After taking a PR battering over 24-hour online check-in, used games restrictions, contradictory explanations of their policies and seemingly mocking people who didn’t like the Xbox One’s policies, Microsoft is performing an about-face on their established DRM policies.
A post on the Xbox website said that Microsoft was backtracking on the DRM and used games restrictions that nearly derailed the Xbox One in this console generation before it started.
Reports are spreading like wildfire that PlayStation 3 update 4.45 is causing some consoles to lock-up and become unusable after applying the update. The update was supposed to include trophy notification options and improved system stability options. It looks like they missed the latter by a bit.
According to some unofficial Reddit data analysis, if you have installed a new hard drive into your PS3 that’s larger than 500 GB, you have a 90% chance of your console bricking and becoming unusable. All other PS3 types have a failure rate of less than 10% with the stock 500 GB models suffering an 8% failure rate and 120 GB models locking up in 2% of cases.
As of publishing, it appears that Sony has rolled back the 4.45 update and lists 4.41 as the current firmware version. Just be aware if you do see an update 4.45 listed and check the internet to see if you’re safe to install it.
News of Visceral Games’ demise may have been premature but it looks like news of the end of the Dead Space may not have been. In an interview at E3, EA Games Label vice president Patrick Soderlund says that the developer has been moved on to work on a new IP while Dead Space has been but on hiatus.
Man of Steel came out last weekend. Unlike Superman Returns, which we’re all going to pretend never happened, Man of Steel was loved by critics and movie goers. I’m working hard to make the time to see it but I’m a bit busy at the moment. The first free two hours I get through…
Disappointingly, DC didn’t follow-up the movie’s release with a new Superman comic after having three straight weeks of Superman/Justice League comics before Man of Steel came out. DC does have a new miniseries coming out from the award-winning 100 Bullets series with Brother Lono #1. If you’re more of a TV fan trying to ease into comics, Mulder and Scully are back to continue their story in X-Files Season Ten #1. On the Marvel front, their critically acclaimed Fantastic Four series continues this week with FF #9.
If there’s something happening in the news, chances are that Lewis Black has a smart, and likely angry, take on what’s happening. That includes what’s happening with the Xbox One’s Kinect. Microsoft might say it’s not a privacy concern but Lewis isn’t sold.
For the casual gamer, there may not be a better or more relevant reviewer than Conan O’Brien. I’m serious. Watch his Resident Evil 6 or Tomb Raider reviews and you’ll find someone who is quite capable of pointing out some unintended faults in games that the core gamer just takes for granted.
Anyway, Conan and trusty nerd assistant Aaron Blair took a look at the recently released Injustice: Gods Among Us and unveils the new Zod DLC. He also backs me in saying Superman could beat Batman in a fight. Like that’s still a question.
We knew that it was likely to be a big opening but I don’t think any of Superman’s biggest fans thought that it would be this good. The new Superman reboot “Man of Steel” scored the biggest opening weekend box office gross for the month of June of all-time with a US take of $125.1 million. Adding in the international totals, Man of Steel picked up $196.7 million.
The previous domestic record for a June opening weekend was $110.3 million for Toy Story 3 in June 2010. Man of Steel also far outpaced 2006’s Superman Returns which opened to $52.5 million in the US.
Just when you thought that Sony had all the momentum coming out of E3 with their anti-DRM policies and pot shots at the Xbox One, Microsoft fires back with their own versions of the famous PlayStation 4 game sharing instructional video. Unfortunately, I don’t think this will help Microsoft that much.
When a game developer works on a game for a particular console, they get a “dev kit.” These are computers that are specced out to perform similar to the retail version of the console. One would assume that the games being shown off at E3 were running on dev kits but you’d be wrong.
It turns out that eye-witness reports from the floor at E3 say that not only were Xbox One games not running on dev kits but PCs that were likely far more powerful than the XB1.
et geekera 