Whats wrong with the Spore DRM? Whats wrong with EA putting some “file protection” on their computer games? Its actually a major problem.

SecuROM that crappy Malware on your computer:

Conflicts with other software
SecuROM is a huge security risk. It sits in the background running as an administrator, thereby bypassing the most basic security best practice of running software using a lesser privileged account. Some versions of SecuROM silently install a shell extension that prevents Windows Explorer from deleting 16-bit executables.

This is why people are complaining about this game. (Worth the read)
What is DRM and is it bad? Read more »

The Video above shows a new launcher in development that allows people to play backed up / copied wii games using the homebrew channel. Its seems like you will need to rip a Wii game, burn on some loading info and off you go!

No word on when the instructions on how to do it will be released…(we’ll keep you posted)

xbox 360

I guess price really does matter. Ever since good old uncle Bill reduced the price on the Xbox 360, sales have jumped up 100%. I guess people are still impressed with 360’s large game collection.

MS reps and retailed report “that between Friday, Sept. 5 and Sunday, Sept. 7, some Xbox 360 models were selling at six times the rate they were the weekend prior”

Congrats?

Apparently it’s possible to cheat at Mario Kart Wii during online game play. This video shows someone who starts off the race with a blue shell in his item box and a never ending supply of them after that. The video is pretty chaotic with a blue shell being fired about once every 5 seconds or so but keeps the race pretty close as the back wave catches up to the first wave of racers and vice versa as groups are nailed with an artillery of infinite blue shells. While we don’t condone cheating, it’s really pretty funny to watch. Especially at the end, make sure you watch it all the way through. Let’s all take a lesson from the video though, don’t use this cheat to get ahead and ruin other people’s stats. With great power comes great responsibility… mmm’kay Peter?

For Red Alert 3, EA has heard or seen the outcry of 1700+ 1 star reviews. This time the SecuROM will allow for up to 5 activations (big wow…), a slight upgrade from Spore’s 3. You will also only need to authenticate the game online once, on initial launch and never again.

Chris Corry, Executive producer, pleaded with users to look past the DRM and to buy the game for the game. “I think it would be a shame if people decided to not play a great game simply because it came with DRM, but I understand that this is a very personal decision for many of you and I respect that,” he added. “As you might imagine, I’m a lot less respectful of those people who take the position that they will illegally download a game simply because it has DRM. Either way, we’re very proud of the hard work our team has put into this game and we hope you will all enjoy it when it launches.”

What that means is we should all take a stand and find a good warez site with the game and download it. Don’t let them get away with this kind of DRM bs! (By the way, this is only my personal stance.)

While i was surfing…I happened to stumble upon this:

Read more »

The highly anticipated Spore game that went on sale yesterday was supposed to be a huge hit for EA, the game’s publisher. Spore is basically a fun lesson in survival and evolution from microbe to complex organism with endless customization and even more possibilities. Except there was one thing wrong: the DRM. Complaints on Amazon have totally killed the star rating for the game, with 1,167 out of 1,254 (or 93%) of reviewers scoring it with one star - the lowest possible score. Notable problems with Spore include the restriction to install the game only three times, installing of unwanted software that cannot be removed, secret communication with EA servers, and general Sony rootkit reminiscent bad feelings all around. The funniest thing of all was put best in one review. Read more »

There are tons of things that you simply cannot understand no matter how hard you try. Stuff like “Why people watch American Idol” and “Are turn signals really that hard to use”. Everyone has things that they simply cannot grasp. Here are mine for today:

Why do people like Metal Gear Solid 4?

I don’t get what people find so appealing about these games… they aren’t games. They are hours and hours of mind bogglingly bad FMV sequences punctuated with the occasional part you get to play a very repetitious game. It’s like watching a really, really badly written and poorly acted hong kong sci fi movie that takes itself way too seriously and every hour or so you can push some buttons on your remote but no matter what you do your actions cannot avoid, change, prevent or otherwise improve the plodding, heavy handed story. Throw in more inane plot twists, completely immature poop jokes, shameless self exposition and more shallow one dimensional characters than your average soap opera and you have Metal Gear Solid. I think I loathe it as much as Halo now. It’s like being forced to listen to your crazy uncle prattle on and on and on about his conspiracy theories just so you might possibly get him to give you a dollar. I can understand liking the actual game that is hidden between all the crap sandwiches but you STILL have to take repeated bites of a very large crap sandwich to play it. It’s like telling someone you’ll give them some candy… if they let you hit them in the hand with a hammer for four hours first. I question the fans of this series taste repeatedly in my mind. If it was somehow possible to remove all the crap from Metal Gear Solid and leave you with just the game I would probably think highly of it… but if you remove all the crap then you have a game that would last about an hour… Read more »

The new Sony PSP 3000 is heading out to the UK during the month of October. I personally can’t wait to get my hands on one!

According to Sony Europe boss David Reeves the handheld will hit the region on October 17th and cost GBP 149.99. The new model will only cost about GBP 10 more than the current Slim and Lite hardware SKU giving consumers options when they go out to buy the PSP.

The Slim and Lite PSP will be phased out added David Reeves who said there might be a limited time price cut on the model to help clear the shelves.


And if you missed it, some of the key improvements will include:
The PSP-3000 has a setting for “Color Space” under the system settings section of the XMB. This can be switched between Wide and Normal. Wide exploits the full color depth of the revised hardware, while Normal returns you back to PSP-2000 level color.

Finally, the 3000 firmware offers a noise reduction feature for video out. This is used to cut the noise when outputting the PSP’s video signal to a television.