A concert series named ‘Passion’ will be playing December in Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore. They’ll be in Melbourne on the 9th and in Sydney on the 12th. Yasunori Mitsuda will be attending and performing. He’ll also tentatively be selling CDs of his work and providing autorgraphs. Hitoshi Sakimoto (composer of recent Final Fantasy games) will be there as well. All the details and ticket information can be found at Eminence Online. Let me know if you’re going, since I’d love to get pictures for the Chrono Compendium.

With elections coming up, the heat is on, and MAGFest is entering the ring with its own attack ads. First up: MAGFest enters the Maryland senate race, taking on Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele and Congressman Ben Cardin.

View the video here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_KPYa0jX81M.

Quoted from McVaffe’s post on the OCReMix Forums
“OK I’m not particularly proud of shameless plugs
but considering all I’ve learned from this site had quite a bit to do
with me actually landing this gig I figured it’d be at least decent of
me to give a heads up to anyone interested.”
“I’ve been working with a small game development company in downtown NYC
on an Xbox 360 title and it’s almost completed. The name of the game is
Street Trace NYC and I’m not going to promise it’s teh B3ST GAM3
EV4R!!! But considering it’s a completely original Live Arcade game and
is completely 3D, it’s pretty damn impressive. As for the concept, I
guess you could call it a cross between ideas of Tricstyle and Twisted
Metal, but it’s definitely a fun multiplayer game (though I haven’t
gotten particularly good at it yet).

And again, thanks guys!! (and gals)”

As if you didn’t have enough reasons to go to MAGFest 5 the weekend of January 7th, 2007 in Vienna, Virginia, we’ve got 1 more for you. Hot off the press!
“That’s right, OCR has been added to our guest page!
They’ll be present to chat about the site, remixing, and give us some
treats such as performances and prizes. They will also be unloading
some their newly printed shirts. Be sure to say hi to djpretzel and the
gang at M5!”

DJP, Larry Oiji, and zircon are the newests additions to a guest
list that already include people like: Xerol, Ailsean, virt, Shael
Riley, Richter, Xerol, MYSELF, and many many many many MANY MANYYYYY others!

No…not the movie. A new Halo GAME. Yea, I WTF’d too. That, of course, has no bearing on how good or bad the game’ll be, of course, but it WON’T be Halo 3 nor the upcoming Halo RTS that’s being made by Ensemble Studios (of Age of Empires fame).

These are just a FEW of the announcements made at Microsoft’s keynote @ X06.
From slashdot:

Microsoft is pulling out all the stops in its X06 Keynote today in Barcelona. The announcements are flying fast and furious: Ensemble studios is making a Halo RTS, and Peter Jackson is making a new Halo game (unrelated to Halo 3 or the RTS). The HD-DVD will be $200 in the U.S. with a release aimed at November of this year. They’ve got a good deal of 360 exclusive content including the next Splinter Cell and GTA IV Episodes, and (initially) Bioshock.
Bioshock will also be on Windows, of course. Windows is also the
platform on which Microsoft is announcing a new Massively Multiplayer
game from Cryptic Studios, a new super-hero MMOG based on Marvel
Comics’ IP: Marvel Universe Online.

A few weeks ago, GeoffreyTaucer had an idea: a database of live performers. Well, a few days later, it’s here.
The database is “simply” searchable at the moment, meaning you can type in any phrase and it will return anyone who has that exact phrase (not case-sensitive) in their “skills” section. There is also room to provide plenty of contact information, as well as room to list your preferred styles, a bit about yourself, and anything else you feel people would need to know.

Over the next few weeks we’ll creep new features in, like a messaging system, improved search, and a matching area where performers and composers can get together. Think of it as a matchmaking service for remixers.

More information:

• List of all registered performers: http://live.xerol.org/viewprofile.php
• Account Registration: http://live.xerol.org/register.php

Thanks to SSBM enthusiast, Global-Trance, we now have a downloadable version of the Press Kit that Nintendo handed out at it’s recent Wii shindig.
http://g-t.dew-owns-it.com/Wii_Preview_Press_Kit_2006/

Enjoy!

Saw this on GAF, and I figure this is ABSOLUTELY worth sharing:

Typically, when a video game company has a major announcement, they
might let some press outlets know about it beforehand, but put the
information on embargo. This sometimes involves legally binding NDAs.
But if such an agreement was penned with Seattle PI/The New York Times, they couldn’t care less. They just stole the Wii press event’s thunder and announced the Wii launch details.

The Wii will be released on November 19 in North and South America and
will cost $250 in the United States. 4 million units will be shipped
worldwide, far exceeding the shipments of Sony’s PlayStation 3.

