Gaming

I've been hearing for some time that Microsoft plans to fete the launch of the Xbox 360 with a big desert celebration. Until now, though, I hadn't heard anything definitive.

But now comes word, via ActiveWin, of something a little more specific.

According to the site, Microsoft is planning a giant event in the desert--"Burning Man meets E3"--where a whole bunch of selected game players will get to be among the first to get their hands on the new console.

It's supposed to be, or so I hear, a 24-hour event scheduled for … Read more

Savvy shoppers may be able to save about $30 on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance this Thanksgiving season.

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores will likely start selling the handheld game player this Thanksgiving shopping season for $48.88, according to Web site Black Friday 2005, which posts information about retail deals. Currently, the Game Boy Advance sells for $79 and change at a variety of retailers and web sites.

The handheld game player is part of an anticipated Black Friday electronics cavalcade by Wal-Mart. Other expected bargains include a $398 laptop from Hewlett-Packard, an $88 Razr phone a Hitachi video camera … Read more

It seems that someone behind the promotion of the Microsoft game "Perfect Dark Zero" has gone and made the kind of silly marketing mistake that drives some advertising critics nuts.

Over the weekend, editors at the video game blog "Joystiq" reported that they received a series of crudely written e-mails. Each one, purporting to be from a different writer, alerted them to the fact that Xbox 360 kiosks--which play demos of games and show off the next-generation Microsoft console's multimedia capabilities--at Wal-Mart stores would soon be featuring a playable demo of "Perfect Dark Zero.&… Read more

Just in time for Halloween, the "Star Wars" universe just got a whole lot bigger.

On the one hand, you've got the release on DVD of the film critics called the "best" of the prequels--and boy, isn't that like saying getting run over by a bicycle is better than getting run over by a bus?

On the other hand, there's the release Monday of the new "Star Wars Battlefront II" for, like, every single video game console in the world.

According to the video game blog Kotaku, the new "Star … Read more

AUSTIN, TEX.--You're sitting in a coffee shop playing "Untold Legends" on your Sony PlayStation Portable when you get a message from some friends playing on their mobile phones while riding the subway in Tokyo.

You play with them for a while, but finally decide to go home. There, you decide you're not done, so you log on from your next-generation console and pick right back up where you left off--with the same character, in the same place and even with the same people.

Finally, it's bedtime, so you go to sleep, but the next … Read more

AUSTIN, TEX.--After a morning of panels at the Women's Game Conference here, it had appeared that the concept of expanding opportunities for women in the video game industry appealed to a scant few men.

But one panelist figured out how to change that.

"This is the Women's Game Conference," began Brenda Brathwaite, a game designer who heads up the International Game Developers Association's Sex special interest group. "Well, if you want to get a lot more men to show up, have a panel on sex in games. Because I see a lot more … Read more

Surprise! According to a new study out from the International Game Developers Association, it turns out that the vast majority of video game designers are white males.

The study, "Game Developer Demographics: An Exploration of Workforce Diversity," shows that in fact, there's no such thing in the video game industry. According to the study, 88.5 percent of designers are male, while 83.3 percent are white. The average age is 31.

It seems like this should come as no surprise, and maybe the biggest surprise was that the IGDA bothered to put resources into discovering what … Read more

After I wrote a story the other day about playing the alternate-reality game Graveyard Games at the Italian Cemetery in Colma, Calif., a reader comment that went vaguely along the lines of "Hey, dumbass, get out of the cemetery where my grandparents are buried or I'm going to call the cops" more or less summed up the feelings of those who took the time to write in.

Fair enough. I understand that graveyards are sacred spaces to many people. But I would argue that the Graveyard Games participants were pretty respectful of the space and that even … Read more

NEW YORK--With nearly everybody who is anybody in the world of virtual worlds on hand at the State of Play conference here this weekend, the thing no one could figure out was where was Blizzard Entertainment?

NCSoft, makers of popular titles like "City of Heroes" and the upcoming "City of Villains" was there. So was "EverQuest's" Sony Online Entertainment, "Eve Online's" CCP Game Design and Makena, publishers of "There." And the whole conference, to which hundreds had come from across the country and around the world to talk … Read more