That famous line has never been so fitting, as it has now been announced that there is a SAW videogame in the works, and is set to release alongside SAW 6 in October 2009.
At Brash Entertainment’s recent press event, IGN received word that a game based on the Saw movie franchise is in development.
Scheduled for a release in October of 2009, the game will weave in and out of the Saw movie plotlines and will be an intricate collaboration between the development studio and the filmmakers. While this is really all the information known at the moment, it should be noted that the game will be running on the Unreal III engine and will likely be released on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Come back soon for more information as it becomes available, and head over to the game’s official site for future details.
As far as the movies go, the rumor that SAW 5 would take a year off was false. Lionsgate is eyeing October 24th 2008 for the release of SAW V, and SAW VI has also been marked on the calendar for October 30th, 2009
Ever since the delay last year, most people with common sense realized that GTAIV was ready to be released on the Xbox 360, but was being held back by Rockstar due to an agreement they had with Sony to release the game simultaneously on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Sony did this because they knew Rockstar would have problems developing for the PS3, just like everyone else. Nearly every week another game is delayed for the PS3 while the Xbox 360 version releases exactly when it should be. Some games that come to mind right now are SDvs.RAW07 being canceled for PS3’s launch (one of the many), Stranglehold being delayed several weeks last fall, and just recently Frontlines: Fuel of War was delayed from Feb to Late-08 for the PS3-version only. There are many more examples, but that is not the main story at hand…Rockstar has finally admitted that the PS3 is the the cause of the delay.
Rockstar’s VP of Product Development Jeronimo Barrera:
It’s really no surprise to anybody that the PS3 was definitely a contributing factor to the delay.
He continues:
Now, we’re neck and neck. That’s not an issue anymore. But back then that was something we were taking into account. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with the PS3 version. It’s awesome. They’re both identical.
At this point, it doesn’t really matter, since we had plenty of other games last fall. It just gets old to see the PS3 blatantly harm the gaming industry with its horrible design. Games are not coming out when they should, and aren’t as good as they should be (for those playing on a PS3) due to Sony’s arrogance when creating the console. Hopefully they have learned a lesson with this, and will actually work with developers, as closely as Microsoft always has, for the PS4.
Along with that, they have released the date for the game, April 29th. I’m going to be steering clear of most screenshots and videos of this game to make the actual game even better for myself, so don’t expect a ton of coverage leading up to it’s release.
It seems gamers don’t like it when you don’t do your homework. That is what Cooper Lawrence is finding out. Since she went on Fox News a few days ago and made a fool of herself, gamers have been heading to Amazon.com and trashing the reviews of her books. It may be immature and petty, but going on national television and blasting a game she has never played or even seen is also pretty immature. If that’s how she reasons her way through life maybe it’s good that some people will be spared from having to read her book. - Aeropause.com
At the time of this story, this is the current review statistics for her newest book, which she was promoting on Fox News as she ignorantly called Mass Effect a sexist sex-fest of a game.
One of the more recent reviews that someone wrote talks about how she’s not even a respected or practicing psychologist, and offers nothing new in this book. He then closes out his review with:
Please don’t contribute to the rash of pop psychology that promises quick fixes and delivers little or no results.
Amen to that. Also, as you research her, or even watch her interview on FNC, you will soon realize that she is actually the sexist. It’s very common that those who always scream about a certain issue, are always the biggest hypocrites, especially in the subject they are so “against”. We see this all the time, most recently with Larry Craig.
A couple days ago, Fox News Channel ran a segment full of complete lies about one of last fall’s biggest games, Mass Effect. I was actually watching this live when it aired:
In the letter, which cites Kotaku’s story on the segment, Jeff Brown, EA’s vice president of communications, asks Teri VanHorn, producer of the Live Desk with Martha MacCallum, to clarify “serious errors” the channel made in their Mass Effect story.
“As the parent company of BioWare, the studio which created the game, EA would like you to set the record straight on a number of errors and misstatements which incorrectly characterize the story and character interactions in Mass Effect.” The letter starts and then proceeds to outline their very strong case.
Your headline above the televised story read: “New videogame shows full digital nudity and sex.” Fact: Mass Effect does not include explicit or frontal nudity. Love scenes in non-interactive sequences include side and profile shots - a vantage frequently used in many prime-time television shows. It’s also worth noting that the game requires players to develop complex relationships before characters can become intimate and players can chose to avoid the love scenes altogether.
FNC voice-over reporter says: “You’ll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex.” Fact: Sex scenes in Mass Effect are not graphic. These scenes are very similar to sex sequences frequently seen on network television in prime time.
FNC reporter says: “Critics say Mass Effect is being marketed to kids and teenagers.” Fact: That is flat out false. Mass Effect and all related marketing has been reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and rated Mature - appropriate for players 17-years and older. ESRB routinely counsels retailers on requesting proof of age in selling M-rated titles and the system has been lauded by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In practical terms, the ratings work as well or better than those used for warning viewers about television content.
