In an effort to catch up on backorders we've learned that M$ has signed an agreement with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing of California for making CPUs for the 360.

"We look forward to working with Chartered on the production of such an important component of our Xbox 360 system," said Larry Yang, general manager of Xbox Console Development at Microsoft, in a statement.

The only problem is that the company won't start work on the CPUs until 2007. So how is this catching up?

Right now let me tell you about a cool little marketing product for the PSP. As you may or may not know. The PSP playes movies as well as Video Games. Well the folks at Konami have released what they are calling the Silent Hill Experience for the the PSP. It's not a new game but more of a marketing piece for the movie. It features:
* View over 2 hours of digital comics based on the popular Silent Hill comic series presented with haunted music
* Includes the acclaimed comic series Silent Hill: Dying Inside and a brand new Silent Hill story The Hunger
* 20 unforgettable music tracks selected from series' producer and music composer Akira Yamaoka
* Exclusive video interview with the director of the Silent Hill movie Christophe Gans and series' music composer Akira Yamaoka
* Rare video content from previous Silent Hill games
Sounds interesting to say the least. And will give horror fans something to check out besides Horror Movies on the PSP.

Wow - I thought I was bad with the whole conspiracy thing.

This article has nothing to do with gaming or console gaming whatsoever but I just had to share it:

ShelleyTheRepublican.com: Linux: A European threat to our computers (by Tristan)

I think the title speaks for itself. If you have some time you should check it out - it's pretty hilarious. I only hope this person doesn't really think like this.

Not sure if this is happening everywhere. But if you live in Austin, TX this Saturday the McDonalds on Braker Ln is teaming up with Nintendo to host a Mario Kart DS tournament. Why McDonald's? Because they just launched Wi-Fi service in all the McDonald's in Austin. It was mentioned to me by a fan of our site who saw it in the local newspaper. Pretty cool idea and sounds like a fun meet-up for the DS Fans in Austin. I wonder what the prizes are?

King Yuan Electronics Company has confirmed, in a round about way, that it is indeed testing chips for the PS3 in preparation for manufacture.

While the company has declined to comment on any orders it receives from specific customers, rumors have circulated indicating that the company will start landing PS3 chip testing orders from next week.

Sources at equipment makers stated that King has already started testing engineering chipset samples for PS3.
hmmm I can't wait!

It was only a matter of time. Granted we've heard rumors of a white PSP for some time now but apparently they are out there.

In fact, you can buy one right now from Play-Asia.

It has the same features as the black PSP: 32 megs of main memory, built in speakers, wi-fi, USB, UMD and so on.

Now whether you can actually get one shipped to the US is another story...

We just told you about faceplate mods for the 360 and now we've found even more mods to customize your 360.

According to Xbox Central there's a new product out there called Fantasy360 which allows you to change the look of your 360 wireless controller.

While I'm not too thrilled about the name of the product it does look pretty sweet. From the press release:

"All Fantasy360 cases are made from high quality ABS plastic materials with a polyurethane coating for durability and an acrylic shine. In addition, these cases fit like OEM and comes in 5 semi-transparent and solid color options at launch as follows :

Plata Mid (Solid Chrome)
Bleu East (Semi-Transparent)
Clear West (Semi-Transparent)
Crimson South (Semi-Transparent)
Smoke (Semi-Transparent)"

Finally, a company that offers some customizations for your 360.

Nyko has announced that it now has fully customizable 360 faceplates available to retailers nationwide.

GameFace 360 allows you to design and fit your own faceplates to your 360. The package comes complete with six pre-printed designs, 15-blank templates and a two piece snap-together faceplate which holds the skins. (Click here to see a picture of what the Gameface can look like).

Further, you can create your own skins to print out and place within the faceplate using Nyko's software.

“Microsoft designed a product with a removable faceplate; Nyko is answering the gamers’ call to fully exploit the fun option of personalizing the 360,” said Susan Corben Cox, vice president of marketing, Nyko Technologies.

The GameFace 360 retails at around $20.

