QuickJump QuickPeek 14: Of DAX/M33’s update splurge, Master Chief’s return, and when JT tries to finish the fight

(Editor’s Note: After the TGS, you’d think that things would go back to their “normal” pace in the gaming industry, but see, the gaming industry isn’t all that “normal” to begin with. Harhar. As the Chesire Cat once told Alice: “We’re all mad here.” Now, if you might remember, our 13th Issue of QuickJump QuickPeek rolled out early, which means this edition might cover some news from last week which weren’t included in the previous issue. Yes, it’s not “normal” procedure as QuickPeek posts go. And we’re saying that with a disembodied Chesire grin.)

A few days ago, we ended the previous TGS Special Edition of QuickJump QuickPeek with a series of open questions. Well, if Master Yoda had anything to say about it, it’d go somewhere along the lines of “Rumors lead to questions. Questions lead to TGS. TGS leads to answers. And answers… lead to more questions… and the eventual Hamill-tendency to scream out ‘Nooooo!'”

This week though, it’s anything but a miserable negative outburst. We’re getting some answers all right. With us having the tendency of screaming out ‘”Yeeeees!” instead. How so? Let’s see, shall we? M33’s identity (i.e. Dark AleX, Mathiuelh, et. al.) revealed, Halo 3 week, Folding@Home‘s ongoing success, building anticipation for the Wii Zapper… Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here though! Get busy with your mouse and start scrolling down!

Hit the Full Article link below to see the rest of this week’s issue!

(Editor’s Note: After the TGS, you’d think that things would go back to their “normal” pace in the gaming industry, but see, the gaming industry isn’t all that “normal” to begin with. Harhar. As the Chesire Cat once told Alice: “We’re all mad here.” Now, if you might remember, our 13th Issue of QuickJump QuickPeek rolled out early, which means this edition might cover some news from last week which weren’t included in the previous issue. Yes, it’s not “normal” procedure as QuickPeek posts go. And we’re saying that with a disembodied Chesire grin.)

A few days ago, we ended the previous TGS Special Edition of QuickJump QuickPeek with a series of open questions. Well, if Master Yoda had anything to say about it, it’d go somewhere along the lines of “Rumors lead to questions. Questions lead to TGS. TGS leads to answers. And answers… lead to more questions… and the eventual Hamill-tendency to scream out ‘Nooooo!'”

This week though, it’s anything but a miserable negative outburst. We’re getting some answers all right. With us having the tendency of screaming out ‘”Yeeeees!” instead. How so? Let’s see, shall we? M33’s identity (i.e. Dark AleX, Mathiuelh, et. al.) revealed, Halo 3 week, Folding@Home‘s ongoing success, building anticipation for the Wii Zapper… Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here though! Get busy with your mouse and start scrolling down!

It’s a great week for the PSP party. Heroes have returned – or well, revealed themselves for who they are, to be more specific – and heroes have finally emerged despite being an underdog of three. And despite the homebrew wars raging strong as ever, it seems as if both sides of the coin are doing rather well.

Following a rather painful statement about the ultimate tease for the homebrew community, Team M33 finally released the their PSP CFW 3.71. Yeah, their prior announcement revealed that they have already finished working on the CFW, but had disappointingly also said that they would go on a hiatus before its actual release.

It seems that reasons for their indefinite “vacation from the PSP scene” include: 1) their efforts to “eradicate all of this rotted side of the world,” 2) to teach a lesson, and 3) “hackers-wannabe that modify a couple of files and want to be acclaimed as a God-like.”

All that seems to be moot now as Team M33 has finally released the actual CFW the next day. As they state, it’s “a Slim&Fat Unbricker, and a 1.50 kernel patch.” All related notes are found on the links below, but what some of you guys might want to hear is that along with the latest CFW release is the formal and public announcement of Team M33’s identity.

