Quantum of Solace Release Date

Columbia Pictures and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures announced that the 22nd James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace will be released on November 14th this year in North America. While the movie will begin its worldwide roll out on October 31st.

Xbox 360: Another Price Cut?

Yes, according to an early copies of September Radio Shack's circular. The circular hinted at a $399 Elite and $199 Arcade.
If it's true, then it will benefit the future purchaser.

Intel's New Atom to Launch in September

With a success of Atom processor (can we say it's a succes?), a new product based on Atom is inevitable. The next stop for Atom is the dual core Atom 330 desktop processor. Like Atom 230, it's fabricated using 45nm technology and will incorporated Hyper Threading. So the new Atom 330 will appear to have four cores within the OS.
According to Register Hardware, the new Atom will be soldered onto Intel's upcoming 945GX-based D945GCFL2 motherboard that support up to 2GB of DDR2 memory.

Sony Announces PSP 3000

The PSP design team never rest a bit. This week at Leipzig Games Convention, SCEE announces a new model for PSP. Unlike the PS3 that only receive a bigger hard drive, the new PSP actually go through some hardware changes while maintaining the physical looks. It will has an "enhanced" LCD screen with more vibrant color and reduce glare when using it outside. It will also has a microphone built in for use with Skype and Go Messenger.
The new model will launched on October 15th in Europe for 199 euros while PSP slim dropping to 169 euros. The system will come bundle with one game. The options will include Harry Potter, FIFA 09, Buzz! Quiz Master, Go Messenger and more.
As for the North American, SCEA announced that the PSP 3000 will be released in 2 bundles and a core pack. The bundles are Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters Entertainment Pack that available on October 14th for $199.99, and PSP 4GB Memory Entertainment Pack that will be available in November for $199.99. A core pack will be available for $169.99 later this year.

Sony's PS3 New SKU

This week, there are so many news coming out from Leipzig, Germany. At Sony Computer Entertainment's press presentation at Games Convention in Leipzig, Sony announced yet another SKU of Playstation 3. The new 160GB Playstation 3 is currently only confirmed for release in Europe region but I'm pretty sure other region will get it too.
Other than the hard drive capacity, no other hardware changed for this SKU. The 160GB PS3 will be priced at 449 euros and will come packed with additional 70 euros of downloadable content.

Update: SCEA just announced that the 160GB PS3 will indeed come to North America in a limited edition. The system will be bundled with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune this November for $499.99.

A Redesigned Xbox 360 Controller

At this week's event at Leipzig, Germany, people has been spotted a new redesigned Xbox 360. Well, it's hard to tell the difference with the old controller physically. So which part that has been reworked? Now, the Xbox controller has been known for its unresponsive d-pad and apparently the engineer at Microsoft's R&D was working hard to solve it. The new controller addresses the problem and offer more instant control with an eight way input taking place of previous four. It will be released this year at the same time as the next Pro Evolution Soccer game.

Final Fantasy Agito XIII Update

After what we learned from the latest Final Fantasy XIII updates from Famitsu, it's time for another update for Final Fantasy XIII Agito. Tetsuya Nomura and Agito director Hajime Tabata spoke to Famitsu's editor recently. They said that a PSP version of the game was always in the planning right from the start. The announcement at the Square Enix party not so long ago was just an announcement that the PSP version has taken priority over the mobile version. The two addresses a few strong elements of the game. The newest trailer made mention of "Lucy", a word that has been mentioned in connection with other areas of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project. As explained by Nomura, this is one of the common points players will find connecting the worlds of the various FFXIII games.
Another term mentioned in the new trailer is PAX CODEX. This is the name of a peace treaty that exists in the Agito world. As Tabata explained, Cid, from a neighbouring country has broken the treaty and sent a Lucy out in an invasion. Tabata revealed that the Agito battle system will offer a mix of action and turn based gameplay similar to Crisis Core. He suggested players to picture a more developed version of the super high speed Active Time Battle system from Crisis Core. But different from Crisis Core whose battles were solo based, Agito has party based battles. The party based battles currently support infrastructure mode. Three players can currently form a party over the net. But Tabata said that he can not confirm yet if the final game will have infrastructure mode support, but this is something that Square Enix would like to offer to players. Plans call for giving players the ability to raise summon beasts and control them in battle.
All of this new tidbits just make me more excited about the game.

