Universe’s Tech Blog

Read the title…

The 360 HD DVD player may not be available just yet, but you can get some breathing room on everyone else this Xmas by pre-ordering yours today. Amazon has it only $199 with a release date of November 7. Goes great with the recent 360 update that enabled 1080p, but broke 360s, then was re-released.

Nintendo has officially confirmed the facts and figures behind its upcoming launch which will see 4 million Wii systems available globally during the six weeks between Wii’s Nov. 19 launch in the Americas and the end of 2006.

Although the largest share of that worldwide allotment will go to the Americas, Nintendo expects supply will be outpaced by demand, based on retailer orders, intense consumer requests and placement on numerous gotta have it holiday lists.

Nintendo is maximizing all its resources for a rapid replenishment program designed to consistently pump Wii consoles into the supply pipeline and keep retailers’ shelves as filled as possible. In addition, Nintendo factories are working around the clock manufacturing the new system. Nintendo is employing fleets of planes, cargo ships, trains and ground vehicles in each global market to maintain the best supply flow possible, starting in the Americas.

A new study by the Consumer Electronics Association estimates a 27 per cent spending increase this holiday season on electronic goods, and major pop culture authorities already have singled out Wii as the most anticipated item for the holidays. For the first time in history, a video game system is on the Toys “R” Us Fabulous 15, the crème de la crème of the retailer’s Hot Toy list. Wired made Wii an editors’ pick in the technology magazine’s annual Test issue. And Toy Wishes magazine also includes Wii on its Hot Dozen list of must-have holiday toys, an industry bellwether of popular demand.

And the widespread demand for Wii creates great stories too: At a Denver retailer event, two sisters, one in her 20s, the other in her 30s, waited all night to be the first in line to place pre-orders - for themselves. The forums in Wii’s online community at www.myspace.com/howwiiplay are buzzing with posts from once and future gamers, male and female, in their teens to their 50s.

The Wii console makes use of a new control system: The Wii Remote can act like anything from a steering wheel to a tennis racket or a sword. Wii’s Virtual Console lets users download and play games from a library of classic titles from the past. Wii goes on sale in the Americas Nov. 19 at an MSRP of USD 249.99, and comes packed with a five-sport selection of games called Wii Sports.
By year’s end, Wii owners will have 32 new titles to play, including industry powerhouse games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Madden NFL ‘07, Need for Speed: Carbon and Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam; category-redefining adventures like Red Steel, Elebits and Trauma Center: Second Opinion; and Hollywood favorites like Cars, SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Some of these games might be familiar, but if you haven’t played them on Wii, you’re only getting half the experience.

Wii owners also will return to their youth with 30 classic games available for download to play on Wii’s Virtual Console. These include games for the NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx16 consoles. Players redeem Wii Points in the Wii Shop Channel and download their games. And that’s not to mention the entire library of more than 530 Nintendo GameCube games that can be played on the Wii console from day one because Wii is directly backward compatible.
The American launch is followed by the Dec. 2 Japanese launch and the Dec. 8 European launch.

Nintendo is preparing for the launch of the Wii console and has now released the list of U.S. events that will take place on or around the launch date in the U.S.

From New York to Los Angeles and untold places in between, shoppers won’t have to wait long to be the first to buy Nintendo’s revolutionary new Wii video game console when it goes on sale at the stroke of midnight the morning of Sunday, Nov. 19.

Toys R Us Times Square in Manhattan and GameStop at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles will host official Nintendo midnight launch events to satiate rabid fans who can’t wait to get their hands on Wii. The events will feature live music and entertainment, fun, games, special guests from Nintendo – and a countdown to the moment that will change the way video games are played forever. Other retailers nationwide are expected to hold their own midnight launch events, so consumers should check with their local retail stores that sell video games.

Wii launches Nov. 19 in the Americas at an MSRP of USD 249.99. Its Wii Remote lets players control the action on their TV screens through the motion of the controller itself. It’s designed for young and old, novices and experts.

The Collective has announced that it is working on a new original game entitled “Harker” for next generation consoles. The game, inspired by the classic horror novel, “Dracula,” is set to take the survival horror genre in a new and much more personal direction.

