funkatron.com

Damn that’s hot.

Jesus, it looks like I just wiped my ass with that screenshot. I will have to buy the game, even though it will surely suck. Maybe the fact that they did voice recording in 2004 has something to do with its dated look. Man, this property deserves so much better.



Chiklis gets cheeky in The Shield video game

• 9/16 Madden 06 roster update taken down because it made Michael King of the NY Jets 7 inches tall
  
  
  
• EA’s “Madden 06” for PSP … buggy beyond belief

An interesting article by Dean Takahashi, the guy who wrote the excellent Opening the XBox.

A+E Interactive: A Walk Through The Xbox 360 Evaluation Lab At Microsoft’s Mountain View, Calif. Campus:

Under this scenario, Microsoft pays an engineering fee that is lucrative for both ATI and IBM, but it doesn’t have to pay high margins to ATI or IBM for making the chips, and it can go directly to a chip contract manufacturer. The goal is to cut costs and to control its destiny. After all, Microsoft remembers it lost $125 on each of the first Xbox machines sold, and it got into a dispute with Nvidia over chip pricing to boot

(Via Next Generation.)

Macworld: News: Intel’s Chandrasekher talks Apple:

“IDGNS: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Intel has been trying to get Apple to use its processors. Has Intel been talking with Apple? Chandrasekher: We always talk to Apple. Apple is a design win that we’ve coveted for 20 years and we continue to covet them as a design win. We will never give up on Apple. IDGNS: What would you be willing to do in order to win Apple’s business? Chandrasekher: Well, nothing unnatural that we wouldn’t do for other design wins. It’s got to make sense from a business standpoint. We would do what makes economic sense. If we can do that and still get the design win, we’d do it.”

Also discussed is Intel’s apparent shutout in console CPU wins:

We are not averse to getting a design win in the console space. What we are averse to is getting a design win at an unprofitable price point. If IBM wants to sell the Power PC processor below their cost, they can have that business. We had an opportunity to go bid on it. We did bid on it, but we didn’t think it was worth getting that business if it was going to be unprofitable for us, so we backed away. I don’t think it hurts us.

And since component providers typically aren’t huge winners in the console market, you have to wonder if this will be a big payoff for IBM. On the other hand:

Out of three players, two weren’t ever on IA [Intel architecture] and one was on IA and has moved. So, big deal. If you look at the console business overall it’s predominantly a replacement market, not a growing market. And if you look at where the excitement is in terms of gaming, it’s in online gaming. If you look at online gaming, where is most of the online gaming happening? It’s happening on the PC.

Not for long. The last generation dipped its toes in the water of online gaming, and XBox Live demonstrated what it could be. This gen of consoles will dive into the online pool once and for all, and the sheer numbers will overwhelm PC-based online gaming.