Ever since the start, the team’s been spearheaded by Dark AleX himself all this time. Another “retired” PSP coder in it too is Mathieulh. Some of you might actually already have made the connection. It was pretty obvious. And if some of you guys were “in on the secret” since Day 1, good for you. We ourselves never did confirm nor deny it, out of respect for the developers. It’s their secret to tell the world, anyways, and we didn’t want to steal from them their right to spill the beans it themselves. But now that it is in fact been publicly and formally announced, then good for them!

Link: Team M33 PSP v3.71 CFW done, won’t be released yet
Link: Team M33 makes us wait no more: CFW v3.71 released
Download: Team M33 PSP CFW 3.71

A big ouchie to PSP unbrickers come in the form of the latest batch of Sony batteries. Fanjita himself confirms that it is indeed Pandora-proof. From our report:

Fanjita got his Sony PSP-110 battery (the fat PSP’s original batt) recently from Amazon, and it seems Sony’s been doing some patching, making it hard to be successfully converted to the ultimate universal PSP unbricker from Noobz and C+D. The homebrew coder says that even flashing an EEPROM image shows lots of errors when using the new battery.

Yeah, we hear a Hamill-tendency (“Nooooo!”) echoing from you guys. Well, from first poster BoBisChriS it did, at least. But good news is Tommy1994! has posted a guide on how to downgrade from 3.71 M33 to 1.50. And that’s done without the Pandora’s Battery. This procedure only works with TA-079 and TA-082 motherboards though, so please be advised. You’ll be needing an original firmware 1.50 file to make it run.

Link: New Sony batteries Pandora-proof

Both the PSP Slim and Crisis Core are causing a bit of a stir over at Japan. The success of Sony was so great that it actually beat Nintendo DS sales! The PSP Slim enjoyed a 130,000 sales count on its first day in Japan – which is aside from the purchased 65,000 units of Square Enix’s limited edition Crisis Core PSPs.

A follow up report even had bigger news: that the PSP in Japan had already sold more than every other console combined for the week ending September 23! Which say a whole damn lot, considering that Japan has so far gone for the Nintendo DS and Wii.

Wanna hear the numbers? Here’s the proof: the PSP sold 277,794 units that week, with the DS in second place with 70,523 units, and the Wii in third with 24,992 units. Now, that’s a friccin’ landslide of a win!

Link: Japan: PSP sells more than other consoles combined

Later on in the week (just yesterday, in fact), Dark AleX followed up on his promise of an ultimate unbricker. Gah! This guy’s on a roll huh? It’s an unbricker that will bring your PSP back to 3.71. You’ll also need the following Sony firmwares to run it: 1.50, 3.40, and 3.71.

Be careful with handling this hack though. Dark AleX warns that those who want to unbrick their PSPs should only use dumps of their own PSPs. Using a dump from another PSP will lead to further bricking or idstorage corruption. Other notes are included in the readme file, which is in Spanish. If you no hablo español, we advise you to check out the forum release thread as linked in the article behind the jump.

Link: Dark AleX’s Despertar Cementerio – universal PSP Fat and Slim unbricker

The updates just keep on coming. The PSP Slim is getting much stronger (whether as proven by its sales figures, game library, or utility functions to be incorporated in the future), and the homebrew community is still very much alive. Which is like, the best of both worlds for everyone! Oh and hey! We sense something coming from StrmnNrmn in the next couple of days. If you remember his announcement, Daedalus R13 could roll out within the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled for that here!

– QJ.Net’s PSP Team

The great black beauty that is the PS3 powerhouse just downed a whole bottle of liquid… err… Ocelot. Much to say, this week brings more good news for the PlayStation 3 family. And this early right out of TGS, we’re already starting to see proof of Sony’s upwards swing towards a healthy future. Healthy here could also be taken in the clinical sense.

Yep, just last week, Folding@Home finally broke their first record: Stanford University’s research project on diseases and molecular folding has reached the Petaflop level. Now, they’ve actually already broken a second record withing a week. As senior development manager (R&D dept.) Noam Rimon revealed, “this time the aggregated computation power of the PS3 consoles – by themselves – has crossed the Petaflop line.”

