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From an interview with Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden II) developer Tomonubu Itagaki on mcvuk.com:

MCV: “Ninja Gaiden II has got some great previews from the press – how proud of it are you?”
Itagaki: “I’m very happy with it. It’s not 100 per cent as I think that’s not possible to do, but I think that I was successful in making a game that no one else could. This is a game that only my team and I would be able to make.”

MCV: “Do you prefer to develop on the Xbox 360, rather than the other consoles?”
Itagaki: “Yes. In my opinion it is the most powerful hardware. I have a lot of friends that develop on it so in some ways I regard it like being at home when I’m working on it. There’s no reason for me to go to a strangers house to make games.”

Niko Bellic wants his money.

By Ben Silverman

Forget liberty – give us residuals or give us death. It’s a sentiment shared by countless actors, and one most poignantly offered by Michael Hollick, better known as the voice of GTA IV’s immigrant star, Niko Bellic.

In a New York Times article, Hollick revealed that he earned about $100,000 for 15 months of work recording dialogue for his role as GTA IV’s protagonist. The game, however, has gone on to rake in over $600 million in a mere two weeks.

And Hollick won’t see a dime of it.

“It’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it,” Hollick told the Times. “I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games.”

The pay discrepancy stems from the fact that Hollywood has yet to make provisions for electronic media, including video games or the Internet. Instead, actors get paid standard Screen Actor’s Guild day wages for their work (roughly $730), leaving them out of the lucrative residual loop should a property become financially successful. When it becomes as successful as GTA IV, an actor could be out literally millions.

Hollick is also peeved that he received no additional compensation for lending his voice to the game’s massive marketing blitz.

“The first GTA 4 trailer generated something like 40 million hits online, and that’s my voice all over it, and I get nothing. If that were a radio spot, I would have. Same thing for the TV ads. I recorded those lines for the game, but now they’re all over television.”

Further muddling matters is the fact that numerous artists, programmers and engineers contribute to the creation of a virtual character like Niko Bellic. Where, execs claim, do you draw the residual line?

We suspect they’re about to find out. The issue bears a distinct resemblance to last year’s writer’s strike, leading many to speculate a similar battle between the Actor’s Guild and Hollywood this summer. After spending a few weeks playing GTA IV, I wouldn’t bet against the Niko. Have you seen what that guy would do for money?

Microsoft (reportedly) plans to release a new version its Xbox 360 video game system code-named Jasper in August and has already assigned IBM and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to make chips for the new game console. However, there are other important rumours: TSMC also got orders to produce the chip for code-named Valhalla Xbox 360 design, which is rumoured to combine microprocessor and graphics chip in a single chip.

TSMC is chosen to make the 65nm GMCH chips,  Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) is contracted to package and test the chips, and Nanya has won orders to supply flip-chip packaging substrates, reports China Economic News Service.

What’s better than blowing stuff up after a long day of work? Not having to locate a rocket launcher to do it… Wreak immediate havoc courtesy of p0Wer. Yeah, you know what it’s all about.

Have fun!

- source: game-warp.com

Some of you are still not understanding that porting XBMC to a (XDK) 360 is still more than just a matter of recompiling, you do not know that a decent MAME port requires things which the original XDK doesn’t evrn provide (self modifying code; that was the main reason why the existing MAME port, which was done using a devkit, is said to perform quite bad on complex stuff). You also aren’t even considering alternatives and you are generally clueless.

There exists code to reload a kernel; though it’s not easy, it’s doable, and requires a lot of knowledge, but has been done (however mainly for a certain different situation which is not relevant for us). But: booting into a non-4532/4548 kernel is going to be complicated and likely requires hardware modifications like a dual-flash mod. Now, does this still sound as good huh? You won’t be able to run (newer) games, and you won’t be able to go live. That shouldn’t be a problem for XDK-warez. So, one question: If it won’t give you games from HDD (cause it will run an old kernel), if it won’t give you XBMC (cause of XDK-XBMC being totally non-portable, relying on x86, little endian, DX8-fixed-function, a fast single-core CPU), if going live will still ban your box (due to microsoft’s cleverness in some specific design choices), if it won’t boot without using the KK exploit (i.e. still requiring a modified firmware): Is this still the “uberhack” you are waiting for? As it is, the main showstopper is still in the awkwardness of running the exploit. SO, hardware hackers, where are you?

It’s just an opinion expressed, but it’s seen as pretty unlikely that there will be any other real exploit in the next few years (same with PS3). Lots of smart people looked at the code. All they could do is to invent new ways to trigger the exploit. But that’s off-topic here, and has already been discussed without any further result.

The hacked ORIGINAL kernel allows you to install and run LINUX, which is NOT homebrew!

What is M$ up to?

A report from Taiwanese news source Economic Daily News says that Pegatron Technology–a recently formed subsidiary of Asus that shouldn’t be confused with the Decepticon leader–has received an order from Microsoft to manufacture a Blu-ray equipped model of the Xbox 360. According to the report, Pegatron says that it plans to begin production on the HD version of the Xbox 360 soon, with plans to ship within the next six months, aiming for a pre-holiday release.

The EDN report also mentions that a price cut for the Core (Arcade) version of the 360 is planned, but doesn’t provide further details on timing or adjustments.