We’re very excited to be bringing the classic world of ‘Dracula’ to life in a new and intriguing way, said Nathan Hunt, studio head of The Collective. We feel this story lends itself perfectly to the survival horror genre and will create a fantastic next generation experience for gamers.

In the game, players take on the role of a very different Jonathan Harker - hardened and ruthless - who is on a very personal mission to destroy all vampires after his beloved Mina falls prey to Dracula. Gameplay involves a combination of hunting these ferocious killers through tracking and exploration, along with an up-close and personal combat system, brutally-effective in the execution of the vampires; using a variety of weapons and environmental factors.

‘Harker’s’ goal is to bring an in-your-face, visceral, and personal style of combat to the survival horror genre, said Nigel Cook, producer. “None of these vampires are going to die with one shot. They’re going to fight for their survival, which will give the player a huge level of satisfaction when they successfully execute one.”

Harker will bring to life the underbelly of the 18th Century World, taking players into diverse locations, areas never explored in history books, in a gritty, realistic art style that will fully immerse players in their environments. The game also features an incredible roster of blood-thirsty, shape-shifting vampires each with their own savage abilities, sometimes hiding in plain sight; the player may never know just how close they are.

“Harker is scheduled for completion in 2008.

The Collective is currently at work on the upcoming Dirty Harry videogame to be published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

EA’s latest Medal of Honor installment will aim to give players the full “airborne” experience so we thought it would be great if someone could explain what that means. Patrick Gilmore, one of the people working on the game will try and clear things up for you:

Your name/role on Medal of Honor: Airborne
My name is Patrick Gilmore, and I’m the Executive Producer of Medal of Honor Airborne.

What is Airborne all about?
The story focus of the game is on the odyssey of the Airborne forces through World War II. There are five historic operations, Husky, Avalanche, Neptune, Market Garden and Varsity. As Private Travers and Pathfinder Eddie La Pointe, you will jump into each one, playing through Italy, France and, finally, Germany following the march to Berlin that effectively ended the European campaign.

• Operation Husky, July 10, 1943, Italy
• Operation Avalanche, September 13 1943, Italy
• Operation Neptune, June 6 1944, France
• Operation Market Garden, September 17, 1944, Holland
• Operation Varsity, March 24, 1945, Germany

What is different about Airborne?
Airborne is fundamentally about freedom and player choice. From the first step out of the plane, the player is in control of how the experience plays out. The player defines their landing spot, angle of approach, tactics and style throughout the game. That’s a big difference from the rail-ride shooting galleries we’ve seen within the genre in the past.

If you can land anywhere in the battle area, even on sniper towers and church steeples, the game cannot be linear.

We are committed to making a more choice-driven game. That has required us to change the way we design levels and the way we craft non-player-character interactions.

The NPCs are largely driven by our new Affordance engine, which makes enemies aware of the value of the terrain around them, and causes them to prioritize high-value resources (like a pillbox) over lower value (a trench) or even lower value (a blasted tree stump) or no value (open ground). This results in lots of cool dynamic offensive and defensive tactics, no matter which direction the player approaches from. Both the Ally and Enemy AI utilise this engine.

Tell me more about the missions?
For each of the five operations, there will be two major missions. You will experience the operation as both the Pathfinder Eddie La Pointe and Private Travers. Pathfinders dropped before the main force to designate drop zones with radio beacons. These missions are focussed on stealth. When you have achieved your objective as Eddie you will then jump in again as Private Travers along with rest of the Airborne troops. Literally hundreds of allies will be jumping in at one time.

Explain to me the experience the player will have when parachuting?
We have conducted extensive research to ensure the authenticity of the airdrop experience. Beyond the team members who have actually jumped, we have interviewed many veterans who have been through an authentic Airborne experiences.
The MOH team works closely with the lead historian at the National WWII museum, Marty Morgan, who is an authority on the Airborne. He actually bought a C47 that actually flew in Normandy, he restored it to flying condition, and flew it to New Orleans, where he had it installed in the National D-Day Museum.
Marty arranged a flight for some members of the MOH team. The team photographed and measured and took textures off of every corner of the aircraft. Then we mic’ed the entire plane, and so, will be the first game in history to feature the actual sound of an aircraft that participated in one of the world’s largest military operations. When you’re in the C47 in Airborne, you are in a real C47.

How much choice does the player have when landing?
Where we wanted to give players maximum control of the jump, it was also very important to us that the gameplay was accurate.

