 The baby? Guitar Hero III. The Shark? Rock Band. |
In keeping with their promise to have new downloadable content once a week following the launch of Rock Band, Harmonix has revealed to GamePro magazine that Nirvana's 1991 album, Nevermind, will be one of the first fully playable albums made available following the previously announced Who's Next by The Who. It has also been implied that one or more unspecified Metallica albums will eventually be available as well.
All three bands are featured in the game's main tracklist so one need only look at the already announced tracks to get an idea of what other bands we may see get the full album treatment: Stone Temple Pilots, Blue Öyster Cult, Weezer, Foo Fighters, The Ramones. I may never leave the house again.
The most important piece of info is still at large, however:
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I already managed to get Microsoft's HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 over an offer I couldn't refuse, and have been enjoying Batman Begins, King Kong, and especially Planet Earth all in their high definition glory with a sharpness and clarity that makes DVD seem like some old VHS copy taped off of UHF.
Not everyone has been convinced it's worth the additional expense, however, which is why Toshiba has temped new buyers by lowering the prices of their standalone players. Now Microsoft has fallen in line, reducing the price of the add-on to $179. If that wasn't enough, buy the add-on within the next month, and you'll get your (somewhat limited) pick of five free HD-DVD movies, which just happens to include the greatest movie of all time, Casablanca, in an absolutely stunning transfer that's worth the price of the drive alone.
To drive the spear of temptation right through your heart, Microsoft are also working hard to promote the upcoming HD-DVD releases of the 300 and Heroes Season 1 with exclusive content on the Xbox Live Marketplace. 300 in HD will be showing up in their on demand service come August 14th, while soon XBL subscribers will be able to download the pilot episode of Heroes for free.
"With the price reduction to $179, the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player continues to be the most affordable way to enjoy high definition," said Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of Global Marketing, Interactive Entertainment Business, Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. "From the beginning, we set out to offer Xbox 360 owners an unrivaled high-definition experience, with a choice of optical discs on the HD DVD format and digital downloads through Xbox LIVE Marketplace - both of which have a selection of the best content Hollywood has to offer. Today's announcements around '300' and 'Heroes: Season 1' are great examples of how we believe HD content can be offered to consumers."
This is the perfect time to jump in on this offer, since in only a few days the second and third greatest movies of all time, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, will be hitting store shelves, with all the high definition gore and gunplay exclusive to HD-DVD.
Since the launch of the Xbox 360, Xbox Live users have gotten used to the free demos that are regularly made available, but every once in a while the Official Xbox Magazine gets exclusive rights to distribute a demo on its pack in demo disc. Past exclusives have included F.E.A.R. and TimeShift.
360 owners who wanted to play these demos would need to then shell out $10 for a newsstand copy of the magazine; not exactly an exciting proposition. The infrequency of these exclusive demos hardly justified maintaining a subscription to the magazine either.
A newly announced service, OXM Digital, could benefit those who want to play the exclusive demos but don't want to shell out $10 for a magazine that is going to end up in the garbage faster than an empty bag of Doritos.
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After six monthly episodes of Sam and Max, many of us were starting to get used to the idea of Freelance Police being regular companions, and not the nostalgic memories we had longed to recapture. While Telltale had been dropping hints that it planned to continue the series — the fact that they called it "Season One" was probably the first clue — there was little said about when and the how.
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Shin Megami Tensai: Persona 3 was well on track to come out today (July 25th) right up until Monday (the 23rd), when it was discovered that the included art book ran into some printing issues. Finding out two days before shipping that a major part of the package isn't ready to go can't be a pleasant experience, and the end result is that, though the game is complete, the ship date is now August 14. The choice was either abandon all extras to ship on time or wait a couple of weeks, and I'm glad to see that Atlus didn't hesitate to make the right choice. It's been eight years since Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, after all, and three weeks is barely a blip on the radar in comparison. Just try not to think about the summer gaming withdrawal and it'll all be ok.