Intel's Next 4 Years Roadmap

One of the most anticipated releases for late 2008 is Intel's Nehalem processor that was recently named Intel Core i7. Looking forward, according to internal slides, Intel plans to release a 32nm shrink of Nehalem, codenamed Westmere at the end of 2009.
The next new architecture after Nehalem is codenamed Sandy Bridge (formerly known as Gester) and will be built on a 32nm process. While details are scarce, Intel is hard at wesl on its development and details have begun to trickle out. Sandy Bridge will features some key improvements. It will support wider vectors which Intel says allows far more power efficient floating point operations. It also will feature "advanced data rearrangement" involving the use of 256 bit primitives. Intel says this will improve cache coordination and help to speed the flow of data. The new architecture will support three and four operand instructions and non destructive syntax to minimize register copies and allow for extensibility. The architecture also feature "flexible unaligned memory access support" which Intel indicates will allow computations to be immediately performed on data loaded from memory. Intel also will offer up an extensible new opcode (VEX) which it says will reduce code size. The overall result of the improvements will be as much as 90% in certain mathematically intensive operations such as matrix multiplies according to Intel.
With the Sandy Bridge processors expected to land in 2010, 2011 will bring a shrink codenamed Ivy Bridge which will be madd at the 22nm node.
Finally the next new Haswell architecture will arrive. It's still in an early stages but Intel has big plans for it. Early reports indicate that it will have 8 physical cores by default and revolutionary power saving features.
Intel was rather tight-lipped about architectural details on its upcoming GPU, Larrabee. Also detailed in brief was the possible Atom succesor, the upcoming Tolapai processor formerly codenamed Pineview. Tolapai is a System On a Chip (SOC) in that it will feature an integrated DDR2 memory controller, an integrated graphics core, and a full chipset which features PCI, ethernet, serial, and peripheral connections. The chips processor will be an x86 design based on the Pentium M and will consist of 148 million transistor. It will come in a 37,5 mm X 37,5 mm package. It will launch with 600 MHz or 1200 MHz clocked models. The new integrated system is expected to be usee in Netbooks as well as other divese applications and will compete with ARM Holdings' SOC offerings.

Crytek's Next Engine in 2012

Speaking at Games Convention Developers Conference 2008 in Leipzig, Germany, Crytek' CEO and President Cevat Yerli said the studio's next engine should be ready for sometime in 2012. As of right now, he says the degree to which graphics can represent real-life is bottlenecked by a lack of new hardware. He says GPU and CPU technology are converging, evident in the new technology in development at Nvidia and ATI as well what Intel's doing with Larrabee.
Crytek's previous engines include the CryEngine 1, which powered the first person shooter Far Cry in 2004 and CryEngine 2, which was used for Crysis as well as the upcoming Crysis Warhead. Yerli believes this engine technology will be more than sufficient in powering games through 2012 when he expects Microsoft and Sony to release their new consoles. As of right now, Crytek is working to increase efficiency with its CryEngine 2 for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 platforms. Yerli mentioned that the PS3 required an extra degree of work but the company is convinced its worth the effort to get the engine running properly on Sony's platform.

American History X

To tell the truth, I can't get enough of American History X. It is a movie released in 1998 but I didn't watch it until 2004. An online friend of mine told me about this movie. He's a fan of Star Wars and we have same taste movie-wise. So I started to search the movie here at my local stores. And they're none. I asked my friend that at the time was having a vacation in Jakarta (the capital city of Indonesia) to search it for me. And luckily he got it. So I watched the movie and I ended up watching it everyday for a week. I started to like Edward Norton because of his performance in this movie. The movie was about a neo-nazi racist named Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) that finds revelation and try to make things right again by stopping his younger brother Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) from following his footsteps. It's a good movie about racism and everyone should watch it so they can see that racism only leads to no good.
There's a line in the movie that I really like: "Life's too short to be pissed off all the time." And it's so true. I used to get angry easily. And after I watched this movie, i start to realize that angry is a negative energy and it is silly to get angry over nothing. So now I can control my temper better. Isn't it amazing how you can be a changed person just because of a movie or one short sentence? Did something like this ever happen to you? A movie that change your life? Or maybe something insignificant that you thought would be meaningless, ended up become something that changed you in a big way. You are welcome to talk about it here.