The net result is that, from the moment your chute pops, you have full steering control. The player can land anywhere they want, and the battle will unfold from there. You can land on rooftops, in back alleys, on top of the primary objective, pretty much wherever you want.

You can also flare your chute to slow your descent, which you need to do if you want to be able to get into combat quickly.

If you get a botched landing, you will go down hard, lose some health, and have to stand, unclip, and draw your weapon before you get into combat just like would have happened historically. Depending upon the enemies in the area you land, that can be the difference between life and death.
The level layout is all about freedom. The AI works well with a branching factor of 3, which is to say there are three entrances/exits to almost every location in a mission.
There are also multiple secret paths to the rooftops, which are also playable and from the there you can leap from one roof to another.

Tell us about the customisable weapons feature.
Historically, there were a variety of upgrades, field modifications and customizations used by soldiers in WWII, so the accuracy and real-world analogs are all in place. As far as how it works in game, there are really two things a player has to do in order to use an upgrade.

First, the player needs a proficiency rating with the weapon he wants to upgrade. Proficiency ratings come in several levels, again according to the military standard of recognizing experts, marksmen and sharpshooters across various weapon types. Second, the player needs to actually find the upgrade in a dropped supply bundle, dropped as a trophy held by an enemy, or squirreled away by the local resistance. Once you have both the upgrade and the proficiency to use it, you can apply it to your weapon.
This means that players will have to invest in their proficiency with a select few weapons, and make choices about which weapon they want to make most powerful.

An example of this would be a forward pistol grip to the Thompson therefore upgrading the gun to carry a 50 round magazine or you can use a Natts Compensator, which pumped gas upward to offset the affects of recoil dramatically affecting the accuracy of the gun when firing multiple rounds.

What is True Trigger?
True Trigger is a feature that allows the player to slowly squeeze the trigger to find the 2nd Stage of the trigger to help them experience focusing in on target. When perfectly executed, a perfectly accurate shot will happen. This is a skill that players should be able to master and once done so the really good players should be able to always execute perfect shots relatively quickly.

Does the game have a multiplayer mode?
Yes the game will have a multiplayer mode. It will include around 7 Maps, 12-15 players or more and primarily Death-match focused. Stay tuned for more details.

Outerlight have announced their recently released first-person murder game The Ship is scheduled for a free four-day tour, open to everyone via Steam, the leading online distribution platform.

The Free Full Game Trial of The Ship casts off tomorrow (Thursday), November 2 at 1 pm PDT and will conclude on Sunday, November 5 at the same time.

Built with Source technology, The Ship is the critically acclaimed debut from Outerlight, a Scottish studio. Steam is the first full-featured broadband platform for the delivery and management of PC games and digital content, and has pioneered its broadband services to over 10 million customers around the world.

Set onboard a 1920’s luxury liner, Mr X, the Ship’s owner has “invited” you to a mysterious game known simply as the hunt, as players must secretly track and extinguish specified passengers while avoiding a similar fate.

The launch of the Wii console is little over a month away now, and although we’ve analysed every aspect of the innovative new console under the world’s most powerful magnifying glass, it still conceals a few mysteries - particularly in the Virtual Console.

With the full list of launch-day Virtual Console games having been released earlier this week, we thought it the perfect time to focus on the retro download service and uncover some of those mysteries.

So we threw a barrage of questions at Nintendo and got back some interesting information - how the games are stored, how much they’ll cost and more. Check it out below and, if you have any more questions of your own, throw them down in the comments section and we’ll put them to Nintendo for answers.

Can games be stored on external media such as SD cards, and what happens if you run out of storage space?

Nintendo: Games that are downloaded can be stored either to the Wii’s internal memory (512MB) or onto SD cards, which plug into the SD slot on the front of the Wii. In addition the console also stores a history of all of your downloads so that if you have to delete any VC games for any reason you could re-download them for free at a later date.

Will you be able to take your VC games to a mate’s house, say, on an SD card?

Nintendo: No. All VC games will be locked to the console they are downloaded on so even if they are on an SD card they can’t be used on other machines. You will have to take your Wii with you.

Does that mean that if your console breaks you lose your VC games forever?

Nintendo: No. Nintendo will offer support to help Wii owners with problems to recover their games.

