Stormbirds was set for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC before THQ apparently got cold feet. As a result, the team of over 30 developers was laid off by Juiced owner THQ.

"The game was in the same genre as Ace Combat and HAWX," wrote Calvert in a recent blog post. "THQ deemed the project too high risk, [and] as a result the entire team were made redundant on the 1st of December 2008."

Juice Games was acquired by THQ in 2006. The developer is best known for the "Juiced" series of racing titles.

Rather than see the fruits of their labors go to waste, some renders (below) from the Stormbirds project have been released by both Calvert and [B]Steven Kerswell[/B] of CG studio RealtimeUK, along with an intro cinematic which is available from the link at the top of the article.

Looks like Capcom is single handedly making Q1 2009 a real gaming event, with plenty to sink your teeth into, even despite inFamous and Killzone 2 being released during the same period.

- Flock - [B]February[/B]
- Street Fighter IV - [B]February 20th[/B]
- Resident Evil 5 - [B]March 13th[/B]
- Bionic Commando - [B]March[/B] (It’s not March anymore. Rather, it’ll be in the first half of ‘09)

The American release dates are as follows:

- Flock - [B]Early 2009[/B]
- Street Fighter IV - [B]February 17th[/B]
- Resident Evil 5 - [B]March 13th[/B]
- Bionic Commando - [B]Early 2009[/B]

This alleged drastic restructuring goes so far as to suggest that there will be closures of company factories and that major divisions will be shut down. This news comes roughly a month after it was revealed that Sony had plans to cut 8,000 jobs from its non-SCEA workforce.

However, as MCV (linked above) reports, Sony is already denying the supposed corporate restructuring. "We do not plan to announce additional restructuring measures at this time," said Sony spokesman [B]Atsuo Omagari[/B]. "We don’t have any such plan."

Whether true or not, Sony’s corporate outlook is rather dire; analysts are saying that a radical restructuring is long overdue. They suggest that Sony needs to focus on content and software, and to give Sir Howard Stringer complete control of the business.

"The most important thing is that, to improve organizational strength in the areas of development, purchasing and marketing, it will be necessary to further concentrate power in the hands of [Sir Howard] and unless this is achieved we believe [Sony] will be unable to close the gap with competitors such as Apple and Nintendo."

Fresh from the Italian PSP Community, PSP-ITA, comes this new update for Moscas’ homebrew app, GoblinsPSP, described as a “utility multifunction PC”. For this release, the bug found in the previous version, 1.4.0.0, which prevented the start of the program after installation has been squished accordingly.

We’ve included here the changelog for v1.4.0.0 as well for your perusal.

Changelog v1.4.1.0:

• Fixed the bug that was after installation and that prevented the implementation of the program

Changelog v1.4.0.0:

• A program available in Italian and English
• Function install / upgrade CF (the list of downloads can be downloaded separately due to the function of the program which then will bring you back to the pages download psp-ita.com)
• Added Yacc (the compression / decompression of image files (ISO / CSO)
• Added UMDgen (program to change the data of image files in order to reduce the size account of)
• Possibility to send e-mail to report to report any bugs or suggestions (a service is offered free assistance to the program, use the appropriate functions to create an e-mail and automatically transfer it to the default program for e - mail)

Download: GoblinPSP 1.4.1.0

• PSP Homebrew - GoblinPSP 1.2.0.0

Check it out, and tell us what you think.

Watch Larger Version of this Video

Fans of the Disgaea franchise left 08 behind with a huge grin on their faces as Nippon Ichi confirmed the arrival of Disgaea 2 Portable on the PSP. Now let’s get on in the new year with more information - and new screenshots - for the said game.

On the other side of the pond, at NIS America, Marketing Coordinator, Nao Zook, definitely wants to jumpstart the year right with a statement that can only be brimming with good vibes all around, saying “Well, at this moment, all I can say is that we won’t disappoint our fans who are waiting for Disgaea 2 PSP.”

As mentioned in the previous report, Disgaea 2 Portable will be getting 30 more content than the original PS2 game, including a scene with Axel, the Dark Hero. And if cameos are your thing, then you’re gonna get that here as well. Lord Zetta of the Makai Kingdom, Prier from La Pucelle Tactics, and Mid Boss are making appearances for Adell’s team.

