Hasta La Gadget!

Man, I have never been so jealous of another human being in my life. I wish I could play in this basement arcade, which is also a sort of small classic video game museum. This kickass arcade was created by redditor mertzlufft and his Dad over 6 years.

It took that long to get it all done with a lot of buying, selling and trading. Some of the games only cost as little as $200, but only because they needed some TLC.

I would never get anything done if this was in my house. My fingers would be nothing but calluses and my brain would be fried on these games from a hundred all-nighters. Check out more images of this epic home arcade over on Imgur.

Hey guys, invite me over. And how is your electric bill doing?

[via Geekologie]

The Xbox One was unveiled earlier this week to much fanfare, but the whole used game activation scheme is a bit confusing at this point. It appears that in order to play second-hand games, an activation fee will be levied. Those wanting to play a game on another Xbox account other than the original will have to pay a fee, but it’s been said that retailers who will sell used Xbox One games will pay these fees.

We discussed how retail stores might possibly treat used games earlier today, but new information that has come in says that retailers will also pay the fees associated with used games as well. According to Eurogamer, sources say that gamers won’t have to pay these fees, and the price you pay for a used game will be the price it takes to be able to play the game.

However, Microsoft has not decided what the activation fee will be yet. It’s been said that it could be £35, but that seems extremely high and we don’t think Microsoft would charge half of the game’s original price in order for someone else to play it. Then again, this is merely just rumor, so take it with a grain of salt.

Sources also say that a percentage of the activation fee will go to the publisher, while the rest goes to Microsoft, which seems rather generous of them. It’s said that brick-and-mortar stores who buy used games will be required to register these game as being “traded in” by using a proprietary database system provided by Microsoft. Once the game is registered at the store, it’ll be wiped from the original user’s account.

Overall, the takeaway here is that gamers will luckily not have to pay the activation fee in order to play a used game, but that doesn’t mean used Xbox One games will be cheap. While you can grab some pretty cheap used games now for current-generation consoles, we’re not sure if the Xbox One will be the same experience. We may never see cheap used Xbox games again, sadly.

SOURCE: Eurogamer

Xbox One used games fee to be paid by retailers is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the Xbox One releasing later this year, many may think that Microsoft will leave the Xbox 360 by the wayside, but it seems that’s on the contrary, as the company aims to sell 25 million units over the next five years, even with the console’s successor on the market. Microsoft plans to move a whopping 400 million units during its lifetime.

Microsoft’s senior vice president of Interactive Entertainment Business, Yusuf Mehdi, says that the company plans to continue to support the Xbox 360 into the foreseeable future, and the company even has a big announcement planned at E3 for the Xbox 360 that will “keep the console vibrant for years,” according to Microsoft.

Overall, Microsoft wants to sell over 100 million Xbox 360 consoles before they inevitably end up calling it quits on the eight-year-old machine. But the company has even more ambitious goals for the Xbox One. Mehdi says that “most industry experts think the next generation will get upwards of about 400 million units…over the next decade.”

Of course, these estimates come from analysts, but Mehdi and the rest of Microsoft believe that’s a realistic number to hit for their next-generation console. And because Microsoft will be marketing the Xbox One as an entertainment device and not just a gaming console, they think they can reach more people than with the Xbox 360. Thus resulting in more units sold.

In April, Microsoft reported that they sold 130,000 Xbox 360 consoles during that month, which is down by more than half from previous months, but if we take that number as the average and base it on future Xbox 360 sales, that comes out to only 7.8 million consoles sold over five years. Even if we double that to almost 16 million, that’s nowhere near the 25 million that Microsoft wants to achieve in five short years, and that’s even with the Xbox One not even out yet. So if Microsoft wants to reach 100 million Xbox 360 consoles sold, it’s going to have to work a miracle, to put it kindly.

SOURCE: Xbox Magazine

Xbox One sets sights on 400m sold, Xbox 360 aims for 100m is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

GRID 2 comes out next week, and you can pre-order it now. The game comes in different editions, though, including a special edition that costs a whopping £125,000 ($189,000). The Mono Edition, as its called, comes with the game, a PlayStation 3 console, a BAC Mono race car (valued at £101,940 ($154,000), and a custom race suit, helmet, boots, and gloves.

The catch is that only one person will be able to buy GRID 2: Mono Edition, because BAC probably doesn’t want to make multiple custom Mono cars. The car and the race gear come with a GRID 2 theme to go along nicely with the game, and the one lucky person to snag this deal will also get to spend a day at the BAC factory in the UK.

The BAC Mono is a road-legal, performance car that you can also race virtually in the game. The Mono’s body is made of carbon fiber and sports a 2.3-liter, 280 bhp four-cylinder engine will propel that allows the car to go from 0-60 mph in just 2.8 seconds, and has a top speed of 170 mph — more than enough to get you to the grocery store and back.

It’s also worthy to note that this GRID 2 special edition package has set a new Guinness World Record for the “Most Expensive Special Edition Video Game Commercially Available.” I guess we say congrats? Either way, it’s available now for pre-order online, and we’re guessing that the first person to hit the buy button will be the lucky chap to own a MAC Mono and a PS3 (and the game too, we suppose).

GRID 2 will be available starting May 28 on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. We’ve already seen a bit of gameplay footage and have checked out some of the features that will be available in the sequel, including improved multiplayer with leaderboards, challenges, and car upgrades, as well as LiveRoutes, which changes the course randomly to keep you on your toes.

VIA: Kotaku

GRID 2 Special Edition comes with PS3 and a real car is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The new PlayStation 4 and Xbox One come with some pretty impressive hardware on the inside. So good, in fact, that Electronic Arts CTO Rajat Teneja believes that the performance and hardware in the Xbox One and PS4 “are a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market,” so not just gaming PCs in general, but the best gaming PC ever.

After that, he didn’t mention PCs again, only saying that “benchmarks on just the video and audio performance are 8-10 times superior to the current gen,” saying that “the compute capabilities of these platforms and the data transfer speeds we can now bank on, essentially removes any notion of rationing of systems resources for our game engines.”

The Xbox One comes with an 8-core processor along with 8GB of RAM. We’re not told about specifics, but a good guess would that both the PS4 and the Xbox One are running AMD’s Jaguar chip. Compared to gaming PCs, most gamers have a quad-core processor in their gaming rigs, with a few 8-core chips floating around.

However, Microsoft nor Sony have revealed what graphics their respective consoles are running, but if they’ve seen the just-announced NVIDIA GTX 780 Titan graphics chip, I’m pretty sure they’d run away whimpering. Imagine two of those cards in SLI — the gaming prowess would be practically infinite.

However, it’s possible that Teneja doesn’t actually mean these new consoles are faster, but rather just have newer technology in them, meaning that the processor inside the Xbox One and PS4 are so new, that it isn’t available for PCs yet. Then again, from the way that Teneja worded his blog post, it seems to mean that PCs don’t stand a chance against the next-gen consoles, which is quite saddening to hear.

VIA: Polygon

EA CTO: Xbox One and PS4 “are a generation ahead of” PCs is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.