In their yearly Christmas Card, Rare has dropped hints that it is possibly working on a sequel to the successful fighting series Killer Instinct.  On the card, next to images of Viva Pinata characters and Banjo Kazooie is a stocking labeled “KI3″.  Now this is hardly a confirmation of anything, but it’s a not-so-subtle hint that Killer Instinct 3 is a real possibility.

[Via CVG]

Aussie tech site SmartHouse broke some news that Toshiba and Microsoft are working closely to create an Xbox 360 with both a built-in HD-DVD drive and a larger Hard Drive. I think it would be silly for Microsoft NOT to do this, and they should have done it a long time ago.

Microsoft certainly cannot be happy this news broke, because there’s bound to be a lot of people who will hold out on buying a 360 this holiday in hopes this new model will arrive by next Christmas. I am hoping this release might drive down the price of the HD-DVD add on for those of us who already have the console.

If the HD-DVD drives become much much more commonplace, can you see a future where some games come in both multi-dvd or single-HD-DVD flavors? (Or even, only on HD-DVD?) I can.

[via TeamXbox]

The big news today is a rumor by a blogger in Seattle that Microsoft and Bungie are about to cut ties.  This comes with the tiniest bit of backing from Team Xbox who basically says they know something but can’t say anything. Which pretty much could mean anything.  Gamespot seems pretty confident this is mostly just a rumor and does a good job poking holes in the source, but until we get some more official word, it’s hard to know exactly what is going on.

To me, this rings familiar with Alex Seropian leaving Bungie.  Perhaps some of the folks at the studio are tired of working directly for Microsoft, and would rather leave to do their own thing.  How many will go?  That remains to be seen.  Could some people be leaving or supplanted now that Christian Allen (of Ghost Recon fame) is working for Bungie?  Hopefully we have answers soon.  In any case, Microsoft has some damage control to take care of now.

On a lighter note, Discovery Channel has a sweet video of a live action (mostly) battle between humans and brutes, in a promotion for their new show “Last One Standing.”  This could give a preview of what we could expect in the elusive Halo movie.

I recently posted about my desire for Chessmaster on 360, and it looks as though Ubisoft is going to meet the challenge to some degree. Gamestop currently has a listing for Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition for Xbox 360, with a release date in September. While this isn’t concrete evidence, these types of things are typically a good indication that someone, somewhere, with some authority told Gamestop that this product would be available on this date. Portable versions, on PSP and DS are listed to come out later in September. Could my cross platform internet playing dream become a reality? I doubt it, but I’m excited at the possibilities these products bring to the table.

Oddly, there is no mention of a PS3 or Wii version. Chessmaster has existed on several older Nintendo consoles, and on each of its handhelds, and it has also appeared on the Playstation in the past. Perhaps this time around, the Sony console will get the enhanced edition of the game at a later date, unlike the last time around when Chessmaster PS2 seriously was lacking in comparison to later released Chessmater Xbox.

It’s quite possible that a follow up to 2004’s Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay for the original Xbox may be in the works for the 360, now I say MAY because the news is a couple months old. It was said on an italian 360 website that Chronicles of Riddick 2 was on the release list for 2007, where they got their information is unknown as the Official US Xbox site has no indication of a new Riddick game on the horizon.

David Twohy, the director of the 2004 Riddick film had this to say on the news section of his website at the start of the year :

“If I had to put money on it, I’d say you’re likely to see another game hit your screen before another movie.”

The 2004 game was a benchmark in what the Xbox was capable of as it was the first FPS game on the Xbox to sport normal mapping long before DOOM 3 and also used softer shadowing providing for spectacular visuals. With the technology we have with the 360 we can only imagine what the next chapter of Riddick may look like.

Xbox360Fanboy has found that the German ratings board has posted a rating for Prince of Persia Classic on Xbox 360! This would make an excellent addition to the Live Arcade, with some really great classic side scrolling gameplay.
If the rating has already been given, it seems likely the title is nearly ready for release, so we’ll keep an eye on this in the coming weeks.

Ever since the release of Chex Quest (a Chex themed total conversion on the Doom Engine) in boxes of cereal, corporate promotions and gaming have been an interesting mix. The prospect of free games with only having to put up with shameless plugs is an interesting idea. Toyota is said to be releasing a FREE XBLA game this summer, no exact release date but who doesn’t like free things?

The most recent approch to this were the not so free but extremely cheap Burger King games. I myself really enjoyed this somewhat creative approach to advertising a product, hell Scott Topic might not share my sentiment but Sneak King was hilarious. As long as there is an incentive to put the money into such promotions we may see even more “Advertainment” games and the relatively easy avenues of digital distribution make it a viable source for delivering them. The negative aspect of this would be the relative quality of these games; what I don’t want to see is “Unlock this Achievement and win a free ring tone!” What they need to make is a FPS where I can totally destroy people with a Automatic French Fry Cannon, what could be funnier? You listening BK games?

Gizmodo reported today on recent developments that point to Microsoft taking part in the Rosetta@Home project, specifically this post by developer David Baker.  This would counterpoint the recent announcement that Sony’s Playstation 3 would be participating in the Folding@Home project.

If you’re not familiar with these projects, they are research software that runs on your console (or home PC) using the processor cycles that are not being used by your normal programs. These cycles calculate the folding of proteins to help scientists better understand how this building block of life works. Folding@Home is focusing on Alzheimer’s Disease while Rosetta@Home is looking at HIV. They are noble goals.

The PS3 Folding client apparently runs exceedingly well when it uses data packets designed with its architecture in mind. While having Microsoft’s console running a similar project is well and good, I think the fans would love to see the consoles go head to head in the same project. Even if the Cell processor can outperform the 360, the install base of the Microsoft console should surely be able to surpass the PS3.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft has already explored running Folding@Home, and found that they would look poorly in this head-to-head matchup and thus are moving to a similar but separate project.

This leads to another point. Rosetta@Home uses the BOINC infrastructure, the framework that many projects of this type use.. including the infamous SETI@Home. With the BOINC infrastructure in place, it is not out of the question that SETI@Home or ClimatePrediction.net cores could be written for the 360. Time will tell.

One of my main concerns from yesterday’s major rumor concerning the Xbox 360 Elite was how are people going to transfer their existing files to their new, larger drives?

Well Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica voiced similar concerns. However, Ben received a tip saying this:

I work for a large game distributor. MS disclosed this SKU to us a few weeks ago—definitely not a fake story. Price, features, color are all correct. MS has told us that the data will be transferred via some sort of cable that will be included with the unit. The cable will also be included w/ the 120GB drive that will be sold separately (price TBD).

Please don’t cite me, but this is all accurate info.

Now whether or not this is accurate is still up in the air. Also of concern to me is whether or not games moved from one 360 to another in this way will be playable as if they were bought there to begin with, or if the gamertag they were bought on has to be signed in.

What do I mean by Turbo? I mean Turbo Graphx 16! In the April issue of Game Pro, the editors had a little sit down with John Lee, the Director of Marketing for Hudson Entertainment. When asked if any of these classics would make the jump to the 360 he said:

“Thats the big question we at Hudson are carefully evaluating. Some of these games are selling beyond our expectations today… a revival of some much-loved games may be happening soon.”

Does this mean that the 360 crowd will get some Bonk action? I sure hope so! We could see Devil Crush, Bonk’s Adventure and several of the other current Hudson TG-16 games currently being enjoyed on the Wii in the XBLA Market Place which is an exciting prospect indeed.