Master Gamer News

January 5, 2001
   For the first time since Oddworld Inhabitants defected from PlayStation 2
development to Xbox development, a Sony employee has made a public statement
about Oddworld.  Sony designer Dave Jaffe says, "You know what?  You should 
do some research on the guys at Oddworld.  You should find out what their 
background is.  I'm not going to say anything else."
   Despite the fact that he said that he wasn't going to say anything else, 
Jaffe did.  He continues, "They're a bunch of freaking Hollywood artists!  
They're artists over there!  There's like two programmers that know anything
about anything!  I'm so tired of seeing PlayStation 2 bashing from a group 
of people that have very little programming expertise."

   According to worldnetdaily.com, large amounts of PlayStation 2 systems 
have been purchased in the US and exported to Iraq in recent months.  Citing
military intelligence sources, WorldNet claims that as many as 4,000 PS2 
systems have been exported to Iraq.  Apparently, the Iraqi government is 
interested in the possibility of bundling many PS2s together in order to 
make a collection of super-computers.  The power of the combined units would
aid Iraq's efforts in "military design and modeling applications."
   What exactly does this mean, you ask?  According to an anonymous military 
intelligence source, "An integrated bundle of 12-15 PlayStation 2s could 
provide enough computer power to control an unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV, 
essentially an aircraft without a pilot."  A different military source 
claims that Iraq has been researching UAVs for years as a potential way to 
execute chemical weapon attacks.  Military sources went on to tell WorldNet,
"Bundled PlayStation 2s could also be used to calculate ballistic data for 
long-range missiles, or in the design of nuclear weapons."
   The United Nations has a ban on the shipment of almost all computer 
hardware into Iraq, but Iraq has found a loophole in this ban.  By 
classifying all PlayStation 2 systems as "toys" rather than "computers," 
Iraq has made it completely legal to import PS2 systems into Iraq-- at least
temporarily.  Even if the UN did ban all PS2 shipments into Iraq, it would 
be very easy for the units to be smuggled into the country because each PS2 
system only weighs about four pounds.  This matter is currently being 
investigated by the FBI and the US Customs Service.

   The New York Times reports that Nintendo is in negotiations to buy Sega 
for approximately $2 billion.  Both Nintendo and Sega have denied this 
claim, and Sega went as far as to send a letter to The New York Times and 
publish the letter on its Japanese web site.  The letter says, "Such 
repeated and arbitrary publication of groundless statements is pure 
harassment and unacceptable obstruction of our business, which we cannot 
overlook."
   According to Sega, the news story "substantially influenced Sega's stock 
price, caused unnecessary confusion, and severely damaged Sega's corporate 
and brand image during a very precarious time in the video game industry."  
Sega's letter to The New York Times goes on to say, "Sega Corporation is 
requesting that The New York Times immediately run a notification and 
apology for the fallacious feature in the same scale and manner as the 
initial article."  Needless to say, no such apology was ever made.

   Hackers have turned the world of Diablo 2 into a mess, but Blizzard 
appears to be one step ahead of the offending individuals.  Starting on 
December 19 and growing increasingly common for a period of about two weeks,
Diablo 2 players began noticing that their items and experience points were 
mysteriously disappearing, as well as entire characters.  Blizzard's 
solution to this problem is to revive all characters who died between 
December 19 and December 31.  These characters will be reverted back to the 
way they were on December 19.
   The cause of this problem is that hackers discovered a glitch in the 
game, a glitch that has now been fixed.  This glitch allowed them to take 
control of characters without knowing the passwords of the characters' 
rightful owners.  Once a hacker got control of a character, they would 
intentionally kill it.  
   According to a report on wired.com, the specific glitch was that "if you 
tried to log in 50 or 60 times with the name of a character that already 
existed, about one percent of the time the server suddenly gave you access 
to that character."  Once word of this glitch spread, more and more people 
began partaking in the activity of killing other people's characters.

   According to a report by British newspaper The Guardian, Sega is 
currently developing several games for Nintendo's Game Boy, including a 
version of Sonic the Hedgehog.  A Sega of America spokesperson says that 
while the Game Boy is not one of the Dreamcast's competitors, she hasn't 
heard "anything about to indicate that Sega will be developing for the Game 
Boy."  
   This could be just another false Sega rumor.  The Guardian's original 
report said, "An announcement will be made over the next week."  It has been
well over a week since the story was originally published, and there still
hasn't been an announcement from Sega or Nintendo on the matter.