What makes this so amazing? It’s because if you calculate the executed processing done by the PS3s alone (meaning we don’t count the processing shouldered by other clients like Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X), it’s already reached the P-flop mark. The PlayStation 3 OS has contributed as much as 1020 TFLOPS out of the total 1285. Man. Imagine where the F@H project would be now if all you PS3 owners out there didn’t contribute? Awe inspiring, much? Hell… join our team while you’re at it!

Link: Folding@Home update: PS3 breaks Petaflop barrier on its own
Join: QJ.net Folding@Home Team: #52781

Hark! The climax of the MGS series is at hand. Or at least… the hands-on teaser (i.e. demo) for the climax is nigh. It’s confirmed all righ, straight from Ryan Payton of Kojima Productions himself, no less. A Metal Gear Sold 4 demo is in the works. And what’s keen about this bit of news is that the demo is in English.

Details about when the release date for the MGS4 demo haven’t been revealed, but Payton does leave us on a good note with “Hopefully I can make an announcement about that soon, but right now, the focus is on making the English demo.”

Link: Metal Gear Solid 4 English demo in the works

An interesting video was posted online of how it’s possible to convert your HD-DVD purchases into Blu-ray content that’s readable on your very own PS3. We know how there are some movies out there that are HD-DVD exclusive, and maybe some of you have always wanted to take a sampling of some of them.

The video works as a guide on how to convert the content without any re-encoding or loss of quality. Once converted, the content can then be burned onto a Blu-ray disc or multiple DVDs. Check it out for yourself via the link below.

Link: Video: HD-DVD exclusives converted to Blu-ray, playable on PS3

Everyone’s indeed keeping an eye out for LittleBigPlanet. After all of the screenshots and videos we’ve seen of the social-interactive game, it doesn’t take much to realize how awesome its potential can get. Analyst Michael Pachter is taking the anticipation to the next level though. He believes that LittleBigPlanet is a console mover.

He also made a remark on how financial targets could be affected by such titles like LittleBigPlanet:

The game is really innovative, and I think it adds a family element that is so far missing from both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 […] If Sony doesn’t cut price at all during its fiscal year, they will probably miss their 11 million shipment target. However, a price cut early in 2008 should spark sales, and their line-up of LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo 5, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4 (PS3, Xbox 360) should help move consoles.

Link: Pachter: LittleBigPlanet a console mover

The PS3 is indeed a big mover in more ways than one, and in varying fields of interest and expertise. From the medical to the social, from the financial to the media formats. How does the PS3 move you? Apparently, “Rumble” now isn’t only used to describe a controller feature.

– QJ.Net’s PS3 Team

Yep, the day of reckoning has finally arrived. Halo 3 has been released and everyone’s just reeling in shock, to say the least. Have any of you guys seen sunlight since the 25th? No? Well, chances are you’ve missed out on a couple of news.

Let’s get the most obvious and biggest news done with first though. Yes, Halo 3 is out… in case you’ve been living under a rock the size of New Jersey. Yes, there’s been a lot of irksome news prior to the release. Our previous QuickPeek did had a roll on all the Halo 3 leakage. But it’s all water under the bridge now, and we’ve formally welcomed the Chief back to our consoles.

A special treat from us, QJ.Net’s 360 Team: a 2-part review of Halo 3!

Link: Halo 3 is here… Are you ready to finish the fight?
Link: QJ Review: Halo 3 (Part 1 of 2)
Link: QJ Review: Halo 3 (part 2 of 2: multiplayer madness and more)

For one to say that Halo 3 would be successful could be said to be a gross understatement. For one, Michael Pachter had predicted a couple of weeks ago that Halo 3 would have raked in 3 million in sales in its first 12 days. Well, what do you know? In the first 24 hours alone, it’s already raked in a staggering US$ 170 million! Whew! Talk about getting hit by a runaway Phantom drop ship!