25-30 games will be available for the Wii this year. As many speculated, Wii Sports will be packed in with every system. Super Mario Galaxy, as many also speculated, will not be available until 2007.

Nintendo will make about 30 classic games available for download
via Virtual Console when the Wii is released, including games from the Zelda, Mario, and Donkey Kong franchises. Downloadable games will cost about $5 to $10 each.

The price of retail Wii games will be $50, $10 less than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games.

“Our goal is to bring gaming back to the masses,” Reggie Fils-Aime,
president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America, said in a
telephone interview. “You see that in our pricing, you see that in the
number of units we plan to make available this year and you see that in
how we are positioning the Wii to appeal to every member of the
household, including but not limited to the hard-core gamer.”

A surprise from Nintendo is that they will be including “channels,”
which are meant to appeal to casuals who don’t consider themselves
gamers. A photo channel allows users to use the Wii to display photos
on their TV. There will also be an interactive news channel and a
weather channel.

Additionally, the Wii will come with a built-in web browser, most likely Opera.

“We are including all of these capabilities as part of our overall
strategy to expand the gaming market,” Fils-Aime said. “Broadening the
market is important because it will breathe new life into this
business. Otherwise, this industry is moving down a path of being more
and more limited to the hard-core gamer.”

Lots of Wii news from the Times. The official announcements
will come Thursday at an event in New York City. Prior to that (not
long now) will be a Japanese event.

http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=6875

Microsoft today released the public beta of XNA
Game Studio Express, the pioneering technology designed to open up game
development to new audiences, including hobbyists, students and
independent developers, in the hopes of injecting a shot of creativity
into the electronic entertainment industry.

Novice game creators can download the tool today from http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna
to develop games for Windows XP and Windows Vista, at no charge. The
games built on Windows can be migrated to the Xbox 360 console system
starting this holiday season as part of the XNA Creators Club
subscription for $99 a year, or a four-month trial cost of $49, opening
up retail console game development to anyone for the first time.
Since the announcement of XNA Game Studio
Express’ upcoming availability on August 14, the public response has
been overwhelming – more than 100 schools have requested information on
how they can incorporate XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula
and the breakthrough news has generated millions of hits on Internet
search engines.

As one of nearly 20 leading universities
worldwide incorporating XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula,
including Southern Methodist University’s Guildhall and the University
of Southern California’s GamePipe, Microsoft announced additional
support from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington, a
leader in the field of digital interactive entertainment education.
Through its ProjectFUN software running on XNA Game Studio Express and
summer workshops starting in 2007, DigiPen will bring Xbox 360 console
game development for the first time ever to thousands of children ages
10 through 16.

“XNA Game Studio Express is an incredibly
accessible tool for making games for Microsoft’s game platforms and
will provide our university students with modern tools and console
development experience,” said Claude Comair, founder and chairman of
the board at DigiPen Institute of Technology. “And now with our
ProjectFun for XNA Game Studio Express, we’re eager to extend our
educational offerings on Windows and Xbox 360 to include young
children.”

In conjunction with today’s release of the XNA Game
Studio Express beta, XNA partner GarageGames will begin enrollment for
its Torque X beta program which can be accessed via http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna.
Torque X includes both Torque Game Builder and a version of the Torque
Shader Engine which have both been developed in conjunction with XNA
Game Studio Express, allowing budding game developers to use drag and
drop tools to easily create great games. The final version of Torque X
will be released this holiday.

The final version of XNA Game
Studio Express and the XNA Creators Club for building and distributing
games on the Xbox 360 will launch simultaneously this holiday. XNA Game
Studio Professional will be available in spring 2007.

Source: Xbox-Scene

Not ONLY will XBOX 360 soon be releasing a webcam for use over XBOX live making it incredibly simple for the average XBOX fanboy posing as a hot lesbain to attempt to coax other XBOX fanboys coaxing has hot lesbians into cyber/cam sex, if they actually CAN find an actualy girl, they can now help pleasure them…remotely.
Thanks to Game Science for its post discussing the Japanese announcement of the Xbox Video Chat hardware/software bundle, which includes
“camera, 12 months of Xbox Live service, chat disc and Live Starter Kit.”

Although the product is
“being developed mainly in Japan”, a release date in the West is likely, if currently unknown. However, with features including “up
to 5 people video conferencing simultaneously… participation can be
restricted to invite only… send vibrations to participants’
controllers”, the staid Brits at Eurogamer are naturally horrified: “Given the remote-rumble function and the fact the Xbox audience is
‘adult’; well, our minds are boggling, frankly.”

From: slashdot