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days

Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days (what a weird title) is a Square Enix's Nintendo DS game set to release sometime this year in Japan. It is a story about a character from Kingdom Hearts II, a member of Organization XIII, Number 13, Roxas. The storyline takes place before Kingdom Hearts II.
Roxas and Axel were watching the sunset from their usual spot on the station's clock tower after a long day of collecting "hearts" from the heartless, as ordered by their organization. When their daily work ended, they often spent their evenings there. They talked about the day's work and other things over ice cream.
"Do you know why the sun looks red as it sinks below the horison? It's because among the countless colors comprising light, red travels the greatest distance."
"You're just trying to show off, Axel."
It was idle chatter between two boys without hearts.....

In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, you will explore a variety of Disney worlds in not only in single player mode, but also in multiplayer missions made possible by the unique networking features of the Nintendo DS in an all new and mysterious Kingdom Hearts storyline. Check out the screens and drool over it.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

I love Kingdom Hearts series. It started with Kingdom Hearts fos PS2, followed by Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for GBA, and Kingdom Hearts II for PS2. With an engaging stories, lovable characters (who doesnt love final fantasy's and Disney's character), unique battle system, Kingdom Hearts series have been a new big franchise. I think i like it more than Final Fantasy Series now. And I was thrilled when I know that not one, but two Kingdom Hearts games are coming. Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days for Nintendo DS and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for PSP. We'll talk about the latter here.
Birth by Sleep is a prequel to the Kingdom Hearts saga. It is a tale of a new three heroes, told across three scenarios utilizing the groundbreaking technology of the PSP. Exciting new features are introduced on top of the traditional controls, game systems, and visual style of its predecessors.
The Keyblade is said to hold phenomenal power. One legend says its wielder saved the world, while another says that he wrought chaos and ruin upon it (Ansem's Report - Kingdom Hearts).
Long before Sora took up the keyblade, there were other Keyblade masters. One of these masters, Xehanort, disappeared one day along with his apprentice. This event proved to be a foreshadowing of great disaster to come. Aware of the threat, another master ordered his three apprentices to seek out Xehanort and his cohort. That's the story of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
It is still a long way until it arrives in storeshelves, so enjoy the screens below in the mean time. It's courtesy of ign of course.

Final Fantasy Agito XIII Screen

Originally developed for mobile platform, now it's coming to Sony's PSP too. It's another RPG from Square Enix. A prequel to Final Fantasy XIII and a part of Fabula Nova Crystallis, it is a game involving a young hero who must protecu a sacred crystal from evil. It still has no release date and not much is known. So, meanwhile, enjoy the only image below until Square Enix unveils more.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Delayed

Oh crap! That's my first reaction when I found out that the next Harry Potter movie got delayed. Warner Brothers announced that they're moving Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince from November 21 2008 back to July 17 2009. In making the announcement Mr Horn stated, "Our reasons are two fold. First, the summer season is a more ideal window for a family tent pole release as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film, the second highest grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first installment. Additionally, like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of.".
Well, it's still crap to me. I don't know if I'm still alive next July.

Update: Since there are games based on the movie for almost every platform that should be released this November alongside the movie, I can't help but wondering if the gamest got delayed too. Guess what, according to an EA (they're the publisher of the Harry Potter games) representative, nothing is decided yet. They're still evaluating the impact of the movie date change.
But I highly doubt they will release it this November. Another crap in my face today. :-(

OCZ's New Core Series

OCZ announces larger and faster SSDs with a built-in mini-USB port for firmware upgrades. Things are really moving quickly in the solid state disk (SSD) market. On July 1st, OCZ shook the storage market with its new OCZ Core Series SSDs which were priced at $169, $259, and $479 respectively for 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB models.
Now, a brand new Core Series V2 SSDs are ready to be in stores near you. The SSDs will be available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB storage capacities. In addition, read speeds have increased to 170MB/second while write speeds are now listed at 98MB/second accross the whole product family. Pricing and availability for the Core Series V2 SSDs aren't known at this time.

