gaming

"CyberPower Inc., www.cyberpowerpc.com a manufacturer of custom gaming machines, unveils the latest addition to its Fang Series of high end gaming systems. The Black Mamba, the cornerstone of the Fang Series, underwent a complete re-design from the ground up to include a monstrous chassis, custom water cooling solution, and DX11 ready hardware.

The new Black Mamba is enhanced, advanced and evolved. The enhancements begin in the outer layer. The Black Mamba gets an all new enclosure to house all the powerful hardware it possesses. CyberPower selectively chose the Corsair Obsidian 800D chassis for its rugged steel frame construction and superior expansion capabilities. The Obsidian chassis is also built to last through years of component upgrades. " source

"Coming good on its promise, Sony's PlayStation Network Digital Comics service has launched, with PSP owners in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa able to download Marvel classics for as little as 99 cents. Along with Marvel Entertainment comics, Disney, IDW Publishing, iVerse Media and several other publishers have supplied Sony with their wares, with 550 available today, including Iron Man, Spiderman, X-Men, Transformers and Archie." source

"Nintendo on Monday said it would launch its Wii Remote in two new colors. Blue and pink versions of the controller will join the existing white and black controllers and will give Wii owners the option of four-player games where each player has their own controller color. Each unit will also have both the MotionPlus add-on and a protective jacket in the box." source

"It is a substantial part of how Kristen, whose last name I'm withholding out of concern for her privacy, has become, according to one leading compilation, the No. 4 ranking woman, worldwide, in Gamerscore. Her tag is CRU x360a - go ahead, look it up. Kristen - CRU or Crubie to some online - is a 24-year-old stay-at-home mom in northwest Indiana. You call her extremely motivated. You can call her obsessed. You can also call her an achievement whore, like she hasn't heard that from every piss-ant with a 5,000 gamerscore in the underground zone.

Bottom line, she's is really effective at piling up her gamerscore. But she's not sure when, or if, she will stop." Source

"Late last week it was reported that following Venezuela's lead in attempting to reduce "violent tendencies" in South American children, Brazilian Sen. Valdir Raupp has authored a bill that would make it a crime to make, import, or distribute "offensive" video games.

The goal of the bill is to "curb the manufacture, distribution, importation, distribution, trading, and custody, [and] storage of, the video games that affect the customs, traditions of the people, their worship, creeds, religions and symbols."

Where this ban, like many others, falls short is in assigning blame for societal ills to video games instead of dealing with larger social issues, including a lack of parental oversight. There are, no doubt, influences in Brazil that are different from the U.S., but video game ratings have proven to be an excellent example of an industry-wide standard that could easily be adopted internationally" Source

"Japan's Sony Corp said it is enjoying robust demand for its PlayStation 3 game console and other electronic products so far in this holiday shopping season in the key U.S. market.

'We saw a very positive sales increase for televisions, computers and PS3 in particular,' Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer told a group of reporters on Thursday. 'I don't think there were any negatives, but we need a little more time to find out how big it was.'

Year-end sales are critical for Sony and other consumer electronics makers as they represent a big chunk of their annual revenues." source

"Two weeks ago, the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 posted monstrous sales to the delight of publisher Activision and developer Infinity Ward. CoD:MW2 raked in over $310M USD in the U.S. and UK in only 24 hours, moving approximately 4.7 million units. That tidy sum in cold hard cash puts even movie industry's biggest one-day opening ever, Twilight: New Moon (approximately $72M USD) to shame.

Now, rival publisher Ubisoft has a similar success to report. Its new game, Assassin's Creed 2, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, has posted better-than-expected sales, selling 1.6 million copies in its first week. With many of the sales occurring at $59.99 mark (Amazon.com and Newegg.com have discounted it to $55.99, and $54.99, respectively), that indicates the game likely has pulled in close to $100M USD in sales." source

"It's never too early to start thinking about that desktop that you really, really need under the tree by the third week in December, and rather than waiting until the last moment and getting stuck with some random configuration and a lofty overnight shipping fee, iBuyPower is encouraging you to have a gander at the five new liquid-cooled rigs that it just unveiled at NewEgg. The low-end is propped up by the Gamer Extreme 922 SLC at just $989, while the specced-out Gamer Supreme 979SLC will set Santa back just under four large. At the top, you'll find luxuries such as Intel's Core i7 975, a Blu-ray drive, 128GB SSD and 1.5TB of HDD space, while lower-end systems snag the likes of a Core i7 860, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD. Peek the via link below for a more robust look at the specifications, and feel free to get your order in now if you like resting easy." source

"Netbooks are, generally speaking, fairly businesslike devices. We buy them for word processing, web browsing, and e-mail, not for music production or game playing. We buy them for their size and weight and battery life, not for their graphics chips and processing power./ But netbook owners aren’t totally out of luck when it comes to gaming, you know. We’ve got a whole suite of older games at our disposal, for one thing; many of the hottest games from even three or four years back run just fine on a machine with a 1.6 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and no dedicated video card. And thanks to the internet and other wonderful technologies, you can take your pick of older titles via services like GameTap or GOG.com./ But that’s not what I came here to tell you about. I came to talk about five recent games that your little road warrior can handle." source