News Pop! 04/11/07
By Eli Green
April 11, 2007 - 23:59
And we're back! Here's hoping all of you had wonderful Passovers or Easters, whichever you celebrate (or don't if you don't). Things have been quite busy with us away, Sony in particular. The company has added more downloads to the Playstation Store, including an update to Gran Turismo HD Concept, the GTA IV: Things Will Be Different teaser, a free Armored Core 4 demo and more movie trailers. If you weren't already aware, Sony also dropped the price of the PSP Core model from $229.99 CAD to $199.99 CAD and added Daxter and Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror on the Greatest Hits list, effectively dropping their price to $24.99 CAD. Microsoft announced their Xbox 360 Elite. The system will be priced at $479 USD and approx. $550 CAD and will include a 120GB Hard Drive, an HDMI port and cable, and will also be black. There will be black accessories to complement the console, so don't worry about that. As far as dates go, the current release date for the system in the U.S. is Sunday, April 29th. That may also be the case for Canada, though much of what we have seen so far suggests a May 4th release instead. One final thing about the Elite, just to clear up any confusion people might have about it, it does not come with an HD-DVD player included!
Now for a quick store stock check before we get into the rest of the day's news. Playstation 3s are in abundance. You can pick one up pretty much anywhere you want, if you want. Xbox 360 are no problem either, as well as PSPs. DS Lites have finally reappeared in stores after a sudden disappearance a couple of weeks ago. Nintendo retail reps we spoke to didn't have much to say about it, except that April is going to be a much better month for seeing the systems on the shelves. That also applies to Wiis, in the case of most retail chains at least. It's probably safe to assume that Toys'R'Us will still be running its bi-weekly flyers with limited quantities of Wiis in it for some time to come. This is one of those weeks, by the way. Now for the rest of the day's news.
EA's Glenn Entis to speak at SIGGRAPH
Noise cancelling microphone headset, that's Genius
Boom Boom Rocket launches
EA's
first Xbox Live Arcade game, Boom Boom Rocket, launched today. The
new rhythmic fireworks game is now available in Canada, the U.S. and
Europe for 800 Microsoft Points and is rated E for Everyone. Players
play by triggering rockets to the beat of the music while travelling
through a 3-D cityscape. The fireworks have been choreographed to ten
original tracks created by Ian Livingstone. The game has single and
in-house mutliplayer modes, as well as a few different difficulty
levels. More interesting though, are the Freestyle Mode and the
game's built in Visualizer, which allows people to watch a fireworks
display to their own music. Though the game is currently only
available in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, EA is already working on
versions for future release in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
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