GameCube games are played with GameCube pads. Can they be played with the Classic controller too, for those who don’t actually have any GC pads?

Nintendo: Nintendo GameCube games can only be played using Nintendo GameCube controllers. The Classic Controller will not work on these games.

Can you specify which controllers it will be possible to use for each of the VC games types (NES, SNES, PC Engine, N64)?

Nintendo: All virtual console games can be played using the Classic Controller or Nintendo GameCube pads. The Wii Remote can also be turned on its side and used as a traditional controller to play NES games. However, a game will only be playable with the control mechanism it was designed for. So, for example, you will play NES games with the D-pad, not an analogue stick or motion-sensitive functionality.

When using a mixture of Wii and GameCube controllers, the Wii Remote or Classic Controller will take priority. So if you have two Classic Controllers plugged in they instantly become player one and two regardless of how many GameCube pads are inserted.

What about game manuals?

Nintendo: Each Virtual Console game downloaded will come with a digital instruction manual.

We are already aware that you won’t be able to gain access to the Japanese or American VC in UK with a UK console. But if you import a US or Japanese Wii into UK, will that machine be capable of accessing the UK VC servers to download and play games made available to us Brits?

Nintendo: No. The European Virtual Console will be available only to European machines. If you import an American machine they would have to connect to the American service and use American Wii Points cards to buy content. Their warranty would also be void so this is not recommended.

Will there be a range of Wii Points cards available? How much will they cost?

Nintendo: At first, only 2000-point cards will be available. These will retail for £14.99.

Will you be able to buy VC Points via the internet through Wii using a credit card, like you can with Xbox 360’s Marketplace?

Nintendo: Yes. Wii points can also be bought online via the Wii Shop using all major credit cards and will be credited to your account. A total of 10,000 points can be stored on your Wii account at any one time.

When Microsoft issued their anticipated fall dashboard update on Tuesday, 1080p support wasn’t the only new feature, as several use started reporting ERROR CODE E71, which essentially “bricked” their console, rendering it unusable for surfing Xbox Live or playing games — you know, everything an Xbox 360 is useful for.

Initial reports suggested these problems were isolated to users who’d modified their firmware to play back-ups, but that’s not the case.

The two are related, though. Microsoft’s attempts to sniff out hackers has resulted in crossfire with users who don’t even know how to crack open their case. 1UP user ReverendSlim ran into the problem not long after Microsoft had repaired a completely unrelated problem. “Got my 360 back from Microsoft today after 2 weeks without it, plugged it up, it downloaded the update, and now all it will do is flash ERROR CODE E71 when you turn it on. So much for playing Gears or CoD3 next week,” he said.

Microsoft says they’re aware of the issue, however, and that “less than 1 percent” of users have been affected., but even if that number’s accurate, that’s 1% of the Xbox 360 userbase that won’t be playing Gears of War next week. “We’re working with those affected to get them back up and running, whether that be by providing another console, or fixing their existing console. We’re committed to resolving this issue,” said the company in a prepared statement.

“Over the next 24 hours, our product team will be working to ensure that those unaffected remain unaffected.” That doesn’t help much now, but at least a solution’s in the pipeline.

Some beta testers that we won’t name for their own protection have let us know that VMWare is now ready to take Parallels to task in the desktop virtualization market with Fusion.

What is Fusion? According to the private beta site… “Fusion is the codename for a new VMware desktop product for Mac that will enable Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. It is built on VMware’s robust and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.”

Fusion boasts the following features and benefits:

