Hasta La Gadget!

Yo, Mad Catz. We both know there aren’t a lot of good flight sims on the Xbox 360, but that’s no excuse for releasing a bargain-budget stick like the Aviator as your first foray into the console space. It doesn’t do Saitek’s reputation justice, and fliers like us won’t stand for it. We want something a little more substantial. Something like your fancy Cyborg X flight stick for PC… What’s that, you say? You’ve done it? Fan-tastic. With nearly all the bells and whistles of the original stick but added buttons, a removable lap rest and completely wireless functionality, the Cyborg F.L.Y. 9 looks like just the stick to strafe our Xbox 360 budget this spring for $100. But hey, that’s not cool — what’s with doubling the original Cyborg X’s $50 price? Press release after the break.

Continue reading Mad Catz courts Xbox 360 dogfighters with pricy F.L.Y. 9 flightstick

Mad Catz courts Xbox 360 dogfighters with pricy F.L.Y. 9 flightstick originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GameStop listings are about as accurate as a 14th century musket — especially when it comes to release dates — but that didn’t keep news site GameSpot from capping the above screenshot. As you can no doubt read, the picture suggests that SanDisk will indeed release a specially-branded 8GB USB flash drive alongside the Xbox 360’s USB storage update — but at twice the normal price for a drive of that capacity. Our red hot rage at this injustice is tempered somewhat knowing there’s no concrete proof the $40 figure is correct, but knowing SanDisk (and, frankly, Microsoft’s own propensity for overpriced storage) we wouldn’t be surprised to see several green thumbdrives pulling a premium at retail next week. Once more for the record: as long as it’s larger than 1GB, smaller than 16GB and you format it using the Xbox 360 menus, any USB flash drive will do.

GameStop listing shows SanDisk’s Xbox 360-branded USB drives at outrageous prices originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time for some more salacious prognostications about the future, courtesy of the wily folks over at vg247. The team there claims to have obtained internal documents from UK video game retailer GAME that lists the release dates for forthcoming Xbox 360 titles. The listing is headlined by new iterations of Crysis, Call of Duty and Metal Gear Solid, but the highlight for us gadget junkies is at the very end: Yoga Natal, scheduled for an October release. Now, even if this doc comes straight from the horse’s mouth, game release dates are notoriously prone to fluctuation, so let’s not read too much into that October date. What’s intriguing is that Microsoft does indeed seem intent on creating specialist games for its Natal experience, and it may be that they’ll all include Natal in their titles to make compatibility abundantly clear. Or this may be just a big bad April 1-related hoax, we’ll live either way.

[Thanks, Matt R.]

Update: We’ve now also discovered a pulled Amazon listing for Yoga Natal, and we’ve stashed a screenshot of its Google Cache version just after the break [Thanks, Ian].

Continue reading Yoga Natal game appears on GAME retailer’s Xbox 360 release schedule (update: Amazon UK too!)

Yoga Natal game appears on GAME retailer’s Xbox 360 release schedule (update: Amazon UK too!) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nintendo Wii users don’t have to feel left out anymore. Netflix has started shipping instant streaming discs to Wii owners who have signed up for it.

The move makes Wii the last console among its peers to get the service.

About a year-and-a-half ago, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 became the first console to offer direct access to Netflix for gamers. Sony’s PlayStation 3 users gained access to Netflix’s instant streaming service late last year.

Finally, in January this year, Netflix said it will offer streaming for Wii users starting Spring. Wii users with a broadband connection and a subscription to Netflix can access Netflix’s library.

The movie rental service sent out e-mail alerts to customers Thursday and has said discs for the Wii could be in the hands of consumers before the weekend.

The Wii can’t play high-definition streaming shows or movies but we are hoping an innovative interface for using Netflix through the Wii’s controller makes up a little for that.

Photo: (ginnerobot/Flickr)

No big surprise here, but Microsoft is bringing its full Project Natal setup to the E3 games show in LA this year, with a “world premiere” event on Sunday, June 13th, followed by a media briefing on Monday the 14th. It’s good to know they’re on track for showing this off, after a no-show at the PlayStation Move-dominated GDC, and we’ll of course be there in force, waving our arms around like we just don’t care. From the looks of our invite, which puts the name “Project Natal” in quotes, we’re not convinced that’s even the final name for the device, but we suppose we’ll find out for sure in June. Microsoft promises this will be our “first look at the future of fun,” and we imagine some near-final hardware and beta game experiences will be on display as well. No word in the invite, but we imagine a Fall launch is still in the cards, with Jonathan Ross’s “October” tweet as the most recent morsel on that front.

Project Natal ‘experience’ to premiere at E3 on June 13th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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