fast eDRAM dedicated to the GPU. The memory bandwidth of the PS3 is 25.6GB/s versus 22.4GB/s for the Xbox 360.

The Playstation 3 uses an nVidia RSX “Reality Sythesizer” graphics processor (GPU) with 24 pixel pipelines and 12 vertex pipelines while the Xbox 360 uses a custom ATI processor with 48 unified pixel/vertex pipelines.

Combining the CPU and GPU power, the Playstation 3 is rated at 51 billion dot-product-operations-per-second (dpo/s). The Xbox 360 is rated at 34 billion dpo/s. Advantage: PS3

Army Of Two

Army of Two, commonly abbreviated as Ao2, is a video game developed by Electronic Arts, released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 4, 2008 in North America. Army of Two is a third person shooter game focusing on the fictional story of two private military contractors (characterized as mercenaries) “fight[ing] through war, political turmoil, and a conspiracy so vast it threatens the entire world” in a timeline spanning from 1993 to 2009.

Focusing on cooperative strategies, Army of Two’s highlighting feature is the necessity to use coordinated teamwork to accomplish the game’s goals. While the game is meant to be played with another human as your partner, a “Partner Artificial Intelligence”(PAI) is also included and programmed to follow the player’s strategies in suit. Dependence on your partner (whether human or PAI) is so pronounced that certain objectives may be impossible to complete without it.

The story begins in 1993 in Somalia when Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios (the protagonists of the game) are still in the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment. They are tasked to work with Philip Clyde, a private military contractor with the Security and Strategy Corporation (SSC), to carry out an assassination. After this mission, Philip Clyde, on behalf of SSC CEO Ernest Stockwell, invites Lieutenant Colonel Richard Dalton (commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment) to join the company for a desk job. He agrees, asking to bring Salem and Rios with him as contractors, and in the following year, the three enter the private sector. Salem and Rios begin mercenary work, and start mercenary work. Over the course of a decade and a half, they are caught up in a complex scheme to privatize the military, and see to the plot’s downfall. At the game’s epilogue, we see the two protagonists start their own firm.

Metal Gear Solid 4

TOKYO–You may have heard of Metal Gear Solid 4 by now. It’s one of the PlayStation 3’s most important exclusive games in the race for next-generation dominance. It is also creator/director Hideo Kojima’s purported last outing with his seminal stealth series. And it’s playable here at the Tokyo Game Show. We were lucky enough to sit down with illustrious Kojima Productions producer Ryan Payton for an all-too-brief 90 minutes with the game, during which we found that many familiar mechanics have changed. But the heart of Metal Gear Solid is definitely still beating here.

First, it’s worth pointing out that the demo of the game we played is essentially the same one Kojima Productions began demonstrating publicly back in July. So if you haven’t seen that video yet, take a look to see everything we’re talking about here. Luckily, Payton contextualized the action we played in the demo and filled us in on the initial story of the game. As it turns out, that gameplay demo is set only about 15 minutes into Metal Gear Solid 4, so you’ll basically watch the intro sequence and play a very brief section. Then you’ll end up right in that dusty village setting that we’ve seen so much of during the past two years. Payton confirmed during our demo that this Middle Eastern area is just one of the locales you’ll visit throughout the course of the game. Just because that’s all we’ve seen of MGS4 so far, don’t think the entire game–or even the majority of it–takes place there. Payton let slip that you’ll also travel to South America later in the game, among other places.

Before we jumped into the demo, we stepped back and got the scoop on the storyline at the outset of MGS4. The game will begin with Col. Campbell contacting Solid Snake to deliver the disturbing intelligence that Liquid Snake is alive and running Outer Heaven. This is a dummy corporation that oversees and controls private military companies all over the world. The PMCs will essentially act as Liquid’s private army throughout the game, so they’ll be the on-the-ground enemy forces you’ll be fighting against. The PMCs will also vary between areas. For instance, the company in the Middle East was called Praying Mantis, but the one in South America will have a different name and appearance.

Further intelligence indicates that Liquid is currently operating in the Middle East, so Campbell essentially hires Snake to travel there to perform a contract hit on Liquid and put an end to his machinations. It’s important to note that the villain we’re talking about here is actually Liquid Ocelot–Revolver Ocelot’s body with Liquid Snake’s attached arm and consciousness. So the bad guy will look like Ocelot, but there’s nothing of Ocelot left in there: The personality is 100 percent Liquid Snake. However, you’ll hear Ocelot’s voice actor delivering the English voice-over in the forthcoming TGS trailer and in the final game, so no more Cam Clarke here (sorry Ninja Turtles fans).

