Xbox 360’s Fallout 3 Not Safe From Pirates

Just last week in our gaming podcast we were talking about how Gears of War 2 wasn’t going to make a PC debut because it has a bit of a problem with piracy. We were afraid this movement was going to cause game developers and publishers to stick with console’s “big can of DRM” over the PC for many future releases.

Turns out, Fallout 3 was stolen before it was announced as finished and has begun to show up on torrents around the Internet. This, of course, has lead folks to believe the leak took place at the manufacturing plant given the obvious circumstances behind the event. Sure, the title could have been leaked at the developers studio, but who would want to cause their products sales to suffer? Perhaps a hacker broke into the studio and stole the raw images?

There are plenty of possibilities, but the fact of the matter is this is the “DRM” console version of the game. It has been stolen and downloaded by thousands of people who are going to actually take the time to make it work on their ‘tweaked’ console. Just when we said “it’s too hard to hack the Xbox 360 and its games,” some pirate comes out and does it!

While the pirates set sea with the glorious booty that is Fallout 3, Bethesda’s staying hush about the incident for now. In odd timing, Ubisoft came out, prior to this event, talking in respect to Tom Clancy EndWar saying:

“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two.” (gamasutra)

Perhaps, the pirates want to bring some attention to the console market in terms of piracy so developers continue to produce PC titles? If nobody is safe, there will be no one safe-haven console to run to when pirates are stealing “potential sales.”

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Retro FlashBack: DragonFire (Atari 2600)Retro FlashBack: DragonFire (Atari 2600)

Now here is another interesting video game for the Atari 2600, the game Dragon Fire consisted of two game screens, one which you ran across a bridge while fireballs were shot at you, you had to duck or jump over the fireball. This screen was a side-scroller style screen (although it doesn’t actually scroll), at the other end of the bridge was a castle door which you’d enter to get to the next screen.

The second screen was more classic “overhead but not really” screen where you ran around this black screen picking up treasures while a dragon at the bottom shot fire at you from below.

As the game increased in level jumping fireballs became more challenging (on the first screen) as you ran because they would come quicker, more often. The second screen would get very difficult very quickly as the dragon would increase in speed and fireball spitting. You could tell how hard the dragon would be as it would change colors from lighter to darker black as you progress stages.

When you finished collecting all the treasure an exit would pop up in the corner and you had to run to it without being burned by the fireballs, that dragon would turn from left to right nearly instantly too! Then, you’d jump into the exit and be back on the bridge again, but this time it was harder. You could die up to 7 times before the game was over (just to show you how hard it is, they gave you a bunch of lives).

The game was tough, frustrating, hard to replay because you were just so nervous and jittery from the last attempt. Graphics were “okay,” nothing to rave at but it was, after all, the 2600.

You can hear all we had to say about DragonFire for the Atari 2600 on Episode 79 of the TD Gaming Podcast!

Nielsen Ratings, PS3 Played Less Than Classic Xbox?Nielsen Ratings, PS3 Played Less Than Classic Xbox?

In a WTF moment, Neilsen Ratings shows more gamers are playing the classic Microsoft Xbox console than the PlayStation 3. While 9.7% of gamers are playing the Xbox 7.3% are playing the PlayStation 3 but Sony isn’t out of the picture by a long shot, having 31.7% of gamers playing the PlayStation 2!

Only 13.4% of gamers are playing the Wii even though it’s the hottest selling console on the market, showing the fury of the casual gamer it seems. It’s trendy to own a Wii but it’s not trendy to play it; it would be interesting to see how much of the 13.4% is Wii Sports.

We’re guessing there are more classic Xbox gamers playing their console compared to the PlayStation 3 because of the console cost. You can find a used Xbox for under $25.00 on eBay but the question remains, who wants a used Xbox? The audience for the PS3 is more hardcore, more elite and more rare compared to the cost conscious gamers in the larger game industry pie.

More than likely, in ten years, we’ll see most gamers playing the PlayStation 3 while Microsoft works to claim demographics on whatever their next console will be. However, we’re not so sure how many Wii gamers will be playing their current generation console in ten years. Probably very few given the two year old console still has a small amount of gaming public.

(Thanks, 1up)

Users Pwn MetaCritic Review SubmissionsUsers Pwn MetaCritic Review Submissions

Although we’ve found Metacritic a userful resource for game reviews, many folks have gone on a user submission rampage to discredit games that haven’t even launched yet. Their first attack was on LittleBigPlanet followed by Resistance 2, now their hitting Gears of War 2.

While Gears of War 2 has a Metacritic score of 94/100 the user’s have reviewed it to be a 3.5 out of 10, with a bright red box around the user review due to its low nature we’re sure. Although users are free to give their own honest representation of the game from their perspective, Gears of War 2, as of the review dates, hasn’t been released yet – these reviews are bogus.

This style of attack was popularized in Spore, when Amazon got nailed with poor reviews of the game because Spore’s “Draconic” DRM made people angry. However, it’s more reasonable for people to voice their opinion on a known issue with a game; Gears of War 2 review spamming is just mean.

We use Metacritic as guidance when we do our gaming podcast to understand what games are rated in the industry, but we don’t use user reviews as our main guide. There are plenty of folks out there that may utilize these reviews in more seriousness because they may feel journalists reviews are tainted by advertisers or “the man” and want the common gamers opinion.

The common gamer cannot possibility be reviewing Gears of War 2 before the title has arrived. This is bogus. Metacritic has this to say:

“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.” (1up)

So, to those looking for holiday gaming gifts, keep this in mind while you start hunting down games you’ll want to buy.