Chris Lewis is the Microsoft executive in charge of the European market for the company's Xbox gaming consoles. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he makes digs at competitor Sony, he laments the trouble his company has had with the Xbox 360 in Japan and discusses the tastes of German gamers.

Read the full interview here.

By now you've probably already heard that Sony has released a portable TV service for the PSP. So we thought we'd look at it a little closer to see if it's worth the hype.

First, you should know that the service is only available in Japan currently. And if it does come across the pond you'll likely need at least a firmware version of 2.60 which means no more homebrew until that version is patched.

There's also this stupid rule that you gotta watch your downloaded programs soon - sometimes within a few days, and then DRM turns the program off for you meaning you will have to re-download it.

That's not all, at least right now it sounds like most of the programs are paid with a few free one's thrown in. That means you gotta buy the service and then subscribe to the programs.

There's a ton more details to be found here plus some excellent screenshots.

So is TV for PSP worth it?

Guess it depends on what's available when it hits here and what the cost will be.

I know we are starting to get heavy on the PSP news but this is a cool one. As you all know the PSP has a Web Browser and some Web Sites have starting releasing PSP formatted versions of their Sites. I had not seen this before clicking on a Google Ad the other day. You can check out the "PSP Web Site" for Hostel here. As you can see from the HTML code below the sites are not done in WAP or XML. Just old fashioned HTML formated to the screen of the PSP. Crappy movie but a cool site.

- IAMLEGEND

It started with Stefan toasted his rare Ferrari. It got worse when his wife was busted for driving without a license. But then all his cars got seized AND he was charged with numerous offenses.

Now, according to The SFGate.com Stefan has plead not guilty through his attorneys and was ordered held on $5.5 million bail.

Deputy District Attorney Tamara Hall requested that bail be set at $5.5 million to cover the $3.8 million cost of the cars and because authorities consider Eriksson a flight risk after finding he had booked an April 10 flight to the United Kingdom.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mary Strobel set a bail review hearing for April 24.

If convicted on all counts, Eriksson could be sentenced to as many as 14 years in state prison.

Looks like all of that GPS talk for the PSP is bullshit. What people were getting confused about is this new mapping software for the PSP: Minna no Chizu. iT contains maps of Japan, put together by map data provider Zenrin. For comparison, this is the data provider used by Google Maps for Japan. So they are probably really good maps. However that's all it is. Mapping Software. No GPS, no new stuff. Anyway It lists for 3,990 yen ($34) and at that price it’s a rather nice deal if you need a map for those trips around Japan. Once again, there is no GPS support, so if you get lost, you’re out of luck. C'mon Sony that's all you got?

- iamlegend

I just hate reading these types of stories.

According to this Japanese site two brother began fighting over who was going ot put away their game console.

The fight escalated to the point that the younger brother, a 13 year old, began repeatedly kicking and punching his 15 year old brother. He beat him so badly the older brother fell unconcious and died later in hospital.

Now, I know when I was growing up my brothers and I fought but not like this. And you gotta feel for the younger beother who has to live with this the rest of his life.

I guess this could be considered a case where gaming led to the violence but I think it's more a case of sibling rivalry gone bad.

Bah! If I hear one more thing about damn apple I will scream. Talk about a overhyped compnay. Well at least this involves the PSP. Look like you can now stream your Apple iTunes all over the place with a PSP using this software. BUT it won't work on your hacked PSP's as it needs the following to run:

* PSP With Firmware v2.60
* Networked XP Home/Pro Comp.
* WiFi (802.11b) Network Router
* Apple iTunes v6.0.4 Installed
* Songs in iTunes Music Library
* At Least 1 Playlist With Music

So go check it out and let us know how well it works. I know iamsiam is a PSP and apple freak. Maybe he can try it out and review it for us.

- iamlegend

While unlikely it is a possibility that a new suit filed against M$ by Lucent over patent infringement will halt sales fo the 360 it's not impossible.

According to a PCWorld aricle, Microsoft is in violiation of patent number 5,227,878, "Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video."

Apparently Lucent holds the patent on the built-in MPEG-2 decoding capability of the 360 which means for every console sold Microsoft is violating that patent.

