Men have always customized and upgraded things. Go back past the colorful history of the automobile and you’ll see blacksmiths engraving swords with crests and family mottos, primitive warriors painting fierce symbols on their hide shields and the like. Many enterprising individuals have turned various electronics apparatus into interesting and unusual creations. A working PC inside a Nintendo shell? Done. Zapper Bong? Seen it.

Here’s one thing that although the overall idea isn’t that new (I saw a book in Barnes and Noble on various Roomba hacks), it’s certainly got points for creativity.

PacMan Roomba

As an Xbox 360 owner I regularly offer up sacrifices and thanks to any god that exists for the fact that I haven’t yet gotten the horrible red ring of death that has plagued Microsoft’s console since the beginning. After frantically denying the problem for months they finally caved and shelled out the money to get people’s consoles fixed. While many tech savvy folks have long since determined the cause of the problem, the real source has been relatively unknown until now.

It seems that in a grand display of irony it was all Microsoft’s fault, due to a bid to save some money in the manufacturing costs. Consoles generally sell at a loss, with companies making their profit on games, and Microsoft sought to boost their profts by creating the graphics chip themselves rather than going through a third party. It seems that had Microsoft gone the standard third-party route they’d have saved themselves a billion dollars in recall costs as well as a good amount of PR.

While we first heard about Crysis Warhead via its recently launched site new details surrounding it have hit the internet due to a press release issued by Crytek.

Apparently the game will be developed with a focus on the story and performance (does this mean no uber awesome graphics?) and it is not a direct sequel to the first Crysis installment, rather a parallel story.

Crysis Warhead will be told from the point of view of Sargeant Sykes, who you will recognize from the first game, and will include a whole slew of new weapons and vehicles the cause mayhem with.

Full press release after the break.

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Asus has recently announced their new game controllers, the Eee Sticks. Utilizing the same concept as Nintendo’s Wiimote, come mid-august Eee PC owners will be able to swing their arms around in a ridiculous fashion to control on screen movements (not saying that isn’t fun).

The Eee Sticks will be bundled with both the Eee PC laptops and desktops later this year, with bundles that include 5-8 compatible games coming next year in a price range of $66-$82.

While Asus has only talked to a few game publishers about compatible games at this time they are hoping to expand their Eee Stick line with companies such as EA.

(Image and tip via Gamepro)

Valved has officially lifted the curtains on their latest service to hit the Steam platform, Steamcloud.

Steamcloud will Steam users to upload various pieces of information collected about their Steam usage to the service and then later access it from a PC anywhere in the world. Steamcloud will record things like game-saves, keyboard configurations, and most importantly games purchased through Steam’s virtual delivery system.

After announcing Steamcloud, Valve gave us a glimpse of what is soon to come. They hope to eventually incorporate things like automatic driver updates along with a larger game cataloge into the already popular Steam service.

While the US has already seen Wii’s Nintendo Channel for some time now, Nintendo is finally bringing the service to the UK, along with Australia.

Set to launch tomorrow, there wont be any changes between the the three versions of the Nintendo Channel. Users of the service will be able to get up-to-date news regarding past, present, and future Nintendo titles along with download DS demos, watch videos, and recommend games.

Almost everyones major gripe about the Wii is that the graphics just aren’t up to par with next gen consoles like the 360 and PS3. Well, thanks to High Voltage Software’s Quatum 3 engine, that may all be a thing of the past. Future titles utilizing the Quantum 3 engine will be able to showcase the Wii’s true graphical capabilities and frankly, they ain’t half bad. Of course, the Wii isn’t going to output HD images on par with games like Gran Turismo 5 but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

You can view a tech demo of the new engine in action along with narration highlighting the engines capabilities below:

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Microsoft might be taking a bit of a gamble with the putting blu-ray drives into a new line of Xbox 360 consoles as it seems that they might lose some of the profitability with the upgrades. Currently it costs about $20 for the dvd-rom drives that come standard on the 360. The prices for the blu-ray drives are up around the $100 mark. Even with the expected mark-up on the new SKU it’d be unlikely that Microsoft would even cover the cost of the console.

Video games have come quite a long way from the days of Atari but despite vast improvements in graphics, writing and gameplay mechanics, the business model hasn’t changed much. You buy a console, hook it up to your television, buy games and peripherals for it, then start all over once the next generation comes out. CD technology made things a little different in that backwards compatability was a possibility. You could play PS1 games on your PS2. Game companies have found a limited degree of success with the advent of downloadable games like Wiiware and XBox Live Arcade, but the majority of the games still come in hard copy disc form, primarily due to constraints of internet connection speed and console hard drive capacity. These days broadband is cheap and readily available in most areas, and storage space isn’t an issue. Computer stores are selling terrabyte hard drives for relatively cheap. Sandy Duncan, a former VP in Microsoft’ European branch who’s responsible for getting the 360 launched in that continent is predicting that within five to ten years consoles and handhelds as we know them will be dead. Much of technology moves towards consolidation and multiple functions. His predictions are that in the future, handheld gaming will take place on next-gen cellphones like the iPhone or devices similar to the iPod Touch and home gaming will be services added to your basic television package by your television/internet provider. It’s hard to say whether or not these sorts of predictions are accurate as it’s really impossible to predict the future.

Konami has today released a whole slew of new Metal Gear Solid 4 screen shots showcasing characters like Gaiden and everyones favorite Solid Snake doing what they do best. While not showing much graphical enhancements since the last set of screen shots these certainly something any die hard MGS fan will want to check out.

