1P Start

An elite team of Grandmas are busy knitting drum silences for Rock Band 2

More details emerged on the new Rock Band 2 drums. While they are essentially the same drums as the first game’s, the new drums are reputed to have quieter drumpads that are velocity sensitive, a reinforced metal pedal (thank god), and clips for add on cymbals that could be purchased separately. It’s a bummer that the cymbals aren’t included with this set, but at least Guitar Hero World Tour doesn’t trump the Rock Band 2 drum set entirely.

But wait, that’s not all! Rock Band 2 will have another set of drums that’s called the Ion kit. The Ion kit will have three cymbals, adjustable pads, a metal frame, and the ability to use the kit as a fully functioning electronic drum kit, i.e. it’s not for just Rock Band.

If you crave more info on these drum kits, you can find all the deets in the latest issue of Games Informer or you can just go to this message board where some dude scanned the entire article and posted it. Isn’t that illegal or something?

The Playstation Portable has been something of a failure for Sony so far. In every single territory around the world, it has been roundly beaten by the cheaper and more innovative Nintendo DS, although Japan continues to be Sony’s strongest supporter. But the lack of success in managing to get a sizeable foothold in the hand-held market means there is a question mark hanging over the little console’s future.

According to Zeno Colaço, a VP for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, talking to Pocket Gamer recently, the console is still subject to the 10 year hardware strategy that Sony seems intent on sticking with. But while that has proved a viable strategy for the PS2, which continues to sell in huge numbers for such an outdated piece of hardware, I just can’t see the PSP having that much life left it in.

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When the PSP was first announced by Sony, all of the elements were there for it to be a huge success - brilliant graphics, a great games line-up, the Playstation brand etc. Unfortunately for Sony, sales never really managed to light up the world as they were expected to, and the Nintendo DS then came in and provided a cheaper, more casual alternative. The PSP has never really recovered, but is it now too late for a recovery?

GI.biz recently interviewed Ubisoft’s UK managing director Rob Cooper, and he had some not very pleasant things to say about the platform, and the direction, or lack of it, that Sony is heading in.

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After being gone for awhile (I’m sure you noticed) I have returned. I went to my Midwestern roots and got hitched to a hot chick. Why should you care? Well I don’t expect you to, but it plays a significant part of the following tale. If you’ve never gotten married, then you won’t know how boring most wedding gifts are. It’s really hard to get excited over opening a blender or the fifteenth wooden spoon. That’s why when my friend Brian said, “You’re going to like this” as he handed me the gift from him and several other of my friends I was more than a little doubtful. Upon opening the present, I realized he was right. It was a PS3. Now, this story isn’t about how lucky I am to have awesome friends. There is a point to it.

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At the beginning of last month, rumours emerged of Microsoft developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360 in an attempt to grab a piece of Nintendo’s obviously huge market. The company has already started this strategy by releasing the Xbox Arcade pack, a cheap and cheerful package to appeal to casual gamers everywhere.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months, here’s a short rehash of the rumours. MTV News (not who I’d normally look to for gaming news, or any other news for that matter) reported that an inside Microsoft source has revealed the plans for an almost exact replica of the Wii Remote. It looks almost identical, although is thought to have a microphone included for future games similar to Singstar.

At the time, Microsoft refused to comment on the speculation, as they do with almost every rumour, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has chosen to speak out.

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Nintendo are having a good year. That’s a slight understatement but it’s the main thrust of the latest press release to come from the company’s headquarters, as it reports a massive surge in profits for the last twelve months.

Net profit rose 47.7% to a record high over the last fiscal year, after the phenomenal success of the Wii and DS, both of which have exceeded expectations, and beaten all rivals in their field.

The net profit for the Nintendo group as a whole was ¥257.34 billion, or $2.5 billion. So just a slightly successful year for the Kyoto, Japan based company then.

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Microsoft has seen sales of the Xbox 360 falling badly over the last few months, with 2008 proving so far to be the year of the PS3, and the Wii of course. So what to do? Why, try and steal your competitor’s market of course.

We’ve already seen the Xbox 360 getting dropped in price, and the Arcade pack released in order to cater to the less well off consumers who snapped up the Wii in droves.

Now, according to a company source talking to MTV, Microsoft are also going to muscle in on the motion control elements of the Wii and are busy developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360.

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Are you sitting comfortably? Then enjoy the following story of how one man managed to get back his stolen Xbox 360 by utilising the power of the Internet…

Jesse McPherson, a gamer from Philadelphia, returned from a trip to the SXSW festival on March 12th to discover his home had been broken in to, and a number of valuable belongings had been stolen.

The thief’s haul included a TV, a laptop, and his prized Xbox 360. Deciding not to take this lying down, McPherson leapt in to action, and started ringing around a number of local pawn shops to see if anyone had been trying to sell his good lately.

The first place he tried had indeed been the target for someone trying to sell a laptop with peculiarities very similar to his own. So he went down there, and got a few stills of the guy from the CCTV footage (as seen above).

He then called the police and explained the situation, but they weren’t really interested. His friends and co-workers meanwhile had rallied around to buy him a new Xbox 360. So McPherson recovered his Xbox Live account, and the first thing he finds on it is a voice message from a randomer.

It turns out to be the thief, who offers to sell him his own stolen Xbox back to him for a price. Again, the police were called, and again, they don’t get back to the victim of the crime… nice.

