Natal Retail Model?

Is this what is gonna look like, and hows it gonna stay balanced on your 50 inch plasma?

Source: Engadget

Killzone 3 Debut Trailer!

“The only place to see the world gameplay premiere of KILLZONE 3 is on Spike’s Pre-E3 Special, Friday June 11th at 11.”

Geoff Keighley Via Twitter

Sony debut rollable OLED screen

“The age of flexible and deformable displays is drawing nearer. Sony recently debuted its latest in OLED technology: a 4.1 inch screen that’s only 80 microns thick.

Facebook viral-jacking

“Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users have fallen for a social-engineering trick which allowed a clickjacking worm to spread quickly over Facebook this holiday weekend.

Affected profiles can be identified by seeing that the Facebook user has apparently “liked” a link:

Messages seen being used by the spammers include:

“LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE.”

“This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!”

“The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School.”

“This Girl Has An Interesting Way Of Eating A Banana, Check It Out!”

Clicking on the links takes Facebook users to what appears to be a blank page with just the message “Click here to continue”.”

Click here for full story:
Source:Graham Cluley’s blog @ Sophos.com

1st Killzone 3 live action video

Adios XMBC for the Original Xbox….

“The last official release for the XBOX by the XBMC team was Atlantis, over 18 months ago. Since then, one brave soul (Arnova) has been merging code from the main codebase into the XBOX branch in our repository. Because there were many users out there that took advantage of these updates, we had no problem with this.

But times have changed. The XBOX has hard limits for what it can handle. Some users are satisfied with these limits, and we encourage them to use XBMC there if they are happy. But it is a popular misconception that official XBOX development is still taking place by the team, so we have decided to set it free. We have enough on our plates already, and worrying about a deprecated platform just increases our workload. A few days ago the XBOX branch was finally removed from our subversion repository.”

Read the full story here:
Source: http://xbmc.org

Exoplanets

From the beginning, exoplanets have defied our expectations for what a solar system would look like.

The first planets were discovered around pulsars, then we got “hot Jupiters” which hug close to their parent stars. Lately, we’ve seen a planet being engulfed by its star and all kinds of weird, eccentric orbits.

New simulations presented yesterday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami indicate that Earth-like exoplanets in such systems will have a tough time supporting life.

We live in a fairly ordered solar system where eight planets trace out nearly circular orbits around a mid-sized star. Massive Jupiter actually helps the Earth out by attracting much of the interplanetary debris that could otherwise threaten our comfortable planet.

However, if Jupiter were to have a much more elliptical orbit, it could knock Earth out of the habitable zone, or the sweet spot around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface. Astronomers with NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory ran simulations of such scenarios, drawing from the rich diversity of exoplanet systems that have been discovered so far.

With a highly elliptical gas giant in the neighborhood, the smaller planet in these simulations would cycle between habitable and uninhabitable conditions, sometimes with a period of just 1000 years. It could support life as we know it sometimes, but other times be frozen over, or boil off all of its water.

This has serious implications for the search for Earth-like planets, which is expected to ramp up as Kepler continues its three year mission. Just because a planet is in a good spot now, it might not always be, depending on its environment. As biological evolution on Earth has shown, a lot of time is needed to build up complex organisms.

If this is too depressing for those of you hoping to find life elsewhere, I have the solution. Push around your own little Earths! PhET Interactive Simulations at the University of Colorado has a really fun gravitational simulator called My Solar System. With just a little bit of fiddling, I was able to get a large planet in an elliptical orbit and a smaller, closer planet with a range of orbits. Warning: you will get really distracted making your own wacky solar system, so don’t plan on doing any work for a while!

Source: Discovery.com.

http://news.discovery.com/space/weird-exoplanet-orbits-could-prevent-alien-life.html

NATAL – $149!

“Natal will launch in the US this October with a price tag of $149.

That’s according to a trusted source, who told us that the motion sensing camera will also be bundled with the Xbox 360 Arcade console for $299.

We were informed that prices outside of the US would be determined based on a number of factors, including exchange rates. Based on current rates, the standalone unit would retail for £103 / €121, and the console and Natal bundle for £207 / €243.

The figure for the standalone unit is significantly higher than a previous sub-£50 estimate, but less than pricing recently suggested by European retailers. It’s also more expensive than Sony’s Natal rival Move, which will be available later this year with a game for less than $100.

Our source said that the device has been pencilled in for an October 26 worldwide launch, although we were advised that the date could yet shift by a few weeks either way.

We were also told that Microsoft’s camera definitely won’t be called Natal, that its proper title will be revealed at E3 next month, and that It will be heavily targeted at causal players and families.

“Microsoft expects to sell millions and millions of Natal units in its first year on the market so you can expect the software launch line-up to target non-traditional gamers,” our source said. “A major marketing campaign will also play a key role in attracting and educating the expanded audience about Xbox 360’s controller-free revolution.”

When contacted about this report, Microsoft told us that it “does not comment on rumour or speculation”. “

Source: Edge-Online.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/natal-to-cost-149-%E2%80%93-source

Iron Baby

GDC

GDC or the Games Developer Conference starts tomorrow.

For those interested I’ve added an RSS news feed so you can keep up to date on what’s happening.

Rumours so far include Little Big Planet 2, Killzone 3 and more info on Sonys Arc. But who knows!

You never know what’s gonna be announced so pay attention!