Home was announced a while ago, but it was met with its fair share of delays. Unsurprisingly, today Sony announced they’re delaying Home again til Fall 2008. I’m not worried, this is just icing on Sony’s online service. In-game XMB is coming later this year and that is significantly more important.

In addition, Sony is apparently in talks with movie studios over a PSN movie distribution service. Neat. Hopefully, it’s not just a rental service either.

This morning, a rumor surfaced claiming that Infinity Ward were in talks with Activision concerning the rights to the Call of Duty franchise — IW wanted it back. Turns out later, Activision fired off e-mails and “straightened out” the situation stating that the rumor was just nothing more than a fabrication. 

Who to believe?

Look at it. The March sales numbers for Call of Duty 4. Still going strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if Infinity Ward wanted to hold off on Call of Duty 5 and continue to support Call of Duty 4. It makes sense to build on what everyone else loves. I mean, they did sell 1 million map packs for $10 a pop in 9 days. God damn, you people.

I’d like to see Infinity Ward take back the Call of Duty name.

Square Enix’s Compilation of Final Fantasy VII games were either ill received or too difficult for me to acquire. Thus, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII was my first FFVII spin-off. And having played through it: it is by far the only spin-off that matters. This is a game for its fans and full enjoyment requires that you have played Final Fantasy VII first despite Crisis Core being the prequel. I am a fan of Final Fantasy VII, but don’t misconstrue that as high praise for it. It may be one of the most beloved RPGs of all time by many, but I found its prequel to be more enjoyable. And before you send your hate laced e-mails, allow me to elaborate.

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My relationship with Western Digital has been shaky at best. Their “mainstream” line and I do not get along at all. Their high end Raptors and I, however have been great. It always impresses me when a new Raptor is released.

The latest release is pretty damn radical. They took a 2.5 inch hard drive, stuck it on a 3.5 inch sized heat sink so it could pass as a 3.5 inch desktop drive. It spins at 10K RPMs, delivers 300 GB of storage space and costs a hefty $300. The dollar per gigabyte ratio may not be great, but, it’s probably the fastest SATA desktop hard drive you can buy.

AnandTech has a preview, but Tech Report did an all out review on it.
 

It’s painfully obvious that the folks at Konami dropped the ball. After lengthy registerations,pre-order codes with missing digits and long patching times, Konami decided to hit anxious testers with an additional blow: the MGO beta has been delayed.

I’m not pissed nor annoyed. It actually gives me time to watch the NBA Playoffs and to decide what my character should look like.

On the entertaining side, this delay also yields funny animated GIFs.

Lots of people are upset over this Metal Gear Online registration. Me? I’m a patient fellow. The page times out, spits out plenty of errors and bores me with its long load times, but I keep on trucking. Gameplay starts in three days and fortunately for me, I finally registered after two days of on and off trying. Konami was terribly annoying when it came to username and password creation though.

 Just check this shit out:

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Mortal Kombat vs DC Comics? Subzero vs Batman? Toned down the blood? No Fatalities? What is this?! Did people ask for this?

Trailer below:

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What is this? Spam?! No, just some stuff you may like to sign up for.

1. First up, GTAIV fans should register to the “Rockstar Social Club“. Cool kids are there.
2. Next, the Quake Live beta test which will allow you to test out id Software’s web based Quake 3 re-release.
3. Finally, check out the Mythos website to sign up for the upcoming beta.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to create my Konami and Game ID’s for the Metal Gear Online Premiere Beta.

March NPD numbers were released earlier today and here’s the breakdown, re-tooled for easy viewing.

Hardware Sales

1. Wii - 721 000
2. Nintendo DS - 698 000
3. PlayStation Portable - 297 000
4. Xbox 360 - 262 000
5. PlayStation 3 - 257 000
6. PlayStation 2 - 216 000

Software Sales

1. WII  Super Smash Brothers: Brawl (Mar-08) - 2.7 million
2. 360  Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (Mar-08) - 752 300
3. 360  Army of Two (Mar-08) - 606 100
4. Wii  Play w/ Remote (Feb-07) - 409 800
5. PSP  God of War: Chains of Olympus (Mar-08) - 340 500
6. PSP  Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (Mar-08) - 301 600
7. WII  Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Oct-07) - 264 100
8. 360  Major League Baseball 2K8 (Mar-08) - 237 100
9. 360  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Nov-07) - 237 000
10. PS3  Army of Two (Mar-08) - 224 900

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Another one of these compilation posts? I may just make it a habit. Anyways, Game Informer unofficially (?) released three screens from Gears of War 2. Check them out. One in-game render, one concept drawing, and one burly looking model render.

Impressive so far. I like how the first screenshot isn’t all dark and grimey.

As for the online beta, it’s the Metal Gear Online Premiere Beta which I just installed and currently patching. I cannot go online until April 21st, 2008, but we’ve already begun the preloading phase. So far I’m somewhat impressed and perplexed. This beta will not be going through the PlayStation Network and thus I have to create Konami ID and a Game ID. Hopefully, this malarky will only be for the beta, because I want a seamless experience. This is Metal Gear, but c’mon.

On the interesting and geeky front, the MGO has the ability to use Bit Torrent to acquire its patches. I do believe this is the first console game to use BT technology. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

I found it neat.