* Ability to create and run a wide variety of x86 operating systems on OS X without rebooting. You can easily create virtual machines and run multiple operating systems simultaneously on Mac OS X. In addition, you can download and run any of the 300 virtual appliances available on VMware’s Technology Network.
* Easily share files between OS X and guest operating system. You can simply drag and drop files between OS X and virtual machines to easily share files between the two environments.
* Access physical devices from the virtual machine. You can access physical devices such as CD ROM drives, video cameras, iPods, printers and high-speed disks from the virtual machine.
* Leverage Virtual SMP capabilities to gain additional performance improvement. You can assign more than a single CPU (on supported hardware with Intel Core Duo CPU) to gain additional performance for CPU-intensive workloads.
* Consolidate onto your Mac: If you need a PC to run specific applications that are not supported on your Mac, you can consolidate onto your Mac by running the PC environment in a virtual machine. In addition to space savings, consolidating onto your Mac reduces hardware, power and cooling costs.
* Safely evaluate software in isolated virtual machines: You can evaluate non-OS X applications safely on your Mac by running them in an isolated virtual machine. If the application crashes or corrupts the system, your Mac is not affected.
* Run over 300 virtual appliances: You can download any of the over 300 virtual appliances - preinstalled and preconfigured applications packaged with an operating system in a virtual machine - available from VMware’s Technology Network. Setting up a wiki or blog server has never been easier.
* Fusion supports all Intel Mac hardware, including the new 64-bit Mac Pro and iMac.
* Your virtual machines can have multiple virtual processors, taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips in today’s newest Intel Macs.
* Fusion supports high-speed USB 2.0 for a huge range of devices. Even devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X will work in a virtual machine.
* Simply drag and drop files and folders in and out of your virtual machines to transfer your data.

A computer researcher has made public information that Apple Computer has encrypted at the binary level critical parts of its Mac OS X operating system.

These “Apple-protected binaries” can serve to protect the OS from being pirated and also to make it “nontrivial” to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, said Amit Singh, a member of Google’s technical staff in Mountain View, Calif., and the author of “Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach.” Singh has also given lectures on Mac OS X to the National Security Agency and at Apple’s main campus in Cupertino, Calif.

According to Singh, the parts of Mac OS X that are protected include the Finder and Dock applications, as well as parts of Rosetta (Mac OS X’s application for running Power PC applications on an Intel-based Mac) and services that manage the user interface.

Singh noted that his list was not exhaustive.

Much of Mac OS X is open source, including Darwin, an entirely functional, open-source operating system based on FreeBSD 5.0 and the Mach 3.0 microkernel, and the basis for Mac OS X.

The Apple-protected binaries signal their protected status by setting a special bit in the header, Singh said. When any binary is called upon by the system, the kernel checks to see if it is Apple-protected; if it is, the kernel unencrypts the code through an “unprotect” operation.

This operation, Singh noted, includes a “dsmos_page_transform” command, in which “dsmos” stands for “Don’t Steal Mac OS X”. He also found a “Don’t Steal Mac OS X.kext” kernel extension in the operating system.

“A lot of times, encrypted binaries are used as piracy protection,” said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Mountain View, Calif.-based Counterpace Internet Security. “It’s a common technique,” he said.

“But more often, and probably what it’s used for here,” he added, “is as anti-reverse engineering.”

Schneier noted that encrypted binaries can affect application performance due to the extra decoding step before they can be executed.

However, he said, “As computers grow faster, there’s more processing power to do stuff like this.

“The devil’s in the details,” he said.

Speaking to concerns about privacy, Schneier said, “There’s nothing sinister here.”

“This is a method for Apple to protect its code,” he said, adding that for people who still want to try to get Mac OS X running on commodity PC hardware, “you can get around it, but not easily.”

Apple representatives were not available to comment.

Malware writers have used a Wikipedia article and special storage features to attempt to plant malicious code on unsuspecting users’ systems, the online encyclopedia’s organisers have confirmed.

The incident took advantage of Wikipedia’s policy of openness, which allows anyone to create and modify articles. The attackers created a Wikipedia page that promised a Windows security update for a supposedly new version of the Lovesan/W32.Blaster worm, and pointed to an external site with the seemingly authentic domain wikipedia-download.org.

Wikipedia editors quickly identified and deleted the article, according to a report from German news organisation Heise. However, the attackers had used a Wikipedia feature that archives all previous versions of articles when changes have been made.

The malicious page thus continued to exist in the archive, and the attackers were able to point to it in mass emails, according to Heise.

The emails used Wikipedia’s logo, and explained that Microsoft had asked Wikipedia to assist with hosting the patch during a supposed Lovesan/W32.Blaster outbreak.

Wikipedia confirmed it has now deleted the archived versions of the malicious article. Wikipedia-download.org also leads to a dead end.

In August, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, addressing the Wikimania conference, acknowledged growing problems for the encyclopedia around accuracy and malicious edits, and promised to improve quality. The English version of Wikipedia passed 1 million entries this year.