Our friends at MSN released a new blog service called MSN Space to accompany the new version of MSN Messenger (which is on public beta stage). The service will support comments, trackbacks, stats and direct posting from camera phones.

The way things are moving, in ten years Microsoft will control the world, Bill Gates will be the president of the United States and there will definitely be a galaxy named after the Redmond company (like Chuck Palahniuk suggests on Fight Club).

EA’s CFO Warren Jenson made a presentation at the Credit Suisse First Boston Annual Technology Conference of what the next-generation console games will look like. And I gotta say… I’m impressed.

He also talked about the future of online gaming for consoles and about how EA plans on selling its games… online!

Olympus, the world’s top endoscope maker in the world is designing a disposable camera pill to look inside the human body. The device would replace current endoscope systems and will also have the capacity to extract fluids from body parts (storing them in a negatively-pressured space) and to deliver drugs in specific areas. With only 2.6 centimeters long and 1.1 centimeters in diameter, the camera pill will be released in about two years, says Olympus.

Another company, RF Systems, plans on start commercializing its own camera pill on early 2005, in China. That’s gotta be weird!

Halo 2 is the fastest selling product in history of the American entertainment industry. After 2.38 million copies sold, 125 million dollars were made just in the first 24 hours of the release! The game leaked a couple of weeks before (not only the English edition, but also the French one), but that didn’t seem to spoil the sales!

That makes Halo 2 into easily the fastest-selling media product ever in the United States, another major victory for the videogames industry which builds on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ recent trouncing of UK videogame and box office records alike.

Thousands of fans crowded up at midnight in front of many stores in the UK waiting for the spending the night playing their Xboxes.

It is finally here! I know you were all waiting. You won’t be disappointed for it is the best browser ever! Go Firefox!

The PS2 sequel to the top selling game Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas, sold in its release weekend 677,000 units in the United Kingdom! That is by far the record for a game release in the queen’s island (the old record was from GTA: Vice City, with 250,000).

In gross revenue terms, the game would have generated around UKP 24 million in the UK alone over the weekend, and projected across the world that figure could be as much as UKP 106 million, or put in international currency terms, $195.5 million or 153.97 Euro. Put in context, if a movie were to gross that much at the box office, it would instantly be classed among the all-time greats – that’s how big Rockstar’s game has become.

Half Life 2 is less than two weeks away from hitting the streets and many of you are wondering how the game that is supposed to be the best game of all time is going to run on your current system (that is, of course, if your system is not an Athlon 64 / Radeon x800XT). The Inquirer made an article putting old systems to the test with the Source Engine and the results were very surprising (”stress test results” are the numbers that matter):

It is obvious that even running at a bearable frame rate, the game looks really bad on the GeForce 4 MX because of the DirectX 7 support, but if you already have an Athlon XP 1800+, all you will have to do to play HL2 is get a Radeon 9600 or a GeForce 6600.

Electronic Arts released yesterday the playable demo for Need For Speed: Underground 2. For 346MB you can drive a Nissan 350Z through Free Roam, Quick Race and Online Mode. Since my computer is *really* slow for all the new games, I still didn’t got a chance to play it (the same way I still didn’t play CS:Source), but Underground 1 was so amazing that I think it’s impossible for EA to ruin this one.

Short Media threw 108 performance benchmarks at Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 2. The results:

The test PC equipped with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 was an average of 0.5% faster than the same hardware with Service Pack 2 installed. The percentage difference between faster and slower is insignificantly small. Less than 2 or 3 percent in some benchmarks could be dismissed by most but when gamers are looking to squeeze every extra frame out of their machines…it may count.

No kidding! Gamespot confirmed that Half Life 2 is already on gold stage!

Ever since the release candidate for Half-Life 2 was submitted to VU Games in mid-September, a piñata has hung in the lobby of Valve’s headquarters. The plan: to bust the sucker open when the game achieved gold status. Earlier today, GameSpot learned from a locally based source that “the piñata has been broken” and the game has gone gold. Further evidence of the game’s completion was a press release issued this afternoon touting the first review of “the entire game.” Though nothing official has been announced yet, it appears the fat lady is at last clearing her throat.

For those of you who don’t know, gold is the stage where the CD/DVD production takes place. After Vivendi Universal Games confirms this information, it’s likely that they will state a concrete release date.

Reggie Fils-Aime, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Nintendo America, confirmed that Nintendo’s next generation console codenamed “Revolution” will follow the Sony’s timetable for PS3 (which is expected to hit stores in Q2 2006). Reggie also attacked Microsoft’s rush on releasing the Xbox 2.