Personally I think M$ will either settle this out of court or drag it on past the 360's lifecycle which means they'd settle in 2 or 3 years for must less cash then it'd cost now.

That's right, according to a recent interview with Ubisoft CEO, the company loves to work on games for the Rev.

In fact, he likes the console so much he calls it "magical."

Ubisoft also announced that "Red Steel" is an official Rev title. Further "we'll see other Revolution games from Ubisoft."

According to Reuters, Sony "is expected to cut the price of its popular PlayStation 2 video game console by 13.4 percent before the end of the month" by about $20 to $129 from the current $149 suggested price.

To date, the company's worldwide PS2 shipments have topped 101 million units.

This cut is expected to help give the aging console one more last boost in sales before the PS3 hits markets later this year. This cut will also make the PS2 a better buy than the orginail Xbox which currently retails at the $149 mark.

It appears so.

We got this picture from PSPFanBoy and they say they scooped it from PSPUpdates.

Anyways it looks like Sony is building an official PS1 emulator for the PSP. How cool is that?

At least according to this site.

That's right, they decided on what they felt were the best games of the 90's. No surprise that the original NES seems to top the list, plus own most of it.

I found this to be interesting.

According to specs released by the PS3 Portal the new console's OS will apparently not only have reserved resources but also be able to take over resources as needed.

In other words, not only will the OS have 1 of 7 reserved SPEs on the Cell Processor but it could also have as much as 25% of the systems memory set aside if it needs it.

Granted this is probably a worst case scenario - the OS taking over resources when you are gaming but it is a possibility. Apparently the OS needs to be able to take over resources for things like:

• Multi-User Voice Chat across all games, even outside of the games own UI
• Multi-User Video Chat across all games, even outside of the games own UI
• Notifications and messaging to be sent between users regardless of the games they are playing

But as was also mentioned in the article, the 360 does something similar however indications are that the 360 has less resources reserved for such instances.

It appears so, at least so the rumor goes.

According to this French page or this Yahoo translated version of the page, Sega is planning a re-entry into the console market of sorts.

The new console will be named SEGA Hedgehog. It will be able to emulate older sega hardware, play movies and also be expandable with usb connectivity. The console will have a touchpad and a combination of PSP and DS interface.

According to the page the system will consist of a Samsung 566Mhz processor, 128 bit 3d NVidia graphics accelerator, GeForce 3d 4500 chipset which was previously seen inside late Gizmondo, 128Mb of RAM and a 11cm (about 4 /12 inch) LCD screen which can post resolutions of 640X360.

Not too shabby.

Only thing is they aren't planning release until Christmas of 2007.

UPDATE!! Turns out this most likely was an April Fools joke.

In another perspective on the Console Wars, Next Gen has a great interview with Kevin Bachus and what he sees with the emerging console wars.

For those who don't know, Bachus was one of the original guys behind the Xbox and he feels that the winner will be the one that can leverage their brand power along with their content. That means that it's not so much about hardware specs or horsepower under the lid. It's about who has the best titles and most recognizable brand.

I think the article is worth the read.

There is a Japanese Company that specializes in privacy screens for cell phones but has now released such a screen for your DS.

It's actually a film you place over your screen so that those sitting beside you can't see what you are doing. Much like the privacy screen found on laptops these days, this privacy film will help ensure what you see is only seen by you.

Hmm, privacy screen and a soon to be released web browser. What will you do with your DS now?

NTHaxor

One of the big flaws of the original Xbox was that it came with a wired network card. That meant that you needed to string wires around the house to play games online.

Well if that's you, I-Hacked has a solution that will give you wireless with your Xbox.

Keep in mind this is a tricky Mod and will likely void your warranty but if you're like most people I know that own an original Xbox you already did that :)

Also, it does take some electronic knowledge as you need to do some soldering and stuff. But if you're good with that why not check it out?

