Circuit City Ripping People Off Again

Apparently Circuit City ran an ad in their paper saying Buy COD 4 and get COD 3 Free well Adam, a reader of The Consumerist, reports:

Today, like many anxious gamers, I went to Circuit City (Store # 3111) to pick up the highly anticipated “Call of Duty 4″ for the XBox 360. I chose to pick it up at Circuit City as this week’s circular ad listed a free copy of the previous game “Call of Duty 3″ with purchase. When I went to check out, I was told that it was a misprint and that they refused to honor it. Myself, along with about half a dozen co-workers were rightfully angry that we wasted our lunch hour on this Circuit City bait-and-switch, that has become too common with this outlet lately.

On top of all this the Misprint in question is still listed on their website. I know from my own past experience that Circuit City is a very bad place to shop and have stopped shopping their.

EA Donates SimCity to the One Laptop Per Child initiative

EA has announced that they will be donating the original 1989 SimCity game to the One Laptop Per Child initiative. OLPC is a non-profit humanitarian effort dedicated to develop, manufacture, and distribute inexpensive laptops all over the world, in hopes of giving children everywhere a modern education. SimCity, while being entertaining, also helps to teach decision-making skills and expand a child’s creative thinking. This is a first time a major game developer has provided a game for free to the whole world. Laptops with the game should begin arriving in countries such as Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia and India by the end of this year.

I wonder if other Major game publishers will start to do this with some of there older games.

Built In HD-DVD Drive 360

An Australia gaming site called SmartHouse claims they have inside source that Microsoft and Toshiba are working on a Xbox 360 with Builtin HD-DVD, Wifi and other features. If this is true and Microsoft can keep the price right they may have something here. Smarthouse says it will be released late 2008 or at CES 2009. We will keep you updated when we have more information.

Is the Xbox 360 Core being Replaced with Xbox 360 Arcade

Thats right folks Core’s days may be numbered both Toys “R” Us and Amazon had an Xbox 360 Arcade SKU listed then it was taken down as soon as people noticed it. This is most likely why there has been so many rumors of the Core SKU being discontinued MS plans on replacing it with the new Arcade bundle.

The arcade bundle was listed as being shipped OCT 23rd and to include a 256 MB memory card, 5 XBLA games, and a wireless controller.

We will keep you informed as we get more information.

Nintendo Now Top Dog In Publishing

Game Developer magazine, published by Game Developer Conference organizers the CMP Game Group, has given Nintendo the highest honors in its annual Top 20 Publishers report. The last five years EA has held this honor and this year Nintendo takes it over Previous top publisher Electronic Arts is now ranked second, followed by Activision, Ubisoft, and THQ.

Game Developer decides the winner “by considering number of releases by SKU, average review scores, and estimated publisher revenue from August 2006 to July 2007.” Also this year they also added the publishers “reputations by polling more than 300 individuals from within the industry” to decide the winner.

“As we can see from the new rankings, the rise of casual gaming, coupled with these new reputational elements, has contributed markedly to ranking shifts,” said Game Developer editorial director Simon Carless. “We’re eager to see how these industry changes affect the report in subsequent years.”

A complete listing of this year’s Top 20 Publishers is available in the October 2007 edition of Game Developer Magazine.

Third Halo Short Film Combat Part II Released

The third short film was released exclusivly on Discovery.com to help promote the series premiere of Last One Standing. This new Live Action Short film picks up directly where Combat Part 1 left off and I have to say this is the best of the three videos that have been made.

The new film is directed by Neill Blomkamp which will also be the director for the Halo Movie if and when they can get a studio to back the project. However, after seeing how well Halo 3 has done and how well these short films are with no studio funding I am sure a Major Studio will pick up the Halo Movie Project.

Mass Effect Trilogy on 360

During an interview with CVG, Dr. Greg Zeschuk the Co-founder of Bioware said it is “Certainly our intent is to have all three iterations or installments of Mass Effect to be on Xbox 360. That’s the goal.” However, if they will all be exclusive to the 360 Dr. Zeschuk pointed out that is it to soon to tell and that even thinking a year in the future is a big challange these days.

Now we all just have to hope that the console cycle lasts longer then 5 years due mainly to the fact that the 360 is in its second year and the first Mass Effect isnt even released yet. Sure the development for the next 2 games will be shorter because Bioware has all the tools and the game engine built but they still might have to make the choice of rushing the next two games or waiting for the next console cycle to begin to finish the trilogy.

Activision Buys Bizarre

Activision has announced the acquisition of developer Bizarre Creations the creator of the widely acclaimed Project Gotham Racing Series. Up till now Activision has lacked in the racing genre which is a 1.4 billion dollar market. While Bizarre is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision, no changes were made to projects currently in development by Bizarre Creations.

Orange Box Gone Gold

A representative from Valve Software confirmed on Wednesday night that its upcoming releases of The Orange Box for PC and Xbox 360 have gone gold. This means that the company has finished development of the set and has shipped it out for manufacturing and are on their way for an October 10 release date.

The Orange Box comes packed with the latest version of Valve Software’s smash-hit Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Also if you pre-order orange box from steam or any other store you will recieve a $5 discount off the price.