Starcraft 2 Beta Screen, Windows Live points suck

via Starcraftwire.net

Bashiok recently encouraged fans to watch the Jace Hall Webshow on January 29th for a feature with the Diablo III team. Fans watched the Season 3 Teaser featured at IGN and surprise-surprise. At minute 2:16 (720i) you will see a short frame with Jace Hall, Dustin Browder and the Starcraft II team toasting with beer bottles -- and while that's cool on its own, the background shows a large projection of Battle.net interface with the words:

WELCOME TO STARCRAFT II BETA !!!!!!

I don't know about you, but I am gonna camp that Fourth Quarter 2009 Earnings Conference Call to find out if Mike Morhaime says the sweet words: the official Starcraft II Beta date.

Blizzard fans are Zealots





Windows Live sucks:

However the system has also been highly controversial for several reasons including the fact that most people are left with excess points they can't use to purchase items. In a recent G4TV chat, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg said offering real world prices on all of their downloadable content is "something we're looking at doing." Now comes word via InformationWeek that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft surrounding Microsoft Points.

The lawsuit, filed by Samuel Lassoff of of Horsham, PA, said Microsoft is "collecting revenues for digital goods and services which were not provided" via the Microsoft Points system. He claims that a recent invoice from Microsoft showed "charges for purchases he couldn't complete". Microsoft has yet to respond to the lawsuit.

"Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg said offering real world prices on all of their downloadable content is "something we're looking at doing."

Wow leave it to Microsoft to be slow to realize that almost their entire customer base hates the somewhat deceptive point system used to purchase games. Kind of reminds me of Vista, just keep telling everyone it's really great, really.

And if you think that's bad, try using it with a PC. I think I'll Stick with Steam and Impulse, thank you.

Nvidia's up and coming

Via Bigdownloads

AMD is currently leading the next-gen PC graphics card race with its recent ATI Radeon products that support DirectX 11. However Nvidia has been hinting that their own entry in the race, known both as Fermi and the GF100, will also be a powerful chip. Today an embargo was lifted and a number of hardware based web sites got to reveal info they learned about the upcoming chip from Nvidia.

Unfortunately, Nvidia is still keeping some major details of their upcoming graphics chips secret including a launch date, clock speed, and the big one: cost. However they have revealed some technical details on the chip itself which suggests it will be twice as powerful as Nvidia's current champion the GT200. Firing Squad reports that Nvidia claims the chip will run Far Cry 2 at 84.3 frames per second with 1920x1200 resolution with 4xAA/16xAF. Dark Void ran at 76.82 frames per second at the same settings. You can see a demo of in-engine graphics running on the chip above.

Update: Nvidia does have some information about the specs on this. Unfortunatly still no price:

Packing in 3 billion transistors, double the CUDA cores of previous generation GPUs¹, a high speed GDDR5 memory interface, and full DirectX 11 support, GF100 is designed for groundbreaking graphics performance. With a revolutionary new scalable geometry pipeline and enhanced anti-aliasing capabilities, GF100 delivers both unrivalled performance and breathtaking image quality.

They really dropped the ball by giving Radeon this big of a lead with DirectX 11.

Elemental

Stardock's new strategy game Elemental War of Magic is being delayed till Q4 of 2010. This was announced before but due to a small oversight their store information was recently updated.

Full post here.

Motion Sensing Razor

Press release from Razer, makers of very fine gaming gear.

Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, NV – Jan. 7, 2009 - Razer™, the world’s leading brand in gaming hardware, announced today a co-development partnership with Sixense Entertainment to develop a revolutionary true-to-life, next-generation motion sensing and gesture recognition controller for PC gaming.

“Razer is extending its vision for PC gaming by partnering with Sixense on this exciting new endeavor,” said Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, president, Razer USA. “The magnetic motion sensor technology combines precision and speed with the freedom of other motion sensing technologies to fill the gap between consoles and PC in terms of human interface devices.”

Marking the next step in user interface technologies for gaming on the PC, Razer and Sixense scientists and engineers along with select PC OEM partners have been working on ultra-precise one-to-one motion sensing controllers that use electromagnetic fields to track precise movements along all six axes for use in current and future generation PC games. The absolute controller position is tracked to within a mere millimeter for positioning and to a degree for orientation.

They go on to say:

Working together with Valve, Razer and Sixense will be presenting a first glance into the future of PC Gaming with Left 4 Dead 2, a co-op team based tactical FPS game that is available on the Steam network, with a technology demonstration of what is slated as the first true one-to-one motion sensing and gesture recognition platform for the PC, which adds a totally new dimension to the Left 4 Dead 2 experience. Technology demonstrations with prototype motion sensing controllers will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 4, Meeting Room #S215. Products utilizing the motion sensing technology showcased at CES will be launched later in 2010.

“With this controller, Razer and Sixense have created the most immersive way to play our games,” said Chet Faliszek, team lead on Valve’s recent best-seller Left 4 Dead 2. “For us and for our customers, this release represents motion-enabled gaming that’s more integrated and visceral than any platform has so far achieved.”