January 20th, 2007 by Armin Siljkovic in , , , , , Microsoft s GTA-killer Crackdown has gone gold and is expected to hit the stores on February 22. According to Microsoft, a lot of people have already pre-ordered the game, if only for the Halo 3 beta key. According to Major Nelson, the demo will be on Tuesday for Xbox Live Gold members, while it s unknown when Silver members will get a chance to check it out.

Crackdown is a open-world action game from GTA-creator David Jones, where it s your job to clean the corrupt city of gangs and criminals. Oh, and you can also throw cars.
January 12th, 2007 by Armin Siljkovic in , , , , , , A company from Texas called Fenner Investments is suing Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for infringing a patent they hold on a joystick port. Fenner filed a patent for low voltage joystick port interface in 1998 and was awarded the patent ( ) in 2001.
The same company has previously sued Nokia, Cisco and Ericsson, among others, for a variety of patent infringements.

Parts of the lawsuit are still going on, and it doesn t look good for Fenner. Don t expect the joystick suit to go well either.
January 12th, 2007 by Steve Reddish in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a very well received and critically acclaimed game that appeared in 1997 on the PlayStation, will be heading to the Xbox 360 as part of the Xbox Live Arcade. It will, however, need to exceed the 50MB size limit that Microsoft requires of all Xbox Live Arcade titles. Konami, creators of the game, have said that the game simply cannot be compressed down to 50MB.

Greg Canessa, Microsoft Group Manager for Xbox Live Arcade, had this to say:
If any games do exceed 50 MB, it s for a very specific reason that would ensure that the gameplay experience is the best it can be. By keeping the file size small for Xbox Live Arcade games, gamers can put one or more games on a memory unit and easily bring those games to a friend s house to share and play.
January 11th, 2007 by George Lester-Pearson in Microsoft Europe s Xbox VP, Chris Lewis, has told MVC that he was dissapointed by sony s no-show over the christmas period, as he states that his company would have liked to have a bit of friendly competition .

“The lowlight of our Christmas was the lack of anything from our main next-generation competition. We were looking forward to some friendly rivalry and the chance to prove that games look and play better on Xbox 360 - but Sony didn t show!”
He also took the opportunity to praise UK retailers for the excellent jobs they did with their bundles.

He did however refuse comment on how the Christmas sales figures compare to previous ones.
“It s difficult to compare Xbox 360 in Christmas 2006 to the previous year. This year we had plenty of stock, a fantastic portfolio of games and some great retail offers and the difference it made was significant.

We re very pleased with our Christmas performance.”
January 9th, 2007 by George Lester-Pearson in In an interview with Kotaku, Bill Gates has claimed that the Xbox 360 is essentially a PC, something he insisted on denying with the original Xbox.

He feels that the 360 has now confirmed its place in the market, and now they feel more comfortable to branch out into other ventures, such as movie downloads and the recently IPTV feature.
The reason we got into Xbox was not just for gaming, Gates said. It s a general purpose computer.

In terms of the first generation in particular, where we were so known as a PC company, the need to make clear how we were prioritizing the needs of demanding gamers, that was super important.
In the interview he also re-affirmed that Microsoft were a software company first and always will remain so.