Gears Of War 2 Coming Soon ( XBOX 360)

The fact that Epic Games is at work on a sequel to 2006’s massive Xbox 360 hit Gears of War is one of the industry’s worst-kept secrets. Aside from being a logical business move–Gears has sold 4.5 million copies globally across the Xbox 360 and PC to date–Epic has been less than opaque about its intentions, even as far back as last year’s Game Developers Conference when lead designer Clifford Bleszinski (aka Cliffy B) said that his company “intends to do a sequel.”

The question, then, has been when would Microsoft and Epic finally get around to making the announcement. True to rampant speculation, that reveal came today during Microsoft’s keynote speech at the 2008 Game Developers Conference

After Epic founder Tim Sweeney and president Mike Capps left the stage with no mention of the shooter midway through Microsoft’s presentation, the lights dimmed to close out the keynote…and a trailer for Gears of War 2 played. Cliffy B then stormed the stage, chainsaw rifle in hand, revealing the game would officially light up Microsoft’s console exclusively this November.

No PC version of the game was mentioned, though Epic released an enhanced PC port of the sci-fi third-person shooter a year after its console counterpart.

King Kong

King Kong is a 2005 remake of the 1933 film of the same name about a fictional giant ape called Kong. The film was co-written, co-produced and directed by Peter Jackson and stars Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, Jack Black as Carl Denham, Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll and, through performance capture, Andy Serkis as Kong. Serkis also played Lumpy, the galley chef on the SS Venture.In 1933, Great Depression-era New York City, actress Ann Darrow has just lost her job at the local theater and is recruited by film director Carl Denham because of the presence of her favorite writer Jack Driscoll. They set sail to a remote Indian Ocean island known as Skull Island, inhabited by prehistoric creatures and the mighty giant gorilla Kong.The film’s budget climbed from an initial $150 million US to a record-breaking $207 million. The film was released on December 14, 2005 and made an opening of $50.1 million. Kong turned out to be very profitable as domestic and worldwide grosses eventually added up to $550 million,^[1] becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history. Strong DVD sales also added over $100 million to the grosses.^[2] It also received positive reviews, with some considering it one of the all-round best movies of 2005, though it has been criticized for its length at three hours and eight minutes. It won Academy Awards for visual effects, sound mixing, and sound editing.

Nissan Teana

The Nissan Teana is a front wheel drive mid-size automobile produced by Nissan of Japan, introduced in 2003. It is exported as the Nissan Maxima and Nissan Cefiro to certain markets, not to be confused with the Nissan Maxima sold in North America. It shares a platform with the North American Nissan Maxima and Nissan Altima, as well as the Japanese market Nissan Presage.Powering the Teana is either 2.3 or 3.5 liter engine which matches to the automatic transmission. Trim levels are 230JK, 230JM, 230JS, and 350JS.The Renault Samsung Motors SM7 of South Korea is built on the Teana platform. In January 2005, Renault Samsung announced a lower-specification version of the Teana which it will sell as the SM5.In the People’s Republic of China, the Teana is manufactured by the Dongfeng Motor Company, a joint venture with Nissan. In the neighbouring country of Pakistan, the Teana is still known as Cefiro and is assembeled in Karachi. Additionally, it is sold in India, Russia, Ukraine as well as in New Zealand and Australia where it competes with the locally produced Mitsubishi 380 and Toyota Aurion under the Maxima badge.

Snake On The Plane

Snakes on a Plane is a cult high concept, horror-thriller feature film starring Samuel L. Jackson. It was released by New Line Cinema on August 18, 2006 in North America. The film, directed by David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2, Cellular), was written by David Dalessandro, John Heffernan, and Sheldon Turner.The movie gained a considerable amount of attention prior to its release, forming large fan bases online and becoming an Internet phenomenon, due to the film’s title and premise. In response to the Internet fan base, New Line Cinema incorporated feedback from online users into its production, and added five days of reshooting. Before and after the film was released, it was parodied and alluded to on television shows and films, fan-made videos, video games, a noise album dubbed Soundtrack for the Motion Picture Snakes on a Plane, and various forms of literature. Despite the immense Internet buzz, the film’s gross revenue did not live up to expectation.The film is rated R by the MPAA, 15 by the BBFC, M by the OFLC and 14A by the CHVRS, due to explicit language, a scene depicting drug use and sex, and sequences of terror and violence.

Rock Band (video game)

Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games, and distributed by EA Distribution. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007,^[2] while the PlayStation 2 version was released in the U.S. on December 18, 2007^[6] and the Wii version will be released on June 22, 2008.^[7] The game was released in Canada for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on December 27, 2007 and for the PlayStation 2 on January 2, 2008. It is due for release in Europe as a timed exclusive on Xbox 360 on May 23, 2008, followed by a release on the other platforms on August 29, 2008.^[3]