New footage (below) leaked from Sega’s own ftp site shows the recently announced Sonic Unleashed game in action. There is still very little known about this game other than:

• it has a generous budget and development team
• it will most likely come out on the Wii and XBOX360
• it’s release date is in November, 2008
• there will be a new character introduced

There is also an unconfirmed rumor that you will be able to play as a werewolf form of Sonic (which would explain the screenshot).

More screenshots, including hi-res, and info here.

First, a two part developer walkthrough. He doesn’t play very well, but this is a good natural gameplay video with some comments from the developer. He mentioned alot of XBOX360 features, so I’m wondering if these translate well into the PC version.

Part 1:

HD version

Part 2:

HD Version

And here’s a little multiplayer video:

Some nighttime single player action:

And more single player mission objectives:

Looks like, as early as August, the XBOX 360 will drop $50 more to $350. As backed up by some leaked images:

In a move everyone could predict, Sony swallowed their pride and finally dropped the price of the PS3 to $500. Just a bit higher than the most expensive Xbox360 package. This move should increase their sales somewhat, but as usual, they are making broad, boastful claims about it:

“Our initial expectation is that sales should double at a minimum,” Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said in an interview.

Well, whatever. But I guess they figured it was safe to lose some money per console, as Microsoft dropped the big bombshell of extending everyone’s warranty on the XBOX360, costing them over a billion dollars, last week. Plus, Sony doesn’t exactly like being ignored at E3, which starts in a few days.

And the Wii, well you still can’t even find it in stores. Keep on truckin’.

Bloomberg catches a blurb from a Microsoft executive.

“We are well aware that the sweet spot of the market is really 199 bucks,” said David Hufford, a director of Xbox product management.

This would definitely make me buy one. I want a Wii as well, but man, there are some very good games for the XBOX360 platform. Everyone knows that they make all of their money off of the game sales anyways. While a price drop would make it take longer to accomplish breaking even per user, it would make the overall users explode in number.

Unfortunately Sony will never learn this lesson. They are far too proud and pompous of their visionary PS3. It is time for Microsoft to be smart and take the hit for the future of their console, as the Wii is leaving everyone in the dust.

Geomerics is a company dedicated to computer graphics and other algorithms. They have recently unveiled their Enlighten engine which coordinates several of their software/middleware advances to provide enhanced lighting in games. The foremost of these is their real-time radiosity, which serves to compute lighting, shadows, radiosity and others at run-time and on existing hardware.

According to their site, they use studies in geometric algebra ( a kind of multi-linear algebra) to come up with new and efficient algorithms to process real-time lighting and even physics calculations.

Recently, Geomerics announced that the Enlighten engine will be used to incorporate into games that are developed for the XBOX 360.

Here is a movie demonstrating some elements of Enlighten and what scenes look like without it:

Yase, you heard correct, I forgot to post this up here, but since I got the free Ipod, I’m now embroiled in the other free sites.

Now, Gratis, the same people that sent me the free Ipod have another site where you and I can sign up for a free XBOX360 (XBOX 360).

XBOX360 for Free XBOX 360

http://www.Free360XBOX.com/?r=18462780

Sign up now and you can easily have one as soon as they come out, for free.