   Chris Roberts has revealed more details on why he left Digital Anvil, the
company he founded in 1997.  Roberts says, "On the business side, I'm 
frustrated by how it takes three to four games to create and ship a game.  
I want to explore new models, such as episodic gaming, that can deliver 
games faster."  Regarding his future, Roberts says, "I'm taking some time 
off, then looking at opportunities in film and new gaming models."
   Now that Digital Anvil is owned by Microsoft, major changes are taking 
place within the company.  Microsoft's Ed Fries says, "In the past, Digital 
Anvil was over-ambitious with the number of projects it took on, and we'll 
scale that back so that the games it does produce will be epic in scope."

   The downfall of Shoichiro Irimajiri continues, as he is now out of the 
video game industry altogether.  As Sega of Japan's president during the 
Dreamcast's launch period, Irimajiri was blamed for the system's poor 
Japanese sales by Sega's principal owner Isao Okawa.  Rather than firing 
Irimajiri outright, Okawa gradually phased him out of the company.
   First, Irimajiri was publicly demoted from Sega of Japan's president to 
its "vice chairman."  Then he took on the role of "company advisor."  Now, 
Irimajiri has left Sega and the video game industry entirely.  Irimajiri 
will now be one of the directors of Delphi Automotive Systems in Japan.

   The official unveiling of the Xbox console is scheduled to take place the
day after this issue of Master Gamer News is published.  On Saturday, 
January 6 at approximately 12:15 PM Eastern Time, the design of Xbox will be
unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show.  The event will also be broadcast
live on xbox.com.
   In a related story, images of the Xbox and its controller leaked to the 
Internet several days ago.  Microsoft has been trying to get the images 
removed from as many sites as possible throughout the week, with the threat 
of legal action being sufficient motivation to remove the images.

   Square has officially confirmed that the first movie based on Final 
Fantasy won't be the last.  Square Honolulu's chief operating officer Jun 
Aida recently told Game Informer, "We are working on the concept for a 
second feature.  We don't have a title yet, but the director just finished 
a treatment and has shared it with our partners at Columbia Pictures.  The 
hope is to start making the second film right after we wrap production on 
the first."  The first FF movie, called Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, 
is due out in July.
  
   Namco has confirmed that it will be making games for the GameCube in 
addition to its previously announced Xbox support.  The company's Youichi 
Haraguchi says, "For 2001, Namco's consumer business will focus on the 
PS2... but that doesn't mean we won't develop for platforms other than the 
PS2.  We will go ahead with development for the Xbox and GameCube, and we 
would like to release games for them.  Of course, part of that is because we
want to see how these consoles do."
     
   Nintendo's shipments of GameCube development kits have increased in 
recent months, but are still minuscule compared to the Xbox.  Nintendo has 
now shipped a total of about 500 development kits to third-party GameCube 
developers.  As a measure of comparison, Microsoft has shipped 500 
development kits to a single company (Electronic Arts) in addition to the 
rest of the third-party community.

   Phantasy Star Online is still scheduled to be released in the US before 
the end of this month, and we can only hope that the game's US launch goes 
more smoothly than its Japanese launch.  On the day of the game's Japanese 
launch, the servers were so flooded with gamers that they became completely 
inaccessible for over six hours.

   Microsoft has announced that the standard version of the Xbox will not be
able to play DVD movies.  Microsoft will also release a separate version of
the console that is more expensive and can play DVD movies.  Microsoft 
claims that this decision was made to put gamers first (the lack of DVD 
movie playback will make the standard version of the Xbox significantly 
cheaper for consumers).

   It's possible that a multi-player version of Half-Life will never be 
released for the Dreamcast.  Now that the single-player version of the game 
has been delayed on the DC, the future of the multi-player version is in 
jeopardy.  Valve's Doug Lombardi says that when the single-player version is
released, "We will all sit down and evaluate its reception and the 
marketplace, and determine whether or not a second product with multi-player
makes sense."

   The next full-fledged sequel in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series will be
released for the PlayStation 2 this fall.  In the meantime, a add-on pack of
sorts could be released for the PlayStation 1.  Tony Hawk himself says, 
"There is talk of doing a 2.5 version for the PlayStation, which would be 
all-new levels.  If it happens, 2.5 should be out by summer."

   An Oklahoma-based developer by the name of "2015" has announced that it 
is working on a new installment in Dreamworks Interactive's Medal of Honor 
series.  The game is for the PC and is called called Medal of Honor: Allied 
Assault.  Meanwhile, EA and Dreamworks continue to work on a PlayStation 2 
edition of the critically-acclaimed first-person shooter series.