Link: Record breaking retail sales for Halo 3 on Day One
Link: Halo 3 pulls in US$ 170 million worth of sales in 24 hours

Woes seem to plague the massive online empire that Microsoft has built though. Many a gamer expected to finally finish the fight, but were rather disappointed when they stumbled on some inconveniences. Certain issues that 360 gamers are currently facing now come in the form of either of the following:

1. a Halo 3 Game Save bug
2. Halo 3 “Cannot Read Disc” errors
3. the inaccessibility of GamerCards

Bungie and Microsoft are of course doing what they can to help ease of some pressure points. Dude, if you’ve got 170-mil worth of sales in the first 24 hours, then that probably gives youa sizeable number of people trying to log onto XBL for some online pwnage. You could probably expect to hit a couple of bottlenecks eventually.

Link: Bungie: We’re investigating Halo 3 Game Save Bug
Link: Spartans cry: It’s raining Halo 3 disc errors
Link: Xbox GamerCards inaccessible due to Halo 3

In other non-Halo-related news, the Half-Life fan’s dreams are about to reach fulfillment. The Orange Box has finally obtained Gold status. Yep, it’s done and very much ready for mass production and distribution. The game is to be released on October 10, and the whole bundle will include Half-Life, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress, and Portal.

Following the Halo 3 release though, critics have been saying the Half-Life release couldn’t have come at a worse time. We’ll see though, because of course, the Orange Box offers something else than Chiefy does… As they say… it’s like comparing Apples Halos and Oranges.

Link: The Orange Box goes gold

We’re pretty sure some of you have already finished Halo 3 now. But as always, be mindful of the other gamers out there who haven’t yet: spoilers are frowned upon in the comments section, and, judging from comments in previous articles, it can get messy when you have the whole of QJ Commenterlandia drown you with some bashing.

– QJ.Net’s Xbox 360 Team

So Nintendo really wasn’t all that present during the TGS. However, that doesn’t mean to say that they were totally absent from the gaming industry as a whole. A couple of big news cropped up for the Nintendo console as well. Everyone must still be having fun with Metroid Prime, but even with that, a couple of upcoming titles seem to make us home in on the target.

The official boxart and fact sheet on the upcoming Zelda-Zapper title have finally been revealed. Not only that, but the actual name of the game has been confirmed: Link’s Crossbow Training. It was a title that was unofficially confirmed last week, but now, we finally get the full details on the Wii Zapper bundle of joy.

You’ll be using the nunchuk to control Link’s movements, while pointing the Wii Zapper on the screen will allow you to aim. The game will have three modes: Target Shooting, Defender, and Ranger. There’ll be over 25 levels and can be played by four players.

Link: Link’s Crossbow Training: Game info, launch date revealed

Retro Studios isn’t one to shy from proclaiming to the world how much effort they’ve put into their little labor of love – which we’re all enjoying very much, since you’re asking. The developers of the game have indeed pushed the Wii console, and we’re not talking about sales here (which is well over the 200,000 mark now, btw).

The developers took some time making sure that the Metroid feel of the game wasn’t lost in the Wii remote controls. This is the same thing that Nintendo had to deal with in developing Phantom Hourglass for the DS: maintaining the Zelda feel of the game despite new controls.

Hardware limitations weren’t that much of a problem either. Art director Todd Keller was quoted to have said that the Wii is “a fairly decently powerful game system as fas as polygons go.” He continued by saying that depth shaders might not be the best facet of the Wii engine, however it does excel on rendering good color palettes.

Link: Retro Studios: pushing the Wii with Metroid Prime 3

Brawl, of course, had its regular luge of updates. From finding out that annoying Mr. Resetti from Animal Crossing would be making an appearance to seeing a whole slew of trophies to be won, what did catch our attention was Solid Snake finally landing on the DOJO site. And it’s about time! He’s been confirmed to be in Super Smash Bros. Brawl since way back when, after all.

