Gaming

Today, Apple unveiled a major update to the iPhone OS which is expected to reach iPhone 3G/3GS and 2nd/3rd gen iPod users sometime this summer, and iPad users in the fall. While the banner feature of this release is its multitasking capability, the announcement that Apple will open a web-based gaming network akin to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network has potential to be the biggest coup. Game Center lets users invite friends to play games, start multiplayer games through matchmaking, track achievements, and compare their high scores on a Web-based game network. This is a huge addition to the iPhone ecosystem which puts it on par with the two major home consoles, and actually catapults it past BOTH Nintendo’s Wii and its DS. ...

Oh dear — looks like it’s time to add FarmVille to the list of internet addiction scares after a 12-year-old UK boy has amassed £905 in FarmVille debt. About £288 of that came from the boy’s own savings, while £625 was billed to his horrified mother’s credit card. The debt — which is equivalent to about $1400 USD — was racked up in all of about two weeks’ worth of gameplay. In the popular casual Facebook game, players can spend real money to accrue virtual currency and items. It’s a business that’s booming enough to garner the game’s developer Zynga an estimated valuation as high as $5 billion. ...

Farmville has been launch in June 2009 and after month it has been rated at #8 in Top 25 Facebook Games. Farmville has become the most popular games on Facebook. It has been rank at #1 Facebook Game on August 2009 up until now. Farmville users can’t get enough of farming. They make impressive hay bales art farm just like the Image below. Fake AV gang launches its attack to the Farmville users by poisoning Yahoo and Google search results using the following keywords (see Image 1): ...

This just in from the “Strange Bedfellows” department: apparently Nintendo has enlisted the help of Google to create a Wii game where players compete to guess the most popular search terms. The game, entitled Ando Kensaku, will be out in Japan on April 29 and won’t likely see much of a release elsewhere given its quirkiness. The screenshot above gives you an idea of the cutesy avatar style of the title, featuring 14 mini-games where several players can choose from a multiple choice search term spread. ...

As expected, Microsoft has pushed out a mandatory update to the Xbox 360 today, which adds support for USB storage devices, expanding the memory capacity of the five-year old video game console. The update will ostensibly allow any FAT32-formatted USB storage device between 1GB-16GB in size to be used to save profiles, game saves, and downloadable content. There are, however, a number of caveats, which mean users can’t just plug anything in and have it work. ...

A very dodgy looking PDF file appeared on Nintendo’s Japanese investor relations site with the title “Launch of New Portable Game Machine” (PDF available here). In the document, Nintendo quietly announced that it will be launching “Nintendo 3Ds” during the fiscal year ending in March 2011. The new handheld gaming console will support 3D effects without the need for special viewing glasses, and Nintendo will talk more about it at the E3 conference in June. ...

“Dirty” or “Flirty” Ok. It’s an old formula for a successful business: pay girls to have fun with you. This time the schtick is getting on-line gamers to pay $8.25 (US) to play an online game with a female for 10 minutes. The women get to keep 40 percent. The site is GameCrush. It just opened last night and it seems to be a success (screen shots below.) “GameCrush is being touted as the first social site for adult gamers with the women online able to set their gaming mood to either ‘flirt’ or ‘dirt’, IGN reports. _ _ “The men online are known as Players and the women as PlayDates and Players pay to play while PlayDates get paid to play. _ _ “Players browse PlayDate profiles — of which there are currently 1200 — view photos and even chat with girls for free.” _ _ “At the moment it only supports Xbox 360 and some games on the GameCrush website. GameCrush plans to support PlayStation 3, Wii and World of Warcraft.” ...

In the same way that media event X guarantees Rogue Antispyware Y, a new and highly anticipated videogame that’s about ready to launch will similarly bring out the scams and fakes. If you have any family members that like their PC games but perhaps aren’t clued up on their Internet fakeouts, you might want to warn them that no matter how cool the so-called “Battlefield: Bad Company 2” keygens look, they should steer clear: ...

Since yesterday evening, PlayStation 3 users have been reporting difficulties in connecting their consoles to the PlayStation Network for online gameplay and system updates. While it was first thought to be a network-related issue, Sony has warned that there is a much more widespread issue currently affecting older PlayStation 3’s. Sony’s offical statement lists the following errors as a part of this internal clock bug: The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000. When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F).” When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.” When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained (8001050F).” Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date. “If you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data,” Sony warned this afternoon. ...