Posted 03/27/09 at 07:35:26 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Pirates of all ilks are locked in a game of cat and mouse with regulators and content proprietors. Throughout their endless war, both have tightly clung to Newton’s third law: every regulation (action) has an equal and opposite ruse (action). Microsoft has come up with a fresh way to stymie videogame piracy. Its newfangled anti-piracy measure will prevent gamers from enjoying illicit copies of games before the street date.

Copies of Games for Windows Live titles will become playable on a set date – the date of the release of the game. PC games will be authenticated online under this new scheme.

"We have zero-day piracy protection—this helps reduce the leakage of IP before release. The bits are encrypted, and there is a one-time activation that checks to see if the game has been released or not, and we'll send out a decrypt code so the game can be played." Drew Johnston, the product unit manager for the Windows Gaming Platform, told Ars Technica. How will pirates respond?

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Posted 12/08/08 at 08:05:16 AM by Paul Lilly

Last week several Xbox 360 and Roku set-top box owners complained of loss of quality and irritating delays when firing up a movie through Netflix's streaming download service. At the time, the glitch had Netflix stumped, but now it appears Netflix has identified the problem and fixed whatever was causing the issue.

"This was a temporary issue that we believe we have resolved," Netflix wrote on its blog site. "Working with our content distribution partners and key carriers, we made some specific changes that should restore everyone's experience to where it was before - high quality streaming."

However, there might still be work to do. Netflix posted its update on Friday, December 5th, but users throughout the weekend were still reporting lingering issues in the comments section.

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Posted 09/18/08 at 03:02:22 PM by Paul Lilly

Dolby isn't necessarily looking to improve the quality of your voice while chatting in-game, but it would like your vocals to interact with the gaming environment in a more realistic fashion. That's the idea behind Dolby's Axon technology, a tool the company introduced today at the Austin Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas.

The basic idea is that this new tool will make it possible to enable surround panning and distance attenuation, so that your character will sound different if, say, he's behind a wall or closed door as opposed to both you and your teammate standing next to each other in the same room. Think of Creative's EAX technology, only this time it's applied to your voice.

Voice fonts come part of the package too, so if you choose a female avatar, you can sound the part no matter what body organs you may or may not have in real life. And according to Dolby, its Axon software has been designed to consume very little bandwidth, capable of supporting thousands of users per server and able to scale across multiple servers.

No customers have yet been announced, and it's consumer interest that might ultimately decide how many developers jump on board. With the increasingly popularity of Skype and stalwarts such as Teamspeak, is the prospect of customized and realistic in-game chat enough to convince gamers to turn off their third-party voice-chat programs?

Hit the jump and let us know what you think.

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Posted 07/15/08 at 08:17:24 PM by Paul Lilly

You knew it would happen sooner or later, the only question being which company would be the first to offer a 2GB graphics card? PowerColor answers that question today by annoucing the world's first videocard carrying a 2GB frame buffer. Or more accurately, the world's first desktop graphics card packing 2GB of memory, as workstation cards have already reached that milestone.

The fat frame buffer will first appear on PowerColor's PCS HD4850 built on ATI's RV770 core and use GDDR3 memory instead of the newer (and more expensive) GDDR5. PowerColor advertises a "massive memory bandwidth up to 57.6GB/sec" capable of "providing faster graphical performance," though it remains to be seen what impact the additional memory will have on gaming performance. Along with the added memory, PowerColor also says the new card will utilize its Professional Cooling System (PCS), which the company claims will result in up to a 10C drop in temps.

PowerColor certainly seems exciting over its announcements. Question is, are you?

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Posted 07/10/08 at 03:05:52 PM by Paul Lilly

A new trailer for 20th Century Fox's upcoming Max Payne movie has been leaked on the web, but if you want to see it, you'll have to be quick. The trailer's already been pulled from YouTube, but at least two other sites are still hosting the teaser.

The PG-13 flick opens October 17 and stars Mark Wahlberg as the main character (can anyone else picture Mickey Rourke playing the part 10 years and 50 pounds ago?), with a supporting cast that includes the likes of Chris O'Donnel, Beau Bridges, Mila Kunis, and Ludacris. Wahlberg looks to be a good fit for the videogame icon gone Hollywood, and here's hoping he can atone for his performance in The Happening.

Catch the trailer here or here while you still can, and post your impression below.

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Posted 04/15/08 at 05:07:04 PM by Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly

Electronics chain has a new suitor, watch out for fake DFI boards, Sennheiser wants your old headphones, and more!

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Posted 04/10/08 at 05:05:28 PM by Paul "One4yu2c" Lilly

Canon's updated entry-level DSLR gets a release date, Amazon takes pity on HD-DVD adopters, USB keys with malware, pills for gamers, and more!

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Posted 03/03/08 at 05:02:07 PM by Paul Lilly

Intel's Atom boasts sub-1W power consumption, SPAM conviction upheld, Return to Dark Castle demo released, and much more!

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