As you may have assumed since day one, Snake’s hitting the Smash arena with his very own set of gadgetry and weapons. His arsenal includes hand grenades, the Nikita missile launcher as well as the Cypher recon camera.

Link: Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Snake’s moves and special weapons

Meanwhile, one of the biggest news to hit the internet this week was of Nintendo’s stock value. Right now, because of the continuing success of the Wii console and its handheld brother, the NDS, the Big N’s stock value has soared way up to the top second ranking – right below Toyota!

Who gets to shine under the bright light of Nintendo then? Other big name brands such as Mistubishi and Canon have been left down the ranks as Nintendo zoomed up. Nintendo’s shares have gained a current market value of JPÂ¥ 8.38 trillion. That’s as much as around US$ 73.38 billion. Their growth has been more than a fourfold spike compared to the last couple of years.

Link: Nintendo stock value soars high, second highest in Japan

More updates next week. And ho ho ho! Don’t forget! Phantom Hourglass gets released for the Nintendo DS! Suh-weet!

– QJ.Net’s Nintendo Wii Team

On to general gaming news, here’s one that we’re all affected by. And though it’s been triggered by 360-exclusive game Halo 3, the matter here is something that just tugs a rather raw and painful wound on our sides. Now the whole “boy strangles sister” thing turned out to be nothing but a (not-so-elaborate) hoax. The only thing that has yet to be confirmed though is whether the remark that JT made on that incident was real or not. Rumors and speculation aside, we did have a bit of scandal of or relating to Halo 3 and Jack Thompson.

The first came in the form of an attempt by the attorney to pull a temporary restraining order on the release of the game. Fortunately for the Master Chief fans, the game got a timely release on the 25th anyways. But not to be unfazed by this, Thompson had decided to use a different tactic – a tactic that we probably all already heard of before.

He sent his 15 year old son to Target with an objective to purchase Halo 3. For those who are clueless, Halo 3 has been given an “M for Mature” rating and should only be sold to those aged 17 and above. Nonetheless, JT’s son, without producing any sort of identification card, had managed to buy the game in his first try.

Now, Thompson is aiming to prove that the current game age rating system is majorly flawed and that serious revisions have to be made on it to make it more effective.

Link: Jack Thompson seeks TRO for Halo 3’s release
Link: This time it’s Target: Jack Thompson’s 15-year-old son buys Halo 3

Honorable Mention: Intergalactic… planetary… planetary… intergalactic

Despite the number of posts that we had which were “out there” – this meaning Space-related posts talking about Mars and whatnot – what we want to put under a microscope here today is our very own planet. Ok, not so much as under the microscope because it most definitely wouldn’t fit, but you get the (continental) drift.

What’s the world going to look like 250 million years from now? Well, just in case you haven’t been in touch with the “Geo” in NatGeo, then you might have missed out on the thoery of Pangea Ultima. Some of us have probably read that some 250 million years ago, there were no continents back then: just a giant mass of land scientists now call Pangaea. Pangaea Ultima however, happens 250 million years from today.

We’re going to go back to having one giant land mass, almost looking exactly like it did 250 million years ago. The interesting to note here… Well, we’re just tossing around the idea that, come 250 million years, region-locked games would be a by-gone thing!

Link: The Earth 250 million years from now: Pangaea Ultima

We had a post early this week about the latest ViDoc that Bungie released right before Halo 3 hit retail shelves. And despite it being the hardest-hitting title for the Xbox 360 (or any other home entertainment launch, as the sales figure have proven), even other console owners are affected by the game and have some rather glowing comments to voice out. One such example is this very friendly comment from Zocks2099.

The comment did make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, despite it being short and sweet. Both shabghai360 (who got the previous Comment of the Week, btw) and Mic2000 agree that seeing a PS3 user making a positive comment on the 360 blog is indeed a breath of fresh air. Mic2000 even suggest we give Zocks2099 an award, and frankly, we agree. Zocks2099, you’re the Comment of the Week!