The letter goes on to point out that the people who wrapped up the segment with a round table were equally clueless about the game: “They have had zero experience with Mass Effect and are largely ignorant about videogames, the people who play them, and the ESRB system that governs their ratings and sales.”
The letter wraps up by pointing out how insulting the resulting story was to EA and Bioware and asks, not demands, a correction:
The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.
Do you watch the Fox Network? Do you watch Family Guy? Have you ever seen The OC? Do you think the sexual situations in Mass Effect are any more graphic than scenes routinely aired on those shows? Do you honestly believe that young people have more exposure to Mass Effect than to those prime time shows?
This isn’t a legal threat; it’s an appeal to your sense of fairness. We’re asking FNC to correct the record on Mass Effect.
Sincerely,
Jeff Brown Vice President of Communications Electronic Arts, Inc.
As a viewer of Fox News Channel for nearly 7 years, and it’s usually the only thing on my TV, I can easily say that this type of horribly biased and uninformed reporting is very common. If they’re not reading off a script they were handed by the Government, they are running their mouths about something they know nothing about to try and distract from the real issues in the world they are so fearful to cover. Remember: videogames are evil, war is good.
Due to its corporate corruption of course. I haven’t talked about GameSpot since they fired one of their most dedicated employees for writing an honest, negative review on a game that just so happened to have a multi-million dollar advertising deal coming up with the CNET-owned company. You can read all the details about that story, which occurred in late November 2007, here:
“It was a tough decision to let go of something [I’ve] been so thoroughly attached to for this many years,” he said. “It’s a crying shame that things went down the way they did, but like I said, I think my time had just come, the time to let it go.”
“I felt like it was just time for me to go,” Navarro told Joystiq in an exclusive interview. ” Certainly [the decision to leave] had a lot to do with the whole Jeff [Gerstmann] situation. … I wouldn’t have left if this situation hadn’t gone down the way it did. … Sometimes you just realize a place isn’t for you anymore, you know?”
Navarro has been a mainstay on the site since early 2003, writing hundreds of reviews and appearing regularly on video podcast The Hotspot. His last day at the site will be Jan. 24.
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This news comes just one week after Frank Provo, another long-time writer for GameSpot, quit the site as well:
Frank Provo, a freelancer and major contributor to the site for nearly eight years, recently announced he would no longer be contributing to the site.
Provo made no bones about the reason for his departure. “I believe CNet management let Jeff go for all the wrong reasons,” he wrote. “I believe CNet intends to soften the site’s tone and push for higher scores to make advertisers happy.” And Provo is in a position to know, according to an earlier post on his LiveJournal. “All the proof I need is in the way the staff reacted to Jeff’s dismissal and to what went on in the closed door meeting that took place on November 30th,” he said. “Any staffer that continues to work there once this fervor dies down does so with the fear that, one day, management will ask them to soften up their tone and scores… and they will either have to swallow their integrity and abide, or risk taking a stand and being let go,” he added back in December.
I’ve removed any links to GameSpot in the above articles, because there’s no reason to ever give that corrupted site’s owners anymore ad revenue. If you care anything about restoring honesty in the mainstream gaming media someday in the future, I would advise you do the same, and never hit up that site again.
It wasn’t a rumor, it was true. It was two months away from being done, but was then canceled due to Nintendo and Microsoft disagreeing over money. This is another perfect example of corporate greed taking priority over the gamer or the gaming industry itself. Fortunately, the story is getting a lot of attention, and a petition has surfaced that seems to be catching on quite well, better than any other petition I’ve ever kept my eye on. I signed the petition a day or two ago when it was only 800 signatures, and is already closing in on 3,000. Maybe if Microsoft and Nintendo see such a huge demand, they will overlook their selfish greed somewhat, cause it’s not like they aren’t going to make any money off of it.
Update: Since the posting of this story around seven hours ago, the petition now has nearly 4,000 signatures. Keep it up! 6pm: It’s now 7500 a few hours later today. The petition is growing in numbers exponentially at this point, and has gone viral. There’s no stopping it now.
A few days ago I read an article from the NYTimes that talked about how big corporations were speaking together at CES 2008 about implementing digital fingerprints and snooping through our digital packets at a network-level to try and address “piracy”. Microsoft’s name was thrown in the article along with one of the main corporations pushing for the technology to be implemented, and this article right here was going to be about the article and slamming Microsoft for being a part of it. Well when I went back to the article today to get a copy of it, I saw it was updated, and guess what, Microsoft does not support this, and will hopefully even fight against it. Here’s the article anyway, since it’s always good to be informed what greedy corporations are up to next. You’ll see the updated note at the bottom of the article.
For the last 15 years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.
But I.S.P.’s may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.
At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant AT&T said discussed whether the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.
Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.
Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.
“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.
Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the M.P.A.A. and R.I.A.A., for the last six months about carrying out digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.