Do note, however, that it looks like the Japanese version won’t have any multiplayer features. But don’t lose hope. Maybe the North American release will follow the way of the Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness title, where NIS America waited for a multiplayer ready version before releasing it.

We’ll keep you posted on more updates. In the meantime, have your fill of these screenshots for Disgaea 2 Portable.

The video comes courtesy of [B]USCmachinima[/B] via YouTube, and the caption reads as follows:

"My youtube username is usually hvzero. This is a video of Beat It and Thriller in LittleBigPlanet done for CTIN 464: Machinima at USC. Full videos coming soon."

Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMjwAsThY00[/youtube]

Why not check out the review, as displayed below?

Watch Larger Version of this Video

PSP Sock and Awe is an adaptation of the Flash game, Sock and Awe, brought to you by Fubra Limited and Popjam. Now practice your shoe-hurling skills and show the outgoing prez how you really feel - with a high-score!

Thanks again Miles for letting us in on another good one!

Download: PSP Sock and Awe

• PSP homebrew - Jungle Adventure v0.1 demo

"The buddies alongside you in each battle have been expertly tuned to provide just enough cover and support to actively get your back on occasions, while never making it feel like they could acchieve every objective alone."

"…the believability and consistency are hallmarks of the Killzone 2 expereince. None of the circumstances, weapons you find, locations you visit, or frankly any of the details in the world feel arbitrary. The world is consistently realized in its unappealing flavor."

"…filled with moments that can handily be described as inspiring awe"

- bots in offline multiplayer "perform pretty well"

"Without a doubt Killzone fans, action, and shooter fans of any stripe will isntantly tag this sequel as a powerful contender for teh best game of 2009"

Hard to believe that the original LCD2690WUXi was introduced over two years ago, but the squared version is finally getting official here at Macworld. The 26-inch MultiSync LCD2690WUXi² packs an IPS active matrix LCD and is clearly aimed at pros and pros alone; some of the super swank features include 97.8% coverage of AdobeRGB, compatibility with NEC’s SpectraViewIITM color calibrator, auto luminance control for consistent brightness and color, support for 12-bit lookup tables and an ambient light sensor. Additionally, you’ll notice a 1,900 x 1,200 native resolution, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 320 nits of brightness and a trio of selectable inputs (DVI-I, DVI-D and VGA). The panel is shipping as we speak for just $1,199, which ain’t bad at all for a screen of this caliber.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Displays

NEC debuts 26-inch LCD2690WUXi² for professionals at Macworld originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To quote: The Army is shelling out nearly $18 million for a new training simulator game that will allow soldiers to drive virtual vehicles, fire virtual weapons and pilot virtual unmanned aerial vehicles in combat situations.

The contract for "Game After Ambush" was awarded late last month to software developers Laser Shot, of Texas, Bohemia Interactive, of the Czech Republic, and Australia-based Calytrix Technologies.

The new simulator - a modification of the commercial "Virtual Battle Space 2" - will replace the Army’s Official video game "DARWARS Ambush," which the service uses to train soldiers for combat.

Since 2006, the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation, or PEO STRI, has fielded more than 3,000 copies of "DARWARS Ambush" to the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and Homeland Defense Department, according to spokeswoman Kristen Dooley McCullough.

In an e-mail, McCullough said the contract included $10.7 million awarded on Dec. 19, with another $7 million in options.

I had written some code to take wikipedia articles and summarise them. I wanted to offer this for use in various places, now the obvious way to offer it is just a web service (via REST, SOAP, etc), but that’s boring and I had a cunning plan. Why not offer it over DNS - it is basically a huge associative array and DNS is designed for this stuff.

So I wrote a little nameserver which returns the results as TXT records. There are some obvious limitations for example responses are limited to around 430 bytes (it only does UDP). It has advantages too, it gets cached at your nameserver and it is also faster than HTTP (no need to setup a TCP session).

