Crispy Gamer News

Nielson released some interesting numbers for consoles played in 2008 (Jan. to Oct.) that reveal the PlayStation 2 as the most popular. Based on the percentage of of all console-gaming minutes played, the PS2 scored 30.2 percent, beating out the Xbox 360 (18.3 percent) and Wii (13.5 percent). Meanwhile, the last generation Xbox (9.1 percent) beat out the PS3 (7.7 percent) and GameCube (4.4 percent). “Other” (we assume mobile phones, PSP, DS and other devices) managed 16.9 percent.

Another report from Nielson also showed that World of Wacraft was the most popular PC game, raking in an impressive 671 minutes per week. Other popular games included Warcraft III (328 minutes), Half-Life 2 (288 minutes), Spore (268 minutes), and PopCap Games’ (133 minutes).

Last Thursday, we reported on Sony adding a new patch to its Home service, which added facial hair to the avatar options while disabling the service’s voice chat capabilities. Apparently, a weekend of silence was more than enough though, as Sony has released a brand new patch to the Home beta, giving users back their collective voice … with a few conditions.

Ostensibly, the voice feature was originally dropped due to the strain the feature was putting of the service. Of course, the decision to yank the feature was probably helped by the fact that much of the chatter going on in Home was of the juvenile smack talk/pickup line variety. Now that the voice chat feature has been re-established, players will be able to go back to hitting on each other, but only in the comforts of their personal spaces and clubhouses. So, you’ll have to actually convince someone to come back to your place before you can try to talk them into “coming to your place”.

By clicking on their PlayStation Home icon on the PlayStation Network column of XMB, Home users will be automatically prompted to update to 1.05. Users who are online with PlayStation Home will need to log-off and click on PlayStation Home icon for the update to register.

To say that PlayStation Home has had a lukewarm launch would probably be one of the biggest understatements of the year. The PS3’s social networking service has been plagued with server crashes, stripped features, and even reports of widespread hacking. Sony seems to be scrambling to fix things, though, as a post on the PlayStation blog is reporting that the service will be undergoing another round of maintenance today to try and fix some of the issues.

The new update, moving things up from v1.03 to v 1.04, is supposed to address “the difficulty some people are having accessing PlayStation Home due to the high demand for the service”. It also looks like Sony thinks some of the issues may be stemming from the chatter going on in Home, as the voice chat feature on the service is being “temporarily suspended”. Who knew that that smack talk and cybersex could take up so much bandwidth? Well … who besides more than three quarters of the people who ever go into virtual worlds? (Second Life anyone?)

To make up for the temporary case of laryngitis on Home, the new update will add give players something extra in their avatar closets: beards. While the selection is extremely limited, and you still can’t create the “Mirror, Mirror” style evil twin of your Home persona to blame for all your actions, there’s a nice big set of muttonchops and even a full beard/moustache combo that would do Santa proud. If nothing else, this should bring a little more diversity to the appearance of the Home population. The fairer sex, though, is out of luck. With no new additions to the female avatar toolbox, it looks like the Bearded Lady will have to be content to stick with her carnival act.

While I’m not sure the proper etiquette regarding just how long we’re supposed to keep the word “New” in Microsoft’s “New Xbox Experience”, it’s still got plenty of new and shiny left on it after less than a month since its launch. So, just how much of an effect HAS the NXE had on the overall Xbox LIVE numbers? Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb has the answers. Posting on his official blog, Hryb tossed out a few interesting XBL stats to wrap up the year and the post-NXE Xbox LIVE era:

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It’s nice to know that, just as in real life, love born in an online world can sour just as easily. According to CNN, a UK couple who got married in the MMO game Second Life and in real life, are now set to get a divorce after the husband allegedly got caught in a virtual affair in the game.

Amy Taylor, 28, said she had caught her husband, David Pollard, 40, having sex with another woman (a “virtual prostitute” to boot) in the game. The couple, who first met in an Internet chatroom back in 2003, are now separated and awaiting finalization of the divorce process.
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Battlefield Heroes, EA’s free-to-play online action game, has been pushed to 2009, according to the game’s senior producer, James Salt. In a post on the official site for the game, Salt explains what the team is working on and where the beta is headed.

The short answer on that is that it will soon be shutting down. Salt goes on to say that the development team has enough feedback from closed beta players to move onto the next phase of development. The game will launch a new closed beta in early 2009. Salt’s full statement to the community follows, after the break:

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PC owners who decide to check out the demo of Valve’s upcoming zombie game, Left 4 Dead, will be getting something extra in their download. Yesterday, Valve announced the demo will be the first to include its new Steam Cloud extension, a set of services for Steam that stores application data online and allows user experiences to be consistent from any PC.

Steam Cloud support will ship with Valve’s Left 4 Dead demo later this week and the full game on November 18th. In this first release, the information stored and accessible through the Steam Cloud will include keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, as well as multiplayer settings such as spraypaint images. When a player logs into Steam from another PC, these settings will be brought down from the Cloud and automatically used in the game. Any configuration changes on this second machine are then synced to the Cloud for future sessions.
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