Not that I want to ignore the Xbox, but certainly we believe that a rush to a new system is a mistake.

It’s the second time this year that a high executive from Nintendo attacked Microsoft’s new generation console. Former Nintendo Europe boss, David Gosen, said last June at the ELSPA Game Summit in London that in every cycle some manufacturer not profiting from the current cycle is eager to kick-start the next one.

Xbox 2 is probably a big mistake for Microsoft, specially because it is almost impossible for it to be backward compatible with the current Xbox version, but that doesn’t take away the charm of its hardware: multi-processor and ATI’s next generation graphic chip (codenamed R500). And I’m still stuck on an 800MHz CPU and a GeForce 4 MX. How sad…

Masa Chatani, Sony chief of technology officer, confirmed that the PlayStation Portable will be released this year in Japan and Q1 2005 on the rest of the world. He also revealed some tech details, but said nothing about the battery life, which has become the greatest doubt about the PSP. This is what Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime had to say about this particular subject:

Those little women at the Tokyo Game Show with those portable consoles strapped to them… What you didn’t see is that those women were having to go recharge the batteries every two hours! (…) We have gone on the record to state that the Nintendo DS will have battery life comparable to the Game Boy Advance SP. Nowhere will you find any mention of the other machines power life. And you have to wonder why…

I think that it’s passed the time for Sony to say something concrete about the battery life… at least admit that it doesn’t last more than two hours. We want the truth!

Ever wanted to be the master of a giant chicken? One that does whatever you tell it to do? Now you can! Sort of. Instead of a chicken it’s actually a man dressed as a chicken and he doesn’t do exactly everything you tell him, but the important thing is that it looks really funny! Try the words “dance”, “moonwalk” and “hump” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Brought to us by Burger King (don’t ask me why).

After all the fight and threats involving Valve and Vivendi Universal Games, Half Life 2 finally has a release date! At least that’s what Eurogamer is saying:

The long, drawn-out Half-Life 2 release date saga appears to be drawing to a close at long last, with Vivendi-Universal Games’ expected to formally announce a November 26th release date for Europe, with US gamers getting the game three days earlier on November 23rd.

PC Gamer UK already published the first review of Half Life 2 on the October edition of the magazine. They gave a score of 96%, which is only as high as Half Life1!

In Addition to the first review, there are 45 new screenshots of the game out on the net! I just saw them and I’m blown away! Can’t wait to play this thing!

HL Fallout reports the versions of Half Life that will be available on retail and on Steam.

Retail Boxes

• Standard Edition: includes HL2 and CS:Source. Ships on six CDs, in one of three box-art packages (Gordon, Alyx or the G-Man).
• Collector’s Edition: includes Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 1: Source, a Half-Life 2 T-shirt and a Prima book sampler. Ships on a single DVD.

Steam packages

• Bronze: HL2 and CS:Source.
• Silver: HL2, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 1: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Valve’s back catalog currently available on Steam.
• Gold: HL2, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 1: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Valve’s back catalog currently available on Steam, Complete Strategy Guide from Prima Games, 3 different Half-Life 2 posters, Half-Life 2 hat, Half-Life 2 postcard, Half-Life 2 stickers, Half-Life 2 Soundtrack CD, Chance to win a trip to Valve! (1 trip offered for every 5000 Gold packages purchased).

The Steam packages purchases begins next week but all the games, except CS:Source, won’t be available until the retail release. Notice that CS:Source will be released before HL2 and will be playable sometime next week. It’s being almost two years since I dropped my Counter Strike addiction, but I think that CS:Source is here to bring me back to sleepless nights drinking coffee and complaining about stupid campers/team killers :) .

The strange thing to notice is how Valve doesn’t seem to care about Vivendi’s threats of not releasing Half Life 2 for another 6 months. I’m really curious to see how things turn out.

Well, to be honest I *hate* The Sims series. It’s extremely boring and I can’t play it for more than 15 minutes. But that is just me and I gotta admit that it’s amazing the way this games sells! “The Sims 2″ sold 1 million copies in 10 days, being the best release ever for an Electronic Arts game. And it seems that they wanna conquer the world now:

EA plans to follow up The Sims 2, which is a PC-only product, with a new evolution of the Sims franchise for consoles – The Urbz: Sims in the City. The title, which features exclusive music from popular hip-hop group The Black Eyed Peas (who also appear in the game) will launch on PS2, Xbox, Cube, GBA and Nintendo DS this November.

It’s good to remember that The Sims is the best selling game of PC history. I wonder what’s the fuzz all about…