Here’s an example command line entry that will pull a summary of the Makezine article from Wikipedia:

host -t txt makezine.wp.dg.cx

makezine.wp.dg.cx descriptive text “Make (or MAKE) is a quarterly magazine published by O’Reilly Media which focuses on do it yourself (DIY) projects involving computers, electronics, robotics, metalworking, woodworking and other disciplines. The magazine is marketed to people who enjoy \”ma” “king\” things and features complex projects which can often be completed with cheap materials, including household items… http://a.vu/w:Make_(magazine)”

It’s basically a big hashtable of Wikipedia stored in SQLLite and served up by a custom DNS server, returning the info in a TXT record. The server code hasn’t been released yet, but it sounds like it’s written in Perl. It’s made by the author of Parse::MediaWikiDump and Text::Summary::MediaWiki, which he wrote to parse through the full Wikipedia dump and generate summary blurbs that will fit in the 430 byte limit.

Think about it. There’s just something fundamentally cool about the world’s greatest encyclopedia distributed and cached on name servers around the earth. Not that this particular hack will be used enough for that to happen, of course, but it’s interesting that it’s possible on existing infrastructure, without anyone having to install anything. A small glimpse of the future of universal cloud storage, all riding on the Internet’s oldest protocol.

Wikipedia over DNS
Slideshow from David’s presentation at the London Perl Workshop 2008

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To quote: [B]Michael Marsh[/B], an 18-year-old gamer from Norwalk, Conn., wanted to set up a gay/straight alliance club in PlayStation Home, Sony’s new free 3-D virtual world component for the PlayStation 3.

The problem was that the words he was using - "gay," "lesbian" and "bisexual" - were being filtered from text chats and were not being allowed in the naming of clubs or in postings in club forums.

Marsh, who is straight but supports gay rights, said he raised the issue with Home community managers during the private beta test, but the problems persisted after the public beta introduction of Home on Dec. 11.

"I can understand if they’re filtering out profanity, but if feel like it’s discrimination," Marsh said. "By blocking a word like ‘gay,’ which is a preferred term by the gay community, you’re encouraging it as a bad word."

Filed under: CES, Misc. Gadgets, HDTV, Home Entertainment

GestureTek brings 3D and gestures together for remote control originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I couldn’t keep myself from smiling and laughing as I watched the little guy dancing, with backup dancers to boot! The adorable sack doll from Media Molecule sure can dance. Anyway, I’m sure you’re itching to see what the heck I’ve been babbling about, go on then.

• More copyright woes: Marvel Comics shutting down LittleBigPlanet costumes

Other cable television channels say they care what their viewers think, but they are not telling the truth. G4 is different, though; we care so deeply about what our viewers think that our president, Neal Tiles, personally answers watchers’ questions. Go ahead, ask him anything. We call it "Open Source," but you’ll call it "OMG! SWEET!"

This week, President Neal drops the insider’s insider word on our new series The Chasers War on Everything,  the future of Code Monkeys, whether G4 will air competitive gaming, and this oft-repeated query: “What happened to all the videogames shows?"

Check it out, and don’t forget to leave a question for next month’s Open Source!

Speaking to Famitsu about their plans for 2009, Hideo Kojima reveals that their studio will be starting with a clean slate (well, considering that Ryan Payton has already left…) and still aim to be a global competitor in the video game industry.

Interestingly enough, it seems as if Hideo Kojima is feeling the pressure from Western studios. What with so many industry key persons stating that video game development is no longer centered in Japan, Kojima Productions is now reviewing their current team structure, tools, staff, and basic operations.

I’ve thought a lot about how Western games have been winning, looking it from a global perspective, and there are things that I’ve noticed. So 2009 will be a year of change, a year where we start from zero again.

With games, you’ve got to use cutting-edge techniques, and doing so costs money - so I don’t think you can make games that just appeal to the Japanese market. So, 2009 will see us continuing to think how to create a team that can take on the world.

That’s weird coming from the guy who made MGS4. Considering it’s been quite a success in both Japan and western markets, you’d think Kojima would be pretty confident in his studio’s capacity to deliver global-standard games. Well, this is coming from the guy, after all, who said he himself wasn’t satisfied with MGS4!