Intel Announced USB 3.0 Host Controller

Intel finally announced the availability of the draft specification for the USB 3.0 host controller. Intel dubbed the specification the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI). The architecture is also known as SuperSpeed USB.
Intel says the xHCI draft 0.9 provides a standardized method for the host controller to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack. The specification describes the registers and data structures needed to provide the interface between system software and USB 3.0 hardware. Intel also says that it plans to make available a revised xHCI 0.95 specification in the fourth quarter of 2008. The USB 3.0 specification promises to increase performance by 10 times what USB 2.0 is capable of. USB 3.0 or SuperSpeed USB promises bandwidth in the 600MB/second range. Products utilizing USB 3.0 are expected to arrive in 2009 or 2010. USB 3.0 is also compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1.

Sony Ericsson Announces T700

Coming with a moderate amount of onboard features but with an affordable price tag, the new bar-shaped T700 is expected to impress with looks and price point rather than with functionality. A quad-band GSM support and a single band 3G support with HSDPA, a 3.2 megapixels snapper without auto focus, a 2 inch 262K color display with QVGA resolution are among the feature embedded to the 104 x 48 x 10 mm phone. Weighing only 78 grams, this phone is sure a compact one. Add the bluetooth connectivity with A2DP profile, USB, 25MB of user memory that can be expand with M2 card (512MB of M2 card is included in the retail package), FM radio with RDS, and a price of less than 200 euro, this phone is ready for the competition. Available in Q4 2008 with Black on Silver, Black on Red, and Shining Silver color.

Intel's Next Generation Turbo Memory

Since Microsoft launched Windows Vista, there have been a number of complaints from users regarding usability of the operating system an other problems. One of the most common complaints about the OS is the sometimes sluggish response times in machines with inadequate amounts of memory on board. Microsoft tried to address some of the memory utilization issues with its ReadyBoost capability, but many people who try it reported no real gains in performance.
Intel saw the opening for technology that would help accelerate Windows Vista and introduced its Turbo Memory. Intel Turbo Memory has not proven to be successful to date and has found little support from PC manufacturers.
News.com reports that Intel has introduced a new version of its Turbo Memory, which aims to transparently optimize Windows for flash memory storage. The new version offers a dashboard for Windows and allows the user to choose and control what applications or files are loaded into Turbo Memory "user pinning". Programs and applications that are data intensive will see the most benefit from the new Intel Turbo Memory according to Intel. Turbo Memory is also said to be capabln of accelerating gaming, digital media editing, and productivity software.

Final Fantasy Versus XIII Screens!

Check out the latest images of Final Fantasy Versus XIII below. It is a Square Enix game exclusively for Sony's Playstation 3. The images are courtesy of ign.





For more images, go here.

Which Gaming System is the Most Favourite?

Game Developer Research has surveyed more than 2000 members of the video game industry to find out which gaming platforms they were spending most of their time with. All the participants polled were from North America.
According to the survey, 70% of all the applicants who replied said that they were making game for either the PC or the mac. The console platforms combined as a whole, amounted to 43% of the pie while 28% said that they were designing games for web platforms. The handheld was at the last place with 16% of the pie.
73% of the console developers surveyed said that they were making games for Microsoft's Xbox 360, and 58% said they're developing for Sony's Playstation 3. It is important to note that these percentages include cross-platform games. Nintendo's Wii is in the third place with 42% and Playstation 2 is next with 15% of the pie.
On the handheld side, 75% of the developers were making Nintendo DS games while 45% of them making PSP games.

