Section: Gaming News, Consoles, Xbox-360

The infamous Red Ring of Death (RROD) has been a plague on the conscience of Xbox 360 owners since the system debuted. Playing a round of Halo 3 or exploring the world of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, only to have your system freeze up and then instantly parish is not something gamers wanted on their minds, especially considering that it might take two weeks – or longer – to get their systems back.

I know it’s something I think about whenever I turn my system on and I bet it’s on your mind as well. Now however, it looks like the RROD epidemic may be something of the past as Microsoft has started introducing Jasper chips into fresh Xbox 360s hitting retail shelves.

VentureBeat has exposed some details on the newly outfitted Xbox 360s, including why the systems should be RROD-proof.

For starters, the new systems will pack a 65-nanometer graphics chip (down from 90-nanometers) that will use less power to operate and has a better fit in it’s designated socket on the motherboard. The key symptom of the RROD was that graphics chips were “popping” off the motherboard due to intense heat which would melt away the (arguably cheap) solvents on the chips. Dean Takahasi, the author of the VentureBeat article, goes one step further with this theory by revealing:

The main failure cause was “thermal fatigue” of the leaded C4 connections between the graphics chip die and its organic carrier. The underfill had too low a glass-transition temperature for the amount of heat generated. That caused cracking over time, resulting in graphics chips coming loose.

New graphics chips aren’t the only upgrade the new systems are packing though, there’s also the pleasant upgrade of 256 megabytes of internal flash memory over the old standard of 16 megabytes. As Dean points out, this will most likely be used to store the New Xbox Experience Dashboard update, which means that even consumers looking to just buy an Arcade or Core Xbox 360 bundles (the bundles without a hard drive) will be able to experience (sorry about that) NXE.

The final revision comes from the power supply which has received a downgrade from 175 watts to 150 watts. If you are thinking 25 watts is not a lot of voltage, check your electric bill. You can even feel better about playing your games so long knowing how much electricity you’re saving, just remember to take a break every now and than for your own sake. The new power supplies will even come with new plugs which will help you differentiate between a Jasper-ized system and pre-Jasper system.

Speaking of differentiating, unfortunately, there is no known way of determining which system is packing the Jaspers yet but those details should be revealed soon as systems with Jaspers make way to retailers.

It may have taken a while but it seems Microsoft may be on track to shedding the Red Shroud around their system. So fess up, kids, are you going to hunt one of these newly upgraded systems down or are you too set in your warding off the Red Rings rituals?

Read [VentureBeat] Via [1UP]

Full Story » | Written by Kris Rosado for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: Gaming News, Features, Game-Companies, Developers

If you think the gaming industry is a sure fire way to make some money, you are way off.

According to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), only 20% of games that hit the market make a decent profit. That means that 80% of the games you see on shelves are either losing profits or barely breaking even.

A game may be very successful but the company still doesn’t make a profit because of all the added expenses that went into the game. Every time you rework or redesign a part of the game, you have to fork over some extra cash. If you decide to add in extra features to the game, such as online play, you gotta open up the wallet. And adding multiplayer, is it worth an extra 500 Gs?

According to Geoffrey Zatkin, co-founder of EEDAR (as interviewed by GameDaily), there are several factors that determines what will make a game profitable. There is no real way to tell which of those little extras will help sell the game.

Genre and platform are big ones, if it is only released on one system that could make people either want it more, or want it less. Also the type of game could effect sales. First person shooters don’t allows do better than third. And the big decision whether or not to switch genres when your company is doing so well with on type.

Game developers have to consider all these questions when creating a game. They also have to think of things like release date (is it near a big holiday?), whether there is downloadable content, and what other games they came out with that were successful/unsuccessful. Plus a ton more.

So it’s easy to see how only about 20% of games make a profit but it is still a sad state of affairs. Spending the money to make a different and unique game can sometimes end up costing you a lot more in the long run. It’s a gamble every developer is willing to take until, one day, they hit the mother load and create a game that will set them financially for a long time.