Whatever the case, it looks like they really got some big plans for this year! Can’t wait to see what they’ve got in store for us!

In a press release boasting over 40 “fitness-oriented titles” on sale right now, GameStop announced that they will be offering free year-long subscriptions to Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, O Magazine, and other magazines for any consumer spending over $34.99 on those titles. Although they did not provide a full list of games included in the deal, obvious titles like Wii Fit and My Fitness Coach were matched with “brain fitness” titles such as Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day and My Japanese Coach.

GameStop senior vice president of marketing Mike Hogan provided this curious comment:

“We know that getting in shape is one of the toughest New Year’s resolutions to stick with, especially for busy moms who often don’t have time to spare for exercise. Today’s moms are looking for ways to incorporate exercise into their lifestyle. Active video games are a terrific way to reach your fitness goals, and as an added bonus, they can be enjoyed with your whole family.”

From my end, it seems like GameStop is making some pretty big leaps in assuming that a very specific audience — busy moms who want to get into shape — is the primary group buying a growing genre of games. Stuffing “mental fitness” games into that category just makes the whole deal even more suspect. After all, I’m willing to bet that there are more otaku nerds buying My Japanese Coach than family-focused mothers, but maybe that makes me just as jaded as the marketers who devised this campaign.

Revision 852 is out for Shadow and the JPCSP Team’s homebrewed concoction, jpcsp v0.1. This release brings you more demos, ms0 and several patches - same as the notes from the previous release, actually.

But although this Java-based PSP emulator may be missing out on details, we’re sure it’s got just the right amount of variety for your enjoyment, so do check out what’s in store this time.

Download: jpcsp v0.1 revision 852

We’re not sure if this already applies in-game, but as far as the LittleBigWorkshop is concerned, some people have already gotten some emails from Sony stating that they had to mod some users’ creations.

Over at the LittleBigWorkshop forums (linked above), one guy by the name of [B]MuffinMan71[/B] talks of his plight. Turns out that the Sackboy in question was one based on the Thing (like, Fantastic Four, Thing). Here’s part of the email (pictured below) he received from the Workshop:

We received a notice from Marvel Entertainment, Inc. ("Marvel") that materials that you posted on LittleBIGWorkshop.com infringe Marvel’s copyrights. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Little Big Workshop Copyright Policy, we removed and disabled access to these materials.

Though this is not in-game, it’s still related to the many issues we’ve been hearing about with regard to copyright infringement in LittleBigPlanet. I know it’s a bit tough hearing this - I myself want to see a Deadpool Sackboy eventually - but, sigh, rules are rules, no matter how unfair they seem.

This release hosts the Socom FTB2 Cheat Device and fixes a couple of bugs, such as that flicker caused by _pspDebugScreenClearLine. Check out the new changelog for 1.80:

• Thanks to a recent patch in the debug library, I was able to remove almost all, if not all flicker caused by _pspDebugScreenClearLine.
• Removed the Anti-Server lock as it was removed, but not completely removed anyhow
• Added an animations applier as a replacement for the anti-server-lock. Has a variety of animations
• Fixed the massive overflow problem that 1.70 was absolutely plagued with. If someone had told me sooner..in that retrospect, any problems, pretty please email me at nofx@tshcodes.com
• A variety of other things that I forgot to open the changelog to document.
• There is a bug that I’m assuming that is caused by the clearline thing, but I really, really don’t care. If anyone cares, email me and I’ll work on it. Until then, the very first bar of the title will flash whenever you enable clearline(by pressing a variety of buttons, whenever it changes a string).

NoEffex also notes that there could be other changes, but he’s been sick and very forgetful so he may not have noted it down. Plus, there also have been reports that the new firmware builds, after recent fixes, works with 3.80.

Dig in, and to NoEffex, hope you’re feeling better.

Download: BakonICE v1.80 (Old Firmwares)
Download: BakonICE v1.80 (New Firmwares)
Discuss: QJ.NET’s PSP Development Forums

• PSP Homebrew - BakonICE v1.70: added warning menus, 3.71 build, more
• PSP Homebrew - FX_ThreadMan 0.5
• PSP Homebrew - Boxing Kenny