AMD Unveiled 4870 X2

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced on Monday its most powerful graphics technology to date. The announcement also marks the current pinnacle of AMD's strategy to beat NVIDIA at the high end by building comparatively smaller chips and then ganging them up together for better performance.
The ATI Radeon HD4870 X2 graphics board houses two 4870 GPUs and competes with NVIDIA fastest board based on the GTX 280. The 4870 X2 will use 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The 4870 X2 is rated at 2.4 TFLOPs and communicates with memory at 230GB per second. It will integrate 1600 stream processors which do parallel processing on streams of data. The 4870 X2 is priced at $549. NVIDIA's GTX 280 is at $499 currently. The lower end 4850 X2 will be available in September for $399.

UK Gets X360 60GB

After rumours that were later confirmed for North America at E3 2008, it is now Britain's time. From August 15, UK customers will find the new Xbox 360 consoles now come with a 60GB hard drive. The recommended retail price remains unchanged at £199. Meanwhile, there's no change to the storage capacity or pricing of the other Xbox 360 models.
Although the 20GB model received a $50 price reduction in the US following the 60GB announcement, a Microsoft UK spokeperson confirmed that Microsoft has no current plans to reduce the price of 20GB model still in stores on the Queen's land. Hmm, that's just plain weird.

NVIDIA Enables PhysX on GeForce 8 Series

NVIDIA offers free applications to take advantage of the PhysX capabilities.
Owners of NVIDIA cards have long waited for a PhysX enabled driver that will allow the higher-end video cards to process physics on the GPU. Today, NVIDIA officially announced the driver that enable PhysX on GeForce 8 series and higher for free.
NVIDIA says that its PhysX technology is already being used in more than 140 shipping titles on the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii. The GeForce Power Pack now activates PhysX on PC platform.
In addition to the driver that enables PhysX on 8 series, the GeForce Power Pack also includes free demos and applications that take advantage of the PhysX on the GPU.
The Power Pack includes a full version of Warmonger where the player destroys walls, floors, and entire buildings to open new paths and close existing ones. Also included is NVIDIA's Fluid Tech demo, NVIDIA's The Great Kulu tech demo, and a sneak peak of the upcoming game called Metal Knight Zero.

Intel Introduced i7

Intel's latest, it's eight core chips based on the new Nehalem architecture have been named and are almost ready to launch.
With the power of 8 logical cores (four physical, doubled by Hyper-threading) built on a 45 nm process to leverage, it's shaping up to be a strong offering. It features Quick path, an answer to AMD's Hyper transport, on chip memory controller, SSE4 instruction support, and 8 MB cache pool.
The processor will be branded Intel Core with i7 identifier for the first round chips. This brand will include an extreme edition at launch according to Intel.

Fujitsu Announced Lifebook U2010

Fujitsu announced a new UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer) called the Lifebook U2010, a follow up to Fujitsu's Lifebook U1010 and features the 3 in 1 tablet/notebook/handheld PC formfactor.
This gadget has some interesting feature, one of them is that you can wirelessly connect to any FM radio at home or in the care and playback the stored digital music library. It utilizes 5,6" WXGA 1280x800 screen with 300 nits of brightness. There are 5 variants in color: Ocean Black, Pink Gold, Cool Silver, Fuchsia Red, and Luminous Blue. It weighs 610 grams and quoted to have 8 hours of battery life. The storage is up to 60 GB hard disk or 64 SSD. Other feature include WIFI and bluetooth 2.1. It uses Intel Centrino Atom Z530 running at 1,6 GHz. It also has 2-level Bios Lock, fingerprint scanner and antitheft slot as security features.