Site [Electronic Entertainment Design and Research ] Read [Game Daily] Via [Forbes]

Full Story » | Written by Jessica Moen for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

Section: Gaming News, Consoles, Xbox-360, Gear, Audio, Game-Companies, Developers, Publishers, Genres, 3D, Action, Strategy, Web-Sites, Official-Sites

Halo fans may have another item to add to their holiday wishlist – the Halo Trilogy – The Complete Original Soundtracks boxed set. Sumthing Else Music Works’ has just announced that the five disc release, which also comes with four tracks from Halo Wars will be available both in stores and for download on December 2, 2008. Amazon‘s currently listing the set for $26.99. If you search for Halo at Sumthing Digital, the Halo soundtracks are $9.99 each, so the boxed set ends up being a pretty good deal.

The Halo Wars special DVD that’s included with this set may be the most appealing to fans. It not only has four unspecified tracks from the forthcoming Xbox 360 real-time strategy game set in the Halo universe, but it also shows the recording session where the Halo Wars theme was created and the opening “Five Long Years” movie that will appear in Halo Wars.

The contents of the pack are pretty standard, aside from the Halo Wars special DVD. There are four CDs – Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2: Volume 2 and the two disc Halo 3 soundtrack. What I don’t understand is, why Halo 2: Volume 1 isn’t included. The original press release, which can be viewed at Team Xbox, makes no mention of the first part of the Halo 2 soundtrack. Perhaps this is because Incubus preformed some of the tracks. I guess you have to spend the extra $9.99 at Sumthing Digital to get that 21 track CD, if you want it.

Read [Bungie] Via [Xbox 360 Fanboy] Also Read [Team Xbox] Product Page [Amazon] Site [Sumthing Digital]

Full Story » | Written by Jenni Lada for Gamertell. | Comment on this Article »

Image by via CrunchBase

Back when I started this site, it was completely free. Built on Blogger, images hosted at photobucket, and email provided through a service that had just sprung up at AOL: My eAddress. At the time this was fantastic because I could pick an email for the site which was close to the domain that I would eventually purchase. It turned out that AOL was not going to give users access to the domain outside of emails, so I bought up a couple of domains anyway. Still ended up continuing to use the emails since the first hosting service I had was terrible and did not want to put emails there. A different host and a couple of blogging platforms later, the eAddress is no longer going to be around.

Today there was a lovely email in my inbox:

As of December 31, 2008, AOL will no longer maintain ownership of domain names registered through My eAddress. Before we release all registered names, however, we are offering our users the opportunity to take ownership of the domains themselves, while continuing to use the My eAddress service. You must take advantage of this offer before December 31, 2008 to avoid disruption to your email service.

So now its time to stop being lazy and then wait for the domains to go to back into gen-pop. Its too bad, those emails were handy for beta testing software and the spam that followed.

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“[...] My resolution for the next year is to attempt to post at least once every other day.”

Okay, so it didn’t exactly go as planned. Longtime readers of mine will know that usually November to early February is my busy season in which I hardly post anything at all. During those few months, I am literally 100x busier than the other parts of the year. Now, it just so happened that this “busy time” began a month earlier than normal this time. Since mid-October, I’ve barely been gaming at all, I’ve not even had a lot of time to talk to/be with friends and family, and I sure as hell haven’t been able to post on blogs. I apologize for seemingly disappearing out of nowhere. I’m sure it seemed like to some that I was gone for good. Well, I am not.

I’m going to try and post whenever I get a chance, but there aren’t any guarantees that you’ll even see the next post before February. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it goes. Life > Internet

-Matt Graham

Section: Features, Lists, Handhelds, iPhone & iPod Touch, Updates, Apple App Store

It’s our second edition of the App Store gaming update! This week wasn’t as bad to put together as last week’s, though the insane amounts of turkey didn’t help things.

In this edition of the update we added two new sections entitled: “What’s Free” and “Games you might like.“ I won’t bother explaining to you the complex definitions of these sections, as I’m sure you folks can figure them out. Since we are still in beta, we can tinker around with the list week to week to find just the right format for you guys. As always, feedback is appreciated so feel free to let us know how much you love the list or heaven forbid, hate it!

We also hope to provide reviews for these games at some point so look out for those as well! Now, on to the list: Read More