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When Calvin once asked why the world couldn’t even be unfair in his favour, he would’ve been really happy if he was one of those thousands of people who were left confused, heartbroken and angry after news emerged that GTA IV for the PC could get delayed in the country.
And, to add to one of those rare occasions where we are the bearer of good news, it looks like you really wouldn’t have to wait after all if you were planning to drive Mr. Bellic around town on your monster PC. So yes, the game is coming out on December 3rd, as originally planned and yes, it will be available at the previously mentioned low, low price of INR 499, so there’s really no excuse not to buy one copy for playing and one NRFB copy for a keepsake, like someone I know is planning to do.
And for all those people who were getting increasingly paranoid over the game’s SecuROM DRM software, (yours truly included) it looks like things aren’t as bad as they are with EA’s games. Head over here for a 2-page interview by PC Games Hardware with Rockstar where every detail about the relaxed DRM mechanism in use by GTA IV PC is revealed.
After the previous country manager Mohit Anand packed his bags and left for Channel [V] in March, the Entertainment & Devices Division for Microsoft India had been left leaderless, even as rumors began circulating that the Redmond giant’s Indian arm was shutting down operations across “several Tier 2 cities”. Finally, to end all speculation about who would be heading the E&D division, Microsoft has announced that Mr. Jaspreet Bindra, currently leading the Online Services Group (OSG) will be heading the E&D division come September this year.
According to the press release, Mr. Bindra will now be responsible for the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows businesses in addition to overseeing operations across the Entertainment (music, TV and video), the Consumer Productivity Experiences (keyboards and mice) and the Mobile and Embedded Business lines. Frankly, we’re happy we now have a new brand person to hound at the Microsoft offices and hopefully, he won’t hog the Mongoose as much as Mohit did in Halo 3. Or maybe he’s more of a Gearhead. Uno, perhaps! Either which way, I hope he’ll finally manage to bring some debug units into the country. It’s been way too harsh without ‘em!
When PC owners finally got their hands on Mass Effect a couple of months back , they were more than a little vocal about expressing their disappointment when the “Bring Down The Sky” DLC wasn’t made available for free download as promised. Finally, as of today, PC owners will be able to blast away fugly bug-eyed Batarians and make sure they handle Armageddon rogue asteroids, Cmdr. Shepard style as the long-awaited 309 MB DLC goes up for free download along with the 1.01 patch for the game. According to the changelog, the 34 MB patch includes support for DLC and some bug fixes for audio, gameplay and multicore CPUs.
However, be warned that you don’t just get access to the DLC. You will first have to create a BioWare Community account (if you don’t already have one) and register your Mass Effect CD Key with them to get a Bring Down The Sky key. A needless hassle, but I suppose a necessary one, or God help the DLC pirates. Get all the information you need at the official Mass Effect DLC page here.
As for the Mass Effect Xbox 360 owners who’re kinda hoping for some sort of a “DLC Now Free” announcement, sorry folks, according to BioWare and Microsoft, there will not be any sort of a price cut on the DLC, so you’ll still need to fork over those 400 MS Points if you want to play.
Download Mass Effect v1.01 Patch
Download “Bring Down The Sky” DLC
Another year, another E3, and another Microsoft Press Conference come and gone. After starting off with a lot of chest thumping (what else is new?) about how the Xbox 360 is the be-all-and-end-all platform for the casual and the hardcore gamer alike and a whole bunch of stats about how Resident Evil 5, Fable 2 and Gears of War 2 will represent more than half a billion in sales for the platform , we finally got to see a hands-on of BethSoft’s eagerly anticipated post-apocalyptic RPG, Fallout 3.
After demoing the game, which involved half of a mock trailer for the game (the other half will hit Xbox LIVE Marketplace as part of the E3 2008: Bringing it Home downloads later), an Eyebot (singing patriotically, of course) roving the ravaged Washington DC landscape and some time spent with the PipBoy 3000 before kicking lots of ass with the VATS system, the sniper and laser rifles, regular and EMP grenades and turning an enemy chopper and its hapless cargo into superheated vapor with the Fatman, Todd professed his love for the Xbox LIVE Marketplace by announcing that players can extend their 100-hours+ gameplay time with a slew of DLC which will be available exclusively for the Xbox 360 and the Games for Windows platforms.
Oh, joy, now I can pay 150 MS Points on the Xbox 360 and $4.99 on the PC so I can get some sort of horse armor, or better yet, a scratch-guard for my PipBoy! Hit the jump to check out the E3 Microsoft Presser demo and the “Perfect Life” trailer.
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Talking about stuff hitting you out of left field, a nice little PR “roundup” from Microsoft is definitely not what we expected to find in our inbox this warm (yes, warm, weird, I know) Saturday afternoon. A colorful little flyer full of “gamer-talk”, the notice promises a lot more fun for the Indian Xbox 360 community, including local releases for Sakaguchi-san’s Lost Odeyssey and the much-awaited Ninja Gaiden 2, which we presume will happen sometime early February.
Apart from talking a little bit more about the educational content, which Microsoft will release on the Xbox 360 in partnership with Educomp - a “technology driven education organization” (FATAL ERROR: Keyphrase Overusage!) we are told that kids would now be able to play with math, science and social studies in completely new ways (oh joy!) and hopefully walk away “educationally enriched” rather than a bad craving for Mass Effect and Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties. Hey, don’t quote us on this, but we actually learnt more of our history playing with the latter than by sitting around in class, where we usually just passed notes back and forth to stave off the Sandman’s intoxicating aura.
Although we have a number of complaints about what we received, we’ll look the other way this time when it comes to encouraging people to trash talk and indulge in unsporting and aggressive behavior on Xbox LIVE (no matter how sarcastic you wanted it to appear) or plagiarizing content straight from GameSpot’s game guides. Please don’t let us catch you doing these again as we might most probably be tempted to send a sharply-worded critique your way. For now, we’re happy we’ll get to see Ninja Gaiden 2 soon, which coupled with the Burnout Paradise release at the end of the month and the Burnout 3: Takedown Marketplace release on Monday, should keep us coasting until April until the big ticket items end up in our grubby mitts.
There’s nothing more annoying to a PC owner than having to wait for a game that millions of others are already enjoying. Used to waiting ages for games like GTA, Halo and Fable, it came as no surprise to the PC aficionados that they’d have to endure yet another interminable wait for Gears of War, the game that sold the Xbox 360, to get to their beloved platform of choice. And just about a year later, Gears of War finally arrives for the PC, and to make up for all the lost time, brings along enough candy and flowers to make sure you don’t ever remember being stood up on this grimy, bloody date.
Life just doesn’t get better than chainsawing and curbstomping (or getting ‘em done unto you) hapless virtual characters in Gears of War. PC owners, who will experience all of this come November 6th, now have a list of achievements to go with all their fun as well. With less than a month to go, Xbox360Achievements.org have gotten their hands on the PC Achievements for the game and, disappointingly, it looks like nothing’s changed, at least from the perspective of an Xbox 360 player looking forward to the Brumak fight. It looks like they removed 10 GS awarded to the “A Series of Tubes” achievement to make space for the new Secret Achievement, which is probably related to defeating the Brumak and the new Act, but that’s pretty much all there is. We’re still not sure if the Annex mode and the Hidden Fronts map pack will be made available for the PC as well, since the 250 GS for those achievements seem to be missing from the PC version, even though the promos say that the game will include three new multiplayer maps and a new multiplayer game type. Either which way, everyone but the achievement whores shouldn’t have a problem with this, I guess.