Gears of War to do a Half-Life?

Everone knows that the best things come in trilogies: the original Star Wars movies, Half-Life, Halo, C&C. Now Gears of War, which has blossomed into the long prophesied Halo beater, has been confirmed to be part of a trilogy in an interview with Microsoft Vice President of Global Marketing, Jeff Bell.

In the interview with GameDaily, Bell talks about the recent Mad World advertisement for Gears of War:

The goal of this ad is to establish Marcus Fenix as the hero of the Gears of War trilogy. The intention is to create emotional connection with him that is lacking in typical third-person action title marketing, by communicating a sense of desperation, loneliness, overwhelming odds, and the ultimate futility of the situation he faces.

Given the success of Gears thus far, the fact that its to spawn two sequels is no bad thing. In fact, it’s almost as if the Xbox is finally coming of age, attracting new developer talent, innovative games and adapting to serve a broader market.

Not to mention that they have chainsaws on their fricken machine guns. Seriously, it’s the most amusing melee weapon since the Doom trilogy introduced the chainsaw in the first place.

Bell also discusses new advertising for the Xbox 360, the upcoming game Viva Pinata and Microsoft’s strategy to expand the Xbox gamer base.

PSP Update + PS3 Downloads Coming Soon

Sony today released version 3.0 of the PSP firmware for Japan and the US. In the past, PSP firmware updates have proved to be unpopular with gamers, as they prevent homebrew programming and ROMs running on the system. This version may prove slightly more popular with PS3 owners at any rate, since it allows PS1 games purchased from the PS3 Store to be played on the PSP.

The major problem with this, however, is that games can only be downloaded on to a PSP via a PS3, preventing many PSP owners from using it’s functionality at all. The update also allows the PSP to be used in conjunction with some PS3 games, much in the same way the GameCube and GameBoy Advance could be used together, and to stream media from the PS3.

For those without access to a PS3, the update also includes additional features for the PSP’s music player, support for the forthcoming camera attachment and Remote Play, which allows you to record RSS feeds on your PSP.

Wiis Bricked By Update

As you may have already read, Nintendo is shipping it’s Wiis with incomplete firmware which results in them requiring an update when they first connect to the Internet via Wii Connect 24. This is a pretty standard practise, it also happened to the PS3 and it’s expected that the Wii and PS3 will be continually updates much as the Xbox 360 is at present.

Much like at the 360 launch, the Wii is bricking upon downloading the update. It is thought that the very firmware update which is meant to fully enable the Wii Connect service is burning out critical components in the Wii which results in the 110213 and 32002 error codes, as well as several others.

It’s unfortunate that no launch seems to go without problems like this, the Xbox 360 Ring of Death problem has already been mentioned and both Apple and Nintendo have had problems this in 2006 with products cracking and discolouring (the former with it’s MacBook series of laptops, the latter with the DS Lite).

Thankfully Nintendo are offering to either replace the bricked systems within three days or repair them (preserving critical data). Like the controller supply problems which I commented on a few days ago, this is something which will hopefully have been fixed by the time the Wii reaches Japan, Europe and Australasia.

If you have been affected by this, then please contact Nintendo’s Customer Service Department for repair/replacement information.

[Story from IGN]