Gaming

Microsoft's recent XBox Live update has led to washed-out colors and sub-1080p playback in certain videos, and the company plans to release a fix—but only for one of those problems. XBox Live liaison Major Nelson says a update is incoming for the color issues, but the restriction of non-Zune videos to 720p video output has yet to receive public acknowledgement.

The XBox Live update in question was released early in December, and was derided out of the gate for a new Terms of Use that prevents users from bringing class-action lawsuits against the company. The same update has turned out to produce some display problems and highly questionable restrictions on video content.

Users have found that colors in the dashboard and during video playback are now washed out and blacks are less black, though color during gameplay appears unaffected. Microsoft has also restricted the resolution of non-Zune videos to 720p resolution, as found in tests by Eurogamer, while Zune videos are able to play at full 1080p resolution.

A fix is coming for the colorspace issue, but Major Nelson provided no timeframe. We'll keep waiting for an acknowledgement, and fix, of the resolution restrictions.

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Resident Evil 6 is in development and on the way, Capcom announced today in a press release. The new installment of the horror series is set ten years after the initial outbreak in Raccoon City, and may feature the infection of the President of the United States alongside thousands of others.

Capcom has released a trailer for the game, which features the president making a case for explaining the source of the virus that has infected all of the in-game hostile creatures, believing it may slow a resurgence in bioterrorist activity. Leon S. Kennedy, one of the major characters in this installment alongside Chris Redfield, describes the infected area of Tall Oaks as "Raccoon City all over again."

Resident Evil 6 is set for release on November 20 of this year on XBox 360 and PlayStation 3, with a PC version to follow at an unspecified date. We've embedded the new trailer below for your viewing pleasure.

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate cousin the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are like thermonuclear devices deployed to kill an insect. They would give copyright holders and the US government unprecedented abilities to summarily block and cut off funding for websites accused of violating copyright. Major sites ranging from reddit to Wikipedia are voluntarily going dark today in protest of the proposed laws, as an illustration of the silencing effect they could have on Internet free speech.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg for PC game developer Red 5 Studios. Not only has the studio blocked access to the beta of free-to-play open-world shooter Firefall for the day, but it also revealed last week that it is pulling out of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) showcase, which is run by the SOPA-supporting Entertainment Software Association (ESA).

Red 5 will also use the $50,000 it would have spent on a promotional E3 booth to start The League For Gamers, a grassroots group it calls "a gathering place for gamers, developers and industry supporters who want to stand against legislation that's detrimental to the games industry."

Max Payne 3's release has been delayed to May of this year from its targeted release date of March, Take Two Interactive announced today. According to a statement, the publisher is pushing the release date to ensure the game "delivers the highest quality, groundbreaking entertainment experience."

Rockstar Games originally announced that it was working on Max Payne 3 in March 2009, and the company was targeting a Winter 2009 release. Multiple releases were eventually sandwiched in between the game's announcement and its now-imminent release over three years later, including L.A. Noire and Red Dead Redemption.

In the third installment of the series, Max Payne now works as security for a wealthy man named Rodrigo Branco in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Branco's wife is kidnapped, pulling Payne into "a conspiracy of shadowy, warring factions."

Since the game's release date has been pushed yet again, Take Two is now reporting a fiscal loss for the 21012 year, which ends in March, of $210 million to $230 million. With its release in fiscal year 2013, Max Payne 3 will be launched closer to other Take Two titles including XCOM, BioShock Infinite, and Borderlands 2.

The official release dates for Max Payne 3 in North America are May 15 for Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 and May 29 for PC; internationally, the game launches May 18 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and June 1 for PC.

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ScummVM was born on September 17, 2001, at 5:57pm GMT+1. The program was meant as an interpreter that could play classic LucasArts point-and-click adventure games such as Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and Day of the Tentacle in a virtual machine (VM).

As for the name, "SCUMM" was the "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion," itself a reference to the first LucasArts game that relied on the company's proprietary game design tool. Expanded and revised through the years, SCUMM helped LucasArs build a huge line of popular adventure games in the 1980s and 1990s, but the DOS-based games became increasingly difficult to play on modern systems.

ScummVM addressed this problem. Little did its earliest developers know, however, that it would grow far beyond its origins, taking on a life of its own as more than 100 people contributed a million lines of code over the next decade. Today, ScummVM has become almost a general-purpose adventure game interpreter that can run on nearly any architecture. How did an ever-changing group of volunteers manage to do it—and avoid being sued out of existence?

I remember the first time I heard those words in the theater, during an afternoon showing of Ratatouille. I was enjoying the movie up until that point, and my kids in particular were quite taken with the talking rats and their lively work in the kitchen. After listening to that speech, though, I felt like a lightning bolt hit me. No one had ever summed up the work I wanted to do so well. My wife made me a print with Anton Ego's impressive image and that speech for me to hang in my office for Christmas this year, and I think about it often.

I've always believed in two things: we must be effusive about the games we love, and we must be brutal with those we hate. Writing for Ars Technica has allowed me to do both, and I hope I did it well. Today is my last day with the site, and I feel it's important to describe what it was like to call this site home for the past several years.

Readers were asking about the existence of triggers on Razer's Project Fiona, so here is a picture of the back of the hardware. See? Triggers!

We were at CES this week, and here are some of the stories we brought back. If Nintendo is going to launch the Wii U in 2012, the company doesn't have much time to give us some actual details about the hardware and the games we can expect. On the other hand, that's probably what E3 is for. Come inside and check out the biggest gaming stories of the week, and to see what we thought of the Fiona itself.

The Vita is shaping up to have a strong launch lineup. At CES, I was able to play another game that should be ready for the system's US launch, or at least near it. Gravity Rush is a title that has been on the radar of the press for a little while now, and I was finally able to give it a shot at CES. Even with a very limited amount of time put into the game, I was immediately impressed with the game's graphics and play.

The main hook? You can control gravity at will, allowing you to "fall" towards almost anything you can see. In practice this is a thrilling way to explore the scenery.