Samsung i8510 INNOV8

Get ready for Samsung's latest phone, the Samsung i8510 INNOV8. It's the most packed handset to date. Yeah, even more feature than Nokia N96. Let's start with quad band gsm, dual band HSDPA, 240x320 2,8" TFT screen, auto rotate (accelerometer), and optical mouse. Weight in 140 grams, i8510 comes with 2 size of internal memory. You can either have 8 GB or 16 GB of internal storage. It also has 128 MB of RAM so, i guess Symbian OS v9.3 series 60 rel 3.2 can run pretty fast. There is no lack in connectivity too. It has bluetooth 2.0, micro USB, and WiFi with DLNA so you can stream music, video, or data from compatible device wirelessly. The i8510 also has GPS with A-GPS built in so you may never get lost again.
The special thing about this handset is the camera. With 8MP auto focus and dual led flash, INNOV8 is sure can capture your moments with high details maxing 3264x2448 pixels in resolution. The camera also has image stabiliser, geotagging, face, smile, and blink detection, and also can record video with VGA resolution @ 30 fps and QVGA @ 120 fps. The Sony Ericsson C905 is sure to be in tough position camera wise even though it use the same camera with i8510. Samsung produce both camera.
And to top it all, Samsung i8510 can play Divx, H.263, H.264, WMV, MP4, MP3 files. With 3.5 mm audio jack and Tv out function, it's really hard not to be pleased with it.
Check out the official photos of Samsung i8510 INNOV8 below.

Final Fantasy VII Rumour

Last week, the internet community was once again treated to a rumour about Final Fantasy VII. The rumour came from a series of photos and videos depicting what appeared to be an advertisement for Final Fantasy VII for the PS3. The item had a release date of the 16th this month and was displayed at the bottom of an in-store advertisement. While many believed that these photos were taken at a Best Buy store, there is no way to be certain as no store logo can be seen. taken from Best Buy store. Square Enix through their representative said that they have no idea why such an odd advertisement would pop up in the first place. Best Buy stores across America also said that they didn't know such thing. So any Final Fantasy fans out there, hoping that this is some sort of a "sign" is again out of luck. At least for now.

Koolzone

This one is going to be quick. I just want to share to the world, there's a website where I always hang out. The name is koolzone. You can go here and check it out. It has many feature, but I like the forum the most. The forum is consist of only a few people. So it is a small community. But what's good about small community is that we get to know each and everyone of them better. See for yourself and tell me what you think about it.

Hypocrisy and Celebrities

I watched the news yesterday and I saw an Indonesian celebrity named Sheila Marcia arrested for drugs ownership. She was caught in a hotel room with a few friends having a drugs party. Ironically, not a week ago, i watched her in television being interviewed and she said that drugs was bad and she never tried or even touched any kind of drugs. So much for a hypocrite. And we see it everyday in our lives. Not just from celebrities, but also from government officers. It's like hypocrisy and lying are needed for the job. It's saddening. Why can't we live in honesty? But then again, honesty is expensive nowadays. A gameshow called The Moment of Truth is willing to pay up to $500000 (yeah, half a million) for answering questions truthfully. Shocking huh? I guess not.

My cousin and Kungfu Panda

I took my 14 year old cousin to a movie yesterday afternoon. He wanted to watched The Mummy and The Tomb of The Dragon Emperor. But when we got there, I saw Kungfu Panda was on. And since I really want to see it, I forced him to watch it instead. And there's no regret. The movie was awsome. I enjoyed every moment of it. I can't remember being laughing all the time watching a movie since the original Scary movie. The animation was good, the voice over was spot on, matching the character with the type of the sound. I couldn't helped thinking of Angelina Jolie when I saw Tigress in action. All in all, I recommend this movie to anyone, even adults. And guess what, my cousin still dragged me to watch The Mummy, so we bought the ticket and watched it after we watched Kungfu Panda. He knows how to make me broke.

Introduction

As any blogger would do first (I guess), I'm going to introduce myself a little bit. My name is Rizki Juanda and I'm known as lionheart85 on the net. I'm 23 years old. From a country named Indonesia, which is by the way I don't really like (we'll get to that eventually). Graduated from college, majoring Informatic Technic 2 years ago. I was a future broker for 15 months, but currently I'm jobless. But look at the bright side, now I can start to do things that I couldn't do before because of my busyness. One of them is blogging. Hehehe Thank God for being jobless. (Well, that came out weird. Hehehe)
Enough about me right now. More will be revealed along with my posts in the future. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned because I have so many to offer. :-D