EA FaceBreaker - The New Boxing Game

EA announced a new boxing game called FaceBreaker. This game will be released later this year for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii consoles.

“We’re very excited to announce FaceBreaker, an all-new franchise from EA SPORTS that is fun, fresh and innovative,” said Peter Moore, president, EA SPORTS. “FaceBreaker reinvigorates one of the great genres in sports videogames. Arcade boxing takes me back to my roots in this industry, and this game signals our shift to adding more approachable fun to our product lineup. In no time at all, you’ll be picking up the controllers and knocking your opponent around the ring, smashing faces, and having a riot.”

The renaissance of the arcade boxing genre is upon us. Created by the same team that developed the award-winning Fight Night Round 3, FaceBreaker offers irreverent fun, immersive gameplay and eye-popping stylized graphics. In this in-your-face, arcade world full of ego-wielding characters, each boxer comes to life with unique attributes and distinct personal style, including Romeo, a Latin lover known for his pelvic thrusts, and Molotov, an oversized Russian demolitions expert with a penchant for fighting dirty. Add a little personal motivation to your fight by uploading a photo of your face to create a realistic likeness using Photo Game Face, and go toe-to-toe with a real-life friend or foe.

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Grand Theft Auto IV In Stores On 29th April

Rockstar Games announced the release date for Grand Theft Auto IV. Developed by Rockstar North, Grand Theft Auto IV will be simultaneously available for Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system and PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system and will be in stores worldwide on April 29, 2008.

"We are so excited to be releasing Grand Theft Auto IV," said Sam Houser, Founder and Executive Producer of Rockstar Games. "We've pushed ourselves very hard to make something incredible and hope the game sets a new benchmark for interactive entertainment."

The launch date of the PC version is still unknown.

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Future of Alan Wake's DX10 Support Is Still In Dark

FudZilla got some interesting infos about the most talked game title Alan Wake and its DirectX 10 version.Here's what they got from:

Besides the usual "We haven't announced anything on this yet" when asked about DirectX 10 support, they managed to find out that the upcoming game from Remedy Entertainment called Alan Wake will benefit from quad-core processors. According to the interview, "quad's" will be up to 30 percent faster than dual core processors. Besides the last years blow dealt by Microsoft concerning the fact that Alan Wake is not a 2007 title, another hard punch was aimed at XP users, when it was said that it is best to consider Alan Wake to be a Vista exclusive game.

According to the interview, the so called "The Alan Wake engine" will use the Havok physics engine. When asked about multi-GPU solutions, Markus Maki made an interesting statement that they will "much rather put [their] development efforts to make sure [that] the game runs great on most gamers' systems, those with single GPUs."

As for now, the game will be available for Xbox360 and PC. You can check out the full interview here.

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CES 2008:No HD DVD Capability For XBOX 360

As we have been guessing that XBOX 360 would have inbuilt HD DVD capabilities but Microsoft did not unveil any such information at CES, and has no plans to do so in the future, according to an executive in Microsoft's entertainment business.

"Absolutely not," said Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for interactive entertainment at Microsoft, when asked Monday if an HD DVD Xbox was in the works.

Microsoft has been pushing HD DVD over Blu-ray as the format for high-definition video, but HD DVD suffered a significant setback last week when Warner Bros. said it would drop support for the format in favor of Blu-ray.


Monday during an interview at CES in Las Vegas, Bell said Microsoft is taking a more agnostic view on how to serve up HD video. He said that it's up to consumers to make a choice between the two formats, not vendors.

"We'll let the market decide how they're most interested in consuming entertainment," he said.

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HD DVD With XBOX 360 Speculated

According to Seattle Times there's a good news for all XBOX gamers(if at all the rumour turns out to be true) which will be made public at the CES.

Seattle Times staff columnist Brier Dudley speculates that Microsoft "may be preparing to license the Xbox gaming platform to consumer-electronics companies".In particular, Microsoft could work with Toshiba to develop a digital video recorder with a hard-drive, high-definition HD-DVD drive and Xbox gaming capabilities. They're already allied against Sony and other backers of the Blu-ray DVD format, and Toshiba could help Xbox finally penetrate the Japanese market.

