by Leila Brillson on February 24, 2011 at 02:15 PM
Do you love the wastelands of 'Fallout'? Regularly waste hours killing necromancers in 'Elder Scrolls'? Can't wait to snipe baddies in 'Rage'? Your author, personally, says an emphatic "yes" to all, but that doesn't mean she's willing to birth a baby in Bethesda's honor. In support of the newest 'Elder Scrolls', dubbed 'Skyrim', anyone who has a child on its release date of 11/11/11 and names it ...
by Lee Bains on February 15, 2011 at 05:45 PM
Perhaps you're the type of parent that hates to see a child become ADD-addled and glassy-eyed in front of the TV. Well, thanks to 'Sesame Street' and Microsoft's motion-control Kinect gaming system, you can soon have your little tyke unresponsive and rambunctious. According to the Xbox PR folk, the multiple 'Sesame Street'-themed games encourage "dancing, jumping, flying and more." We would ...
by Terrence O'Brien on February 11, 2011 at 03:50 PM
Ok. Let's try this again: Sending threatening messages to anyone, for any reason, even if it's a joke, even if it's using another person's account or e-mail address is a really, really, really, really, really bad idea. Really. Take, for instance, the recent tale of one (unnamed) Maryland teenager who is now headed to court to face charges of sending threatening messages to about 100 people via a ...
by Warren Riddle on February 9, 2011 at 03:30 PM
Single mother Dawn Matthews received an extremely unwelcome (although increasingly common) letter recently. After she allowed her 11-year-old son, Brendan Jordan, to create an Xbox Live account -- with her credit card information -- he subsequently racked up £1,082.52 (almost $2,000) in charges. The compassionate mother apparently hasn't punished her son, but she did tell the Daily Mail that ...
by Terrence O'Brien on February 2, 2011 at 11:00 AM
We've seen the Kinect do some pretty amazing tricks. It's easy to forget, though, that, despite all the hacking and bolting the gaming peripheral to robots, the Kinect is a video camera at heart. Artists Dom Jones and Dan Nixon recorded and processed the footage for a video from a band called Echo Lake using the Kinect. The results are a sublime blend of musical specters performing the song, ...
by Leila Brillson on January 27, 2011 at 12:45 PM
Update: According to the Twitter feed of XBLA's Director of Policy and Enforcement Stephen Toulouse, the account was "illegitimately modified" and Julius' mother has since been contacted.
The Rainman of 'Halo,' 11-year-old Julius Jackson is apparently a video game whiz. The boy, whose mother says he usually masters games in three to four days, is autistic, and reaches to his Xbox both to ...
by Lee Bains on January 25, 2011 at 05:01 PM
Oh, the hazards of working in the family business. According to reports, Allen Begley got a call from his employer (and father-in-law) Joshua Seal this weekend. After arriving at Seal's Flooring in Kingsport, Tennessee, Begley was allegedly locked in a room, assaulted, and accused of stealing jewelry valued at $245 from a job site. Seal reportedly released Begley -- but only after taking an Xbox ...
by Caleb Johnson on January 21, 2011 at 09:35 AM
While surgical robots are much more precise than clunky human hands, the surgeons who use these devices aren't able to guide the 'bots with their natural sense of touch, and this can make it easier to bump into a delicate organ or artery. In response to this problem, some graduate engineering students at the University of Washington recently developed an Xbox 360 Kinect hack, which uses the ...
by Caleb Johnson on January 17, 2011 at 02:00 PM
Over the weekend, Swedish police responded to a report of domestic abuse and discovered the only violence happening was of the pixelated variety. According to Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, cops stormed Robert Johansson's home after a nosy neighbor claimed to see five people inside beating up a woman. Turns out, Johansson and his friends were just playing a round of boxing on the Xbox 360's 'Kinect ...
by Lee Bains on January 14, 2011 at 07:30 AM
We Americans are labeled with several stereotypes. Such confused foreigners interchangeably think that we are are all extravagantly wealthy, Tea Party supporters, or incredibly dumb. But rarely does a citizen of the world believe as fully in all of those things as does David Morrill, who hopes to sell a Sarah Palin-autographed Xbox 360 for $1.1 million on eBay. Sure, he hasn't found a buyer in ...
by Amar Toor on January 3, 2011 at 06:06 PM
Part of any prison guard's job involves breaking up fights or riots that invariably erupt when you put a bunch of convicts in close physical contact with each other. Defusing these spats can be a messy, and sometimes dangerous task, but it may be getting slightly easier, thanks to new computer vision systems that can automatically detect brewing violence from above.
As the New York Times ...
by Warren Riddle on December 2, 2010 at 03:40 PM
The trial of alleged Xbox-modder Matthew Crippen began this week, and a stern lecture from the bench has already forced a courtroom apology -- from the prosecution. The unprecedented trial hinges on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but discrepancies in the Act -- combined with problematic behavior from the prosecution -- reportedly left U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez with ...
by Warren Riddle on November 30, 2010 at 01:30 PM
The Xbox 360's Kinect motion-control system provoked comical moments of ungainly, destructive gaming immediately upon its release. Thankfully (for those with a predilection for schadenfreude), that oafish hilarity has continued at an almost exponential rate. Well, Microsoft just revealed a significant reason for the abundance of Kinect casualties, and it relates to the Kinect's market success.
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by Warren Riddle on November 15, 2010 at 06:40 PM
Xbox Kinect users have already provided the world with numerous demonstrations of ungainly goofiness. According to Engadget, Kinect doesn't just offer unbridled moments of uncoordinated motion-control hilarity, though. Microsoft exec Dennis Durkin believes the system possesses powerful targeted advertising capabilities. While gamers naively flail and lunge, the Kinect system could conceivably ...
by Terrence O'Brien on September 28, 2010 at 03:15 PM
Ben Heck is an all star in the field of DIY and modding. The man who has turned almost every game console under the sun into a portable system (be it handheld or laptop) now has his own show dedicated to making his fans' DIY dreams into reality. Mr. Heckendorn took time out of his hectic schedule of soldering and ripping things apart to chat with us at Maker Faire this weekend. Read on after the ...
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