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A couple of weeks ago, rumours were abound of a version of Guitar Hero being made for the Nintendo DS. They came about after Australia’s Office of Film & Literature Classification, gave Guitar Hero: On Tour a ‘G’ rating on March 4th, effectively letting the cat out of the bag.

Now, we have proof of the existence of the game after Activision officially announced the game through a press release.

The game is scheduled for release this summer, and will work by way of a new peripheral, called the Guitar Hero Guitar Grip, which slips over the back of your DS (as seen in the picture above) to turn it in to an electric guitar, as well as top selling portable games machine.

The game will also come with a Guitar Hero pick stylus enabling DS owners to strum their way to fame and fortune, at least in terms of a Guitar Hero career.

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Over the course of last week, the big rumour to hit the gaming websites was that a Nintendo Wii with a Blu-ray drive was on the way. Apparently it had been spotted in Tokyo, and was getting readied for an official release.

Of course, the whole thing was absolute bullshit. There was no truth in it whatsoever, and some of the game sites who took it seriously, and reported it as fact should be ashamed of themselves.

Of course, there are rumours which can seem feasible, and get reported as possibly having an element of truth about them, hell I’m sure even we here at 1PStart have been guilty in the past. But for various reasons, this was obviously a faked news report, and should never have been passed on.

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Ever since HD DVD as a format died a bitter death back in early February, there has been speculation over what Microsoft would do now that their decision to support the format has gone horribly wrong. Now it seems that they are at least talking to Sony about the possibility of a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360, to replace the now virtually worthless HD DVD one.

Microsoft has already cut the price of the HD DVD drive to bargain basement levels, and now it seems they are keen to move on from the dead format altogether.

There are reports that not only could an Xbox Blu-ray drive be on its way, it might actually be fully integrated in to the console, rather than merely available as an expensive add-on.

According to the Financial Times, Sony Electronics US president, Stan Glasgow, claims his company is in talks with Microsoft about the possibility.

if this does happen, what’s interesting is that it would mean Sony making money on every Xbox 360 sold, as well as every Playstation 3, which regardless of sales figures would make it the big winner in this format war.

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We all know about the Red Ring of Death by now, a problem suffered by many Xbox 360 owners over the past two years. It’s a hardware failure which kills your beloved console stone dead, and forces you to send it off to Microsoft for a repair. So you’d hope that while being repaired, Microsoft would take the utmost care of said console, and treat it with the respect it deserves. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen, as avid video gamer Nathaniel found out to his cost.

Nathaniel had owned an Xbox 360 from launch, and two years after buying it saw it succumb to the Red Ring of Death. He then had to make the difficult choice of fixing the console himself or sending it in to Microsoft for repair. He seriously contemplated the former as his Xbox was like no other, having unique artwork and signatures from members of the gaming community on it.

As can be seen from the before picture above left, this included custom artwork by Rooster Teeth Comics artist and Halo fan artist Luke McKay, as well as signatures from several members of the Rooster Teeth Productions staff, and members of the Xbox 360 team and Bungie Studios. These were all acquired while travelling around with his trusty Xbox 360 as his faithful companion.

Not wanting to void the warranty, and wreck his Xbox forever, Nathaniel sent the console off for repair after a lot of soul searching. To make sure his console would remain the same and not be tampered with, in any way apart from fixing the problem, he rang Xbox support and duly received assurances that his console would be fixed and sent back to him in exactly the state it had been previous.

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The recent demise of HD DVD as a format, after it lost its long and hard fought battle with Blu ray to become the future choice for high definition movie lovers everywhere, is set to have a massive impact on the games industry, with Sony’s decision to stick a Blu ray player in the Playstation 3 now looking like a piece of forward thinking genius.

Meanwhile Microsoft backed the HD DVD format, which Toshiba has now officially killed off by ceasing manufacture of all hardware, and face the choice of doing nothing to combat the help this will give the PS3, or move forward and produce a Blu ray drive for the Xbox 360 instead.

If you’re one of those unfortunate Xbox 360 owners who bought the HD DVD add on, you may now be out of luck in trying to ditch you defunct technology, as some game shops in the US are already refusing to accept them for trade in. I expect other chains around the world will also follow the same logical steps.

Rumours are also rife that the price of the HD DVD add on for the Xbox 360 will be slashed to bargain basement levels, with $49.99 being the rate cited by an inside source. Even at that price though, it’s not worth buying, as you’ll soon find the limited number of movies available in the format getting a bit dull. It’s a dead format, just save your money.

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I’ve run into a bit of a space problem at my apartment and it’s giving me some tough choices. Namely, what do I want to keep in boxes and what do I want to toss out or give away. One of the final things to get consideration for axing are my game consoles, but the time might be drawing near. If I don’t do something now, the amount of old consoles I have will continue to grow. As the graph below demonstrates, by the age 100 I’ll be crushed to death by old video game systems.

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This past week has seen a multitude of rumours spreading from both online forums, and industry insiders, over price drops for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3. But are any of them true, and at the end of the day, does it really matter when the Wii is kicking so much hardware sales ass?

The talks f a price cut for the PS3 have emerged solely from Internet forums, and seem to be insistent that the console is due for a reduction in price to £299. And this will reportedly be announced by Sony on or around January 28th, which is next Monday by my reckoning.

A couple of things point to a possible reduction in price for Sony’s behemoth of a games console. For starters, there is the white PS3 coming to the States, which despite Sony denying is going to happen, I would put good money on. What better way to introduce the new colour of console than by coupling its launch with a well publicised price cut?

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