Head over to Gamernode to check out the latest set of MGS4 screen shot.

NCsoft, developers of popular online titles such as Lineage and Guild Wars, has announced that they will begin developing two online titles utilizing the Unreal Engine 3. It seems that NCsoft has signed a deal with UE3 developers Epic Games that will give them full access to all of the latest updates developed for the engine. With NCsoft’s success with both Lineage and Guildwars, will UE3 be exactly what game developers need to finally knock WoW off the throne or will Blizzards recent release of patch 2.4 re-addict gamers  to the game that has been related to crack? Only time will tell.

Wouldn’t it be great if the iPhone browser had Flash support? That way you’d be able to play tons of simple 2D games from essentially anywhere in the world. Or better yet, what if it could play full 3D games that we see on consoles. Impossible, right? Well, apparently it’s not. Apple recently held a presentation on a new SDK (System Development Kit) for developers to use to create applications on the iPhone. As the presentation shows, the iPhone is capable of far more than it would seem at first glance. For example, although it hasn’t been fully exploited yet, the iPhone is capable of full, real-time, 3D rendering using a toned down version of OpenGL. That’s not all, it is also capable of using OpenAL to produce 3D audio. Another feature that the iPhone is known for, other than it’s multi-touch technology, is the accelerometer that the iPhone uses to switch between portrait to landscape modes. During the presentation, it was revealed that the iPhone’s accelerometer is actually capable of detecting three axis’ of movement. To put it in perspective, that means that the iPhone actually has the same amount of motion controls that the Wii’s Nunchuck attachment has. More after the jump.

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Valve’s popular Steam service, which offers hundreds of games today, might be expanding soon, with the addition of downloadable vidoes and music. In an interview at GDC, Valve’s Doug Lombardi said that they’re looking into videos, TV shows, music etc. to offer via their Steam service. He didn’t go into detail, only saying that they’re “looking into it”. What else might they be looking into?

Sony has announced that the new DualShock 3 controller will be available in April, MSRP $55. The new controller has been available in Japan for quite a while now, and is the most popular accessory for Japanese PS3 owners. Sony hasn’t mentioned about anything about a European release, but don’t expect it to be out on the EU market a few months after the US release.

Looks like Toshiba and Sony are good friends again, now that the high-def war is over. Toshiba has bought a Japanese Cell and RSX chip factory from Sony for a staggering $835 million, meaning that Toshiba is investing that much money into the Cell, the PS3 — and Blu-ray.

IBM recently announced that the Cell chip has been successfully shrunk to 45nm, which will improve performance and cut manufacturing costs. Toshiba’s new plant is expected to start manufacturing those new chips this summer. While Toshiba will manufacture chips for the PS3, it will also use the Cell for its own products in the future.

During Microsoft’s GDC press conference, Epic took the time to show off some features of a new version of their Unreal Engine 3. For those of you who don’t know the engine used in Gears of War as well as pretty much ever FPS running on Xbox 360. Undoubtedly, the new Gears of War game, set to release in November, will take full advantage of these features. To summarize, the update will basically add realistic interaction to environment and character models. A full list of known features after the jump.

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Premier provider of physics software to game developers, Havok has announced today that the company will offer Havok Complete - the PC version of its award-winning physics and animation software - for download completely free of charge.

Starting May, the software will be available free for non-commercial use to anyone. It combines the company’s Havok Physics engine and Havok Animation, the company’s premier character animation solution. Its technology is used in over 200 games, making it one of the most widely used physics engines.

By doing this, Havok is opening itself to the indie market where developers don’t have the big budget as their studio counterparts, but will now have the same level of technology at their disposal.

“Havok has an excellent revenue base generated by sales of our three products across multiple platforms and into multiple industries,” said David O’Meara, Managing Director at Havok. “This enables us to make an industry-changing move and opens up a much broader market for products such as Havok Behavior - and our new products Havok Cloth and Havok Destruction - that really come alive when adopted on top of our core platform, Havok Complete.”

Additionally, Havok has entered into agreements with Intel, one that will see approved game developers on the PC platform execute a commercial distribution license with Havok for free.

“Intel is very pleased to be sponsoring this direction in the PC market. This aligns well with our ongoing strategy of putting the best software tools in the hands of PC games developers,” said Renee J. James, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Software and Solutions Group, Intel Corporation.

Big news, indeed.

Unreal Engine 3 is the de-facto standard for gorgeous games these days, Valve’s Source is the standard for mods, but Sony is trying to fight that dominance, while at the same time making it a lot easier for developers to make games. The company revealed the PhyreEngine at GDC, a free (like totally free) graphics engine for PS3 and PC games, which will include the full source code, artwork, rendering pipelines and example game templates. This will certainly be good for new developers, who don’t have millions to shed out to UE3 and other commercial game engines.

The launch of the Wii marked the launch of several websites that chronicled the destructive force of the rogue Wiimote. Windows were smashed, PDAs rendered unassisting and brand new high-definition televisions were transformed into post-apocalyptic wall hangings. Although a strengthening of the Wiimote wrist strap and a general understanding that one shouldn’t be flailing around quite that wildly have cut down on the number of accidents of this type, Panasonic is creating a new line of televisions that are designed to prevent this issue. They come with beefed- up screens that can take an impact of up to four joules without batting an eye. For those of us unfamiliar with such measurements, a joule is about the amount of energy it takes to raise a small apple one meter in the air. It’s hard to say what that equates to in terms of flying wii impacts, but they demonstrated that the new tvs can in fact take more punishment than the older models.