Arcade Games Zone

As top video game makers gather next week in Los Angeles for the E3 trade show, they will be touting hot titles, new online offerings and, potentially, console price cuts to drum up gamers’ support.The mood on the event floor is expected to be festive, with the game business having thus far weathered sluggish consumer spending and soaring oil prices — in stark contrast to the gloom and uncertainty hanging over many other industries.

“The major message that’s going to come out of it is that the industry is very strong now,” said BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Williams. “Demand for hardware right now remains robust.”

Holiday titles, price cuts in focus at game show | Technology | Reuters

An updated patch for Gears of War has been released, fixing various performance issues, including the Games for Windows - LIVE update issue.

Download here:

News: Gears of War Patch #1 (Revised) - GamersHell.com

Will Wright, one of the game industry’s most fertile minds and the creator of the groundbreaking SimCity and The Sims, said Tuesday that his biggest project yet will be released worldwide Sept. 7.

Wired.com got an extensive first look at the latest version of Spore, a grandiose simulation of every stage of life, from the primordial soup to space exploration.

Gallery: Will Wright Walks Us Through ‘Spore’

At long last, there’s a ship date for Spore.

Electronic Arts announced Tuesday that the much-anticipated new game from The Sims creator Will Wright will ship on September 7.

The company announced that the game–which tasks players with advancing a character progressively from primordial ooze to small tribes to cities to civilizations and into space–will launch worldwide on PCs, Macs, Nintendo DS, and mobile phones.

‘Spore’ to ship September 7 | Geek Gestalt - A blog by Daniel Terdiman - CNET News.com

This free game is supported by in-game advertising. NOTE: This game is for US residents ONLY and requires a Ubisoft account which can be created at www.Ubisoft.com

Farcry (US only) - free download

Nearly a decade after their release, both Counter-Strike and Everquest have been banned from sale in Brazil. The ban, which has recently been implemented, was ordered by the Brazilian courts last October. Some Brazilian gamers have written in to website about the bans. One of the readers claims that Counter-Strike has been banned because it teaches “war strategies”. For those unfamiliar with Counter-Strike, it is centered around battles between two teams called the Terrorists and the Counter-Terrorists. Everquest, a very popular MMORPG, has been banned because some experts fear that quests which are both good and evil may lead to antisocial behavior.

» Brazil Bans Sales of Counter-Strike and Everquest » Blog Archive Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech

No one really knows what has been causing these problems since the official lines never divulged the specific problems or rates of failure. All a person has to do is to press the power button on their Xbox 360 and there is a chance that it will just up and fail to boot up and shine the “Red Rings of Death”.

Q: So what do you think the real failure rate of the Xbox 360 is? Some have estimated it as high as 30%. I got my Xbox in early 2007 and so far so good but what do you think the chance is that it’s going to die on me one day.

It’s around 30%, and all will probably fail early. This quarter they are expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat failures. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means it’s not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of years, while a bad unit can fail in hours. I have a launch unit and have not had a single problem with it. And it’s used a lot. But I don’t know anyone else with a 360 that hasn’t broken, except you now. There’s no way to tell when yours might die. But the cooler you can keep it, the longer it will probably last. So stand it up, keep it in free air, etc. :Note : Xenon was the code name for the first Xbox 360 mother board.

Inside Source Reveal the Truth About Xbox 360 “Red Ring of Death” Failures