If you steal an Xbox 360, don't forget to disable the auto sign-in feature before going online. That's the lesson high-tech crooks are probably gleaning from today's New York Post brief about a thief, 22-year-old Jeremy Gilliam, apprehended after logging into Xbox LIVE with his victim's online game id.
The ’00s will be remembered as the decade when the videogame industry got flipped on its head.
Going into the year 2000, the general feeling was that the game industry was ready to put away childish things. The era of Nintendo and kiddie entertainment was over, and the videogames of the future were about multimillion-dollar budgets, mind-blowing photorealism and “digital actors” playing out their parts with human realism thanks to “emotion engines,” etc.
Say what you will about the gaming industry in 2009. Yeah, it was a little rough, with consumers tightening their belts and only a few megahits. However, we did see price drops for all the major consoles, a gazillion new iPhone games, and a smattering of amazing titles, some of which we're still playing.
But forget about the past, it's time to look ahead and search out the most anticipated games of next year. Our list nearly doubles 2009's, so there is a lot to get excited about.
OK, so it's technically impossible to beat a game that has no defined ending, but World of Warcraft player "Little Gray" is the first to finish virtually every single thing that the land of Azeroth currently has to offer.
According to MMO Champion, he's the first player to nab every single achievement in the game and the first player to reach 986/986 points listed in the armoury.
Microsoft has reportedly unleashed a second wave of bans, bringing the total count of banned Xbox 360s to around 1 million -- about five percent of some 20 million Live-connected consoles. There is also some uncertainty now as to whether or not the bans are permanent. It is safe to assume that they are, as Microsoft specifically targeted consoles as opposed to Gamertags. However, there is no guarantee Microsoft won't go even further and nail Gamertags associated with those banned consoles as well.
Nine research teams from universities across the U.S. will study how interactive video games such as the Wii Active could help fight childhood obesity and how mobile phone games could help smokers quit or reduce tobacco use.
The teams will also focus on how video games can be designed to help people change behaviors and self-manage chronic illnesses as well as improve communication with autistic patients.
If you want to be a CEO but not have any of the real responsibilities of one, you could try to play a new online game being offered by Cisco. The company this week posted myPlanNet, a computer game that lets anyone be a broadband executive making network deployment decisions.
Security expert Symantec has discovered what it refers to as an OSX.Loosemaque threat cleverly disguised as a classic video and targeting unsuspecting Mac users. Trojan.Loosemaque is designed to look like a Space Invaders/Galaga style game that deletes a file from your home directory, for every alien ship you destroy.
In a recent interview, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford—the developer behind the upcoming Borderlands—revealed some surprising opinions about Valve's Steam digital distribution platform. While the common sentiment among both gamers and developers tends to be positive, Pitchford told Maximum PC that "I don't trust Valve" and that he believes "a lot of the industry doesn't" as well.
n a most recent social-engineering ploy, security experts have identified a new spam campaign, trying to attract users to download a Monopoly game, which is, in fact, more or less like Russian roulette game.