   The Gathering of Developers has confirmed the rumor that a third 
installment of the Myth series is on its way.  Anyone who signs up for GOD's
Club Gathering gets a free calendar, and this calendar reveals that the game
is called Myth 3: The Wolf Age.  The calendar also says that the game is a 
prequel to the first two Myth games, and that it's being developed by a 
company called Mumbo Jumbo.

   British developer Mucky Foot Productions is working on a sequel to the 
recently-released PlayStation stinker, Blade.  The game will be based on the
sequel to the Blade movie, which is due out sometime around March 2002.  The
video game sequel will be released for the PlayStation 2 initially, with 
ports to other consoles very likely sometime thereafter.  Mucky Foot 
previously developed Urban Chaos for Eidos.

   In a report that may or may not be true, Xbox365 claims that Microsoft 
will run two Xbox commercials during this year's Super Bowl.  One of the 
commercials will supposedly depict a giant robot destroying a PlayStation 2 
system, while the other will focus on gameplay footage from the graphically-
impressive Xbox game, Halo.

   Seaman will be released for the PC by the end of March, but only in 
Japan.  The game may or may not be released in the US at some point in the 
future, but perhaps that's a good thing.  The game's lead designer Yoot 
Saito says, "The tempo of the game will be slower due to the style of the 
new version."

NEWS BRIEFS
   Square has given US release dates to its next two PlayStation 2 games.  
Driving Emotion Type-S is set for a January 30 release, while The Bouncer is
set for sometime in March.

   Tecmo's Dead or Alive is the latest video game franchise that is on its 
way to the big screen.  A movie based on Dead or Alive is in the works at 
Mindfire Entertainment, which is also working on a movie based on Sega's 
House of the Dead.

   GameSpy Industries has purchased 100 percent of Mplayer for an 
undisclosed amount of money.  This deal gives GameSpy control of the online 
gaming service found at mplayer.com and the new game-ranking service found 
at globalrankings.com.

   Interact has announced DexPort, the PlayStation 2 version of its popular 
DexDrive peripheral.  This peripheral allows gamers to download and upload 
PlayStation 2 saved-game files from the Internet.  DexPort will be released 
before the end of this month at a $25 price point.

   When asked how many Xbox systems will be available for the US launch, 
Microsoft's Robbie Bach told The Wall Street Journal, "It is in the millions
of units."

   Sony has slightly increased its PlayStation 2 shipment forecasts.  The 
previous forecast was for 10 million systems to be shipped worldwide by the 
end of March, and the new forecast is for 11 million systems to be shipped 
worldwide by the end of March.

   K-Mart has stopped carrying all Dreamcast-related products.  K-Mart's 
only official comment on this comes from spokesperson Nicole Dowswell, who 
says, "It is a business decision.  We do not disclose information about 
vendor relationships."

   EverQuest recently broke its own all-time record for most users 
simultaneously logged in to an online RPG.  This record was broken on New 
Years Day of all days, with a whopping 81,858 people playing the game at one
time.

   Interplay has announced a March release date for the PlayStation 2 
version of Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

   Raven Software's Kenn Hoekstra has published an in-depth guide to getting
a job in the video game industry.  Among many other things, this guide 
includes links to the Employment web pages of various video game companies. 
To access the guide, click here.

   A Dreamcast version of Activision's Spider-Man game will be released this
spring.  The game is already available on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

   Microsoft has delayed the European launch of the Xbox until early 2002.  
This move was made so that American store shelves can be adequately stocked 
with Xbox systems this fall.

   Nintendo has added five games to its list of $40 Player's Choice games, 
most notably the relatively new Perfect Dark.  The other four games are 
Donkey Kong 64, Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium, and Super Smash Bros.

   Westwood Studios has been releasing new Red Alert 2 maps on its web site 
in recent weeks.  The new multi-player maps can be downloaded for free by 
clicking here. 

   Note: Due to the holidays, no new sales charts have been released since 
the previous issue of Master Gamer News was published.  The usual array of 
sales charts will return in the next issue of Master Gamer News.

Sources for news: Fastest Game News Online, GameSpot, GameFan, Blue's News, 
GI News, Next Generation, Adrenaline Vault, The Magic Box, Daily Radar, 
Sega X, PSX 2 Online, Nintendorks, IGN, The Sega Zone, Gaming Age, The NPD 
Group, PC Data, www.cowdance.com

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