“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”
Internet civil rights organizations oppose network-level filtering, arguing that it amounts to Big Brother monitoring of free speech, and that such filtering could block the use of material that may fall under fair-use legal provisions — uses like parody, which enrich our culture.
Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, who has led the company’s fights against companies like YouTube for the last three years, clearly doesn’t have much tolerance for that line of thinking.
“The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status,” he said. “The question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.”
I asked the panelists how they would respond to objections from their customers over network level filtering – for example, the kind of angry outcry Comcast saw last year, when it was accused of clamping down on BitTorrent traffic on its network.
“Whatever we do has to pass muster with consumers and with policy standards. There is going to be a spotlight on it,” said Mr. Cicconi of AT&T.
After the session, he told me that I.S.P.’s like AT&T would have to handle such network filtering delicately, and do more than just stop an upload dead in its tracks, or send a legalistic cease and desist form letter to a customer. “We’ve got to figure out a friendly way to do it, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.
UPDATE: Not all members of the panel endorsed network filtering. Microsoft has said it does not support the idea.
There’s been a lot of talk about this situation in my comments section, but as more time passes since the announcement of Warner Brothers (along with New Line Cinema and HBO) going exclusively to Blu-ray, more details are found out why First was the fact that Sony and the Blu-Ray Association paid Warner $500 million dollars, and now this:
Fears of a deteriorating U.S. economy and falling DVD industry sales helped drive Warner Bros.’s decision to back Sony’s Blu-ray next generation DVD format exclusively, a top executive told Reuters on Monday.
Hollywood’s biggest seller of home movies tipped the balance of power on Friday in favor of Sony in a fight for the next generation of DVDs between the electronics giant and Toshiba Corp., developers of the HD DVD format.
“We’ve typically been recession proof,” Warner Bros. Entertainment Group President Kevin Tsujihara said in an interview at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
“But the thing that we saw in the fourth quarter … was gas prices beginning to affect sales. And since we’re considered an impulse purchase, it’s beginning to impact us,” he said.
Tsujihara said the company needed to quickly erase consumer and retailer confusion over dueling DVD formats before economic conditions deteriorated.
Toshiba vowed the format war was not over, but Warner’s move was seen as a major setback, at least, in the race to develop a potentially multibillion-dollar market for high-definition discs.
Warner executives said the consortium of companies backing Blu-ray, including five of the seven big Hollywood Studios, could spend more than $50 million in 2008 to convince consumers to upgrade, or more than the amount spent by the backers of both HD DVD and Blu-ray in the 2007 holiday season. Budgets have not been finalized, Warner Bros. said.
The movie division of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., out of respect for Toshiba, has kept a low profile at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the neon-lit gambling oasis in the Nevada desert not known for its subtly.
Even Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer kept his remarks about Warner brief in public presentations.
Warner’s decision is seen cementing Blu-ray’s victory in what could possibly be the last physical format for movies and TV shows as technology and Internet companies race to build online distribution channels, according to Citigroup analyst Tony Wible.
A 2007 decline in DVD sales, which account for half of Hollywood’s profits, and anticipated further declines in 2008 sped Warner’s decision making process. Merrill Lynch said on Monday the United States had entered its first full blown recession in 16 years.
The economy had little impact on the fourth quarter’s higher sales of high definition televisions, which in turn helped boost sales of next generation DVD players, Warner Bros. Home Video President Ron Sanders told Reuters.
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The reason why Time Warner and Sony’s Stringer were quiet was because the switch was actually a breach of contract with HD DVD. Good thing the $500 million will easily pay that off.
Earlier this week at CES 2008, Toshiba/HD DVD canceled their press conference after the news of the Warner’s switch hit. The Blu-ray group on the other hand gloated that their CES booth would be, “The Best Booth of All-Time”
For the final time in his life, Bill Gates will give the keynote speech to kick off the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It starts in just a few minutes, and you can watch it LIVE right here. After the show you can download a audio version of it over at MajorNelson.com
The keynote kicks off at 8:30pmCT, 6:30pmPT, 9:30pmET.
The 17-year-old boy reportedly wanted his father, James Stanley Niedosik, 60, to look at his Xbox 360 Friday night.
However, when the father didn’t want to, an argument ensued. During the dispute, the boy handed his father a rifle and told him to shoot him, and he did.
The boy suffered from a .22 caliber bullet lodged in his skull behind his ear and was treated at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
Niedosik was arrested and sent to Monroe County Prison on $250,000 bail. He is now charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and endangering the welfare of a child.
“One’s in jail, one’s in the hospital,” Jeanie Niedosik, James’ ex-wife and the boy’s mother told The Morning Call. “I won’t know exactly what happened until I talk to [my son]. He’s incoherent yet; they have him heavily sedated.”
While she was not present at the shooting, she believes the incident was an accident.
“He did the shooting, but it was an accidental thing that took place,” she said.