Microsoft could also make a splash by announcing plans to give the Xbox 360 an internal HD-DVD drive, putting it on par with Sony's PlayStation 3 that has a built-in Blu-ray drive.

But then again, Gates may want to keep everyone in suspense about the next Xbox, in case he decides to return to CES after all.

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After PS3 XBOX 360 Gets DivX Support

As we have guessed that Xbox 360 will go in the path of PS3 and so they are.

Coming to you December 4 will be an updated Xbox 360 Dashboard that will play your downloaded videos.

The Xbox 360 Fall Update will arrive fashionably late on December 4, bringing with it a slew of enhancements to Microsoft’s console interface. Official details were released today, confirming previous reports speculating on what would be new.

The new Dashboard update will bring with it an “Inside Xbox” news feed from Xbox.com, where gamers can read about game releases, events, and Xbox LIVE Marketplace offers. This feature mirrors the Information Board recently introduced to the PlayStation 3 in the v2.0 firmware.

Perhaps the biggest video-related addition in the Fall Update is MPEG-4 Part 2 video codec support, most popularly implemented in DivX and Xvid videos. Videos packaged in an AVI container encoded in either simple profile or advanced simple profile should play in their full glory on the Xbox 360. The inclusion of MPEG-4 Part 2 video support was a feature hinted at by DivX Inc. CEO Kevin Hell earlier this month, though its implementation will arrive sooner than most expected.

The Fall Dashboard Update will be available for all connected Xbox 360 consoles free of charge beginning at 2:00 a.m. PST on December 4.

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More Games Added To XBOX 360 Backward Compatibility

A new compatibility update for the Xbox 360 have been rolled out which increases the total games playable on your new XBOX 360 to 300.

The Holiday comes a little early this year, as the BC team has just issued out another update. The latest backwards compatibility update is now available over Xbox Live.This free update brings the complete list of original Xbox games that you can play on your Xbox 360 to over 300. Remember, your original Xbox games will look better than ever on Xbox 360 running in 720p and 1080i with anti-aliasing.You can also play cross-platform between Xbox 360 and the original Xbox over Xbox Live.

In the meantime, just sign into Xbox LIVE and drop any of the games on this list and you should get a prompt for the update. If you don’t get a prompt, try again later today as the update is just being rolled out. An updated ISO file for you to download is also available on Xbox.com.

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Xbox 360 Goes 65nm - Consumes Less Power

AnandTech investigates the new 65nm Xbox 360 consoles:

Microsoft just recently dropped the price of its Xbox 360 and around the same time, rumors crept up about a quiet introduction of 65nm CPUs into the bill of materials. The original Xbox 360 manufactured from 2005 up until August of this year all used 90nm chips; the CPU, GPU and eDRAM were all fabbed on a 90nm process, which was state of the art at the time. However, as you've undoubtedly noticed with Intel's recent move to 45nm, 90nm is more than dated now.

A move to 65nm would undoubtedly reduce power consumption, potentially make the console quieter and obviously make it cheaper to produce. With the Xbox 360 there's also another side effect that many surmised would result from a move to 65nm: increased reliability.

The reporter concludes the new 65nm Xbox 360 consoles use a lot less power. In idle the old 90nm Xbox 360 uses 149W while the new 65nm version consumes only 100W. While playing Halo 3 the old console uses 173W and the new 65nm console only 120W.

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Divx Playback Support To PS3

It's now official: the PlayStation 3 console will get DivX video playback support via an upcoming software update.

“We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to bring DivX to PS3,” said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. “Our technology will expand the multimedia functionality of PS3 by enabling users to enjoy access to the broad library of content in the DivX digital media format.”

Products that bear the DivX Certified logo have undergone a rigorous testing program to ensure a high-quality DivX media experience that includes reliable video playback and excellent visual quality. DivX is currently working to certify PS3 and deliver a superior digital media technology to consumers in the near future. Current PS3 end users will be able to add DivX functionality to their systems via a separate system software update at a forthcoming date. PS3 game title developers will be able to utilize DivX’s decoder technology by updating the system software of PS3’s Software Development Kit to version 2.00, which was released by SCE on November 2nd.

It's believed the Xbox 360 will also get DivX support but that's not official yet.

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