Filed under: Gaming

As you’ve surely heard (and hopefully confirmed for yourself) by now, The Dark Knight is a runaway hit. So much so, in fact, that a number of manufacturers have figured it prudent to crank our hardware with the iconic Batman logo front and center. Next in line for admission on the bandwagon seems to be Microsoft, which apparently showed off a “limited edition” (read: likely one of a kind) Dark Knight Xbox 360 over in Taiwan. We know, you want the details — eventual release dates, a price, the works. Unfortunately for us all, we’re stuck with just that image above and hope for the future. Hey, at least you can let your imagination run wild.

[Via IGN]

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Filed under: PlayStation Network

Check your emails, folks. Over the next few hours and days, new members of the expanded beta for PlayStation Home will be added. Already, folks in Europe have received a notice acknowledging their acceptance into the new beta. From what we hear, American members of the beta should be receiving download codes soon as well. Make sure you check your spam messages, as you wouldn’t want to delete the code necessary to access the updated beta client — would you?

Remember: if you’re already in the old beta, you must still get the download code to access the new, expanded beta. An edited version of the invitation e-mail is available, after the break.

[Thanks, Snake!]

Continue reading Updated Home beta invitations being delivered

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

We can’t in good conscience recommend trying this one at home for sake of your own sanity, but one enterprising PS3 enthusiast has thankfully gone the extra mile and installed Windows Vista on the console so you don’t have to. As you might have guessed, however, it’s not a pretty sight, with the OS running under emulation and requiring nearly 25 minutes to fully boot up. You can also add an extra five minutes and thirty seconds on top of that to load the start menu, and about twelve minutes to load up that most demanding of applications: Notepad. Head on past the break to see it for yourself, and hit up the link below for the installation instructions… if you dare.

[Thanks, Death_Coil]

Continue reading Vista gets crammed onto a PS3. It’s as bad as you think.

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Filed under: Videos and Screenshots

Click for high resolution image

Ferrari Challenge is gearing up for August 26 — the game’s release date for North America. With little under two weeks left before race day, we’re sure some of you might be interested in seeing more of the game. Luckily, we’ve added a few new screens to our gallery for you to check out.

In the screenshot above, you can see the Ferrari 333SP. It’s one of the cars we mentioned before in our hands-on with the North American version of the game. You did read that, didn’t you? Make sure that you do!

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Filed under: Gaming

Apparently not willing to let things get to the point that someone has to step in and say, “enough already,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata recently told The Wall Street Journal that the company will be easing up on the number of accessories it releases for the Wii. More specifically, he said that, with the upcoming release of the Wii MotionPlus and Wii Speak add-ons, “most of the ideas for accessories that we had initially come up with are out now,” and that while they “might think up some more,” they “don’t have any plans to release a whole lot more.” Of course, we’re guessing that’s not a sentiment echoed by third-party manufacturers, who we’re sure we can count on to keep on cluttering up the living rooms of Wii owners the world over.

[Via Joystiq]

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Filed under: e-Distribution Games, News

Holding out on downloading Siren: Blood Curse in hopes of a Blu-ray release? If you are in the US, don’t bother. Sony has spoken to MTV Multiplayer, reiterating that there are no plans for a North American release on of Siren in disc form “at this time.” The Sony representative reminds us that “you are able to delete and then re-download episodes since the purchase is linked to your PSN account. The developers kept this functionality in mind knowing that the episodes were fairly beefy.”

MTV speculates that Sony may simply be testing the waters in terms of Siren’s sales before releasing a retail version. Either way, if you really want the game on Blu-ray, you can always just import it from Europe.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Peripherals

Tilt controls might be getting all the fanfare, what with the iPhone and Sony Ericsson’s own W760 featuring tilt gaming, but the analog stick still reigns supreme when it comes to getting some actual fragging done. We spotted Zeemote’s promising JS1 mobile joystick back at MWC this year, featuring four trigger buttons and an analog nub, but the little Bluetooth controller is finally getting a release. In fact, Sony Ericsson is giving this thing away in the Netherlands, with the purchase of a W760. Sadly, folks who already own a W760, don’t live in the Netherlands, or just want a stand-alone JS1 for throwing at people or wedging in small crevices are still out of luck — still no word on price or release of the thing outside this deal.

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

While Intel’s Larrabee might not be a household name for consumers just yet, it’s certainly at the table where Nvidia and AMD/ATI eat. The many-core (8 to 48, at least, according to that Intel graphic) x86 chip runs all your existing apps while tossing in support for OpenGL and DirectX thus eliminating the need for a discrete graphics chip. At least that’s the plan. While the exact number of cores remains a secret as does the performance of each core compared to current GPUs, given the importance Intel places on Larrabee, it’s reasonable to assume that an 8-core chip will launch in 2009 or 2010 with comparable performance to GPUs on the market at that time. Intel does say that Larrabee cores will scale “almost linearly” (read: within 10%) in games; that means that a 16-core chip will offer nearly twice the performance of an 8-core chip, 32-cores twice that of 16, and so on. Apparently this has already been proven in-house with Intel name-dropping Larrabee-coded titles such as Gears of War, FEAR, and Half-Life 2, Episode 2. It’s no coincidence then to hear that Intel’s first Larrabee product will target PC gamers. Click through if you’re just dying to read about Larrabee’s 1024 bits-wide bi-directional ring network and other bits of technical wonderment sure to create at least the hint of a silicon malaise.

[Via CNET and Washington Post, Thanks Dan R.]

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Filed under: Videos and Screenshots

It’s Metal Gear Solid 4 … meets “Thumb Wars.” This lengthy ad does Kojima Productions justice by taking a humorous concept and running with it … all the way. Clocking in at almost four minutes, this thumb-recreation of MGS4 is in fact, an ad for the upcoming Japanese mobile game, Metal Gear Ac!d Mobile.

[Thanks, Gambit07! Via Kotaku]

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Filed under: Gaming

We’ve been hearing whispers that an Xbox 360 price cut is in the works, and now we’re starting to see some evidence — VGChartz scored this image of an unknown retailer’s inventory system showing the 360 Arcade dropping to $199 on September 7th. There’s no word on whether the rumored 60GB and Elite price cuts are coming as well, but they’d certainly be welcome — and with Rock Band 2 scheduled to hit just a week later, we’d say next month is looking like a good one for Xbox fans.

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