Sweet! How cool is this? Looks like Ghosts and Goblins is coming back in a new form on the PSP. Time to once again pray for death. What you don't remember how insanely hard this game was for the NES and SNES? Anyway IGN has this to say about the game

"There's also a slew of enhancements when it comes to weapons, magic and armor. You can now access a menu and cycle through different offensive and defensive items. The system seems to work well and never gets in the way of the action. Plus, there's a damn good chance fans will love the new items available. Capcom wants to keep most of them hidden in secrecy, but they all look to enhance how combat plays out. Just take a look at the screenshots on this page and you'll learn a thing or two concerning some of the stuff developers packed in here."

Sweetness!

- iamlegend

Oh and this is the shiznit.....nothing like real life Ghosts and Goblins LARP style....

This Just in: Paramount Pictures will be providing free, HD movie-related content for Live users, including movie trailers, theme packs and more.

The first Xbox Movie Showcase, which launched this week, features downloadable content from MI III (Due out May 5) and Jack Black's upcoming Nacho Libre (Due out June 16).

So if you like movie Swag but don't have a 360 or Live now might be the time to get into it.

Check out this review of the new Metroid game from Wired. Apparently they aren't fans. The review goes on to say that the main problem with this Metroid is that they have made it another boring FPS. The puzzle and mind-games of the originals are totally missing from this newest version.. I remember many many hours spent on the NES playing Metroid and even the GBA version from a couple of years ago. What do you think about the newest Metroid for the DS?

- iamlegend

We got this link from Make and had to share it:

Did you know that the SNES had a mouse? If you got Mario Paint it came with a mouse.

Well this guy felt bad that he had this mouse laying around but had nothing to do with it so he hacked it and adapted it to run on a PC.

You can find complete instructions here.

The link speaks for itself:

T3 - The limitless Xbox 360 hard disk

That's right - now you can have almost limitless HD space on your 360. Well sorta.

You see this device will allow you to shuttle data between your console and home computer (assuming your home computer has a much larger drive).

It's a device that sits between the 360 and your computer and connects via USB to transfer files. And it has cool blue LEDs what could be better?

Is it possible? Would Microsoft buy Sony?

Well according to this article not only is it possible, it is plausible.

Now I don't really know what the going rate is for Sony these days but Microsoft does have some deep pockets. But even I don't think M$ could afford the current valuation of just over $47 billion.

But it is an intriguing question. After all it would give M$ a foothold in the consumer product market that they don't have now (aside from the Xbox).

And imagine what a360/PS3 console would be like? Play every game ever released for Playstation (1,2 and 3) as well as all Xbox games (version 1 and 360).

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

Remember those virtual pets that was the craze a couple of years back? Did any of you say, "oh it's just a phase and they'll disappear soon"? Well think again. They're still pretty high in demand and in the past 2 years they've managed to sell over 20 million units in Japan. Now this is not the original ones some of us has played with. No. This is the Tamagotchi Plus. With each unit selling for anywhere between $16.90 to $25.30, this makes quite a pretty penny for Bandai.

Outside of Japan, Bandai has sold 11.8 million of the Tamagochi Plus. The game has even won an award in UK. There's also something new, the Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop due to show up in US stores some time this year.

But do you think Bandai will stop at just making these addicting units? Think again. They've now moved on to children's clothing offering such products as tshirts with Tamagotchi characters. I'm sure they'll even sell the clothes bundled with a Tamagotchi game as well.

With the abilities to interact with other Tamagotchi units, this creates another way of meeting new people, like these cute girls. Wow! I need to get me one of these!

"I've gota lota Tamagotchis!"

-iamsiam

Poor Stefan.

First, he pulverizes his priceless Ferarri.

Then his wife gets busted driving another expensive car without a license.

Now it appears that Mr. Eriksson has been arrested for grand theft!

That's right, apparently all his cars, including the Enzo and the Mercedes were actually owned by unnamed British financial institutions. It sounds like they didn't know that he had brought them to the US when he moved.

Just gotta wonder how much more this guy can take before he decides to eat a bullet?

Yahoo Video Games has an excellent interview with Xbox execs about the 360.

The interview covers lots of ground, from the failed lauch of the the 360 due to distribution problems to what the future holds for the popular console.

The interview is 5 pages long but worth the read. My favorite part? When asked about the launch in November his response was "Well I think everything for the most part has gone really, really well."

Huh? Guess he's new to Xbox :)