It is a competitive music game by THQ and Planet Moon Studios that is made for the Wiimote. After taking a look at the user interface and art style it would be easy to compare this game to Guitar Hero or Rock Band but the game play has more in common with Parappa The Rapper and Bust a Groove on PSOne.

Rather than using a dedicated controller the game is build around just using the Wiimote. You wave the Wiimote wand like a conductor in time with the arrow pattern on the screen in time with the music. If you do good you score points and charge up attacks to zap the other band. Winning a match requires you to build up an attack and mess up the other player at the right time.

Each match is against two cute exaggerated cartoony bands of competing musical styles and depending how you do it will switch between the dominant music style. You can sort of think of it as Conductor Waggle Hero.

There are thirty songs that were recorded in five different musical styles. There is Rock/Metal, Funk/Hip-Hop, Country Western, Latin, and Marching Band versions of each song and the covers had a pretty good production. I love that it had different musical versions of Blitzkrieg Bop, Jungle Boogie, Man of Constant Sorrow and Whoomp! (There it is).

It was pretty different to see Latin and Country songs in a music game, I freaking loved the fact that one of the bands were Mexican "Day of the Dead" skeletons. It is rated T for Teen for some very mild lyrics but I still think that this game would be perfect for kids.

Before I got this game I almost forgot how much fun a game can be using motion sensitive controls. It involves a bit more coordination and interaction by waving your hand around and it is a lot more fun that just hitting buttons in time and tapping on a gamepad. I would love to see this game ported to the Xbox 360 once the motion sensing "Newton" controller comes out. It is a shame that there is no online game play but there is a lot of in room versus fun.

My cats found the Wiimote strap to be hypnotizing as I tapped the controller to the beat. My game hand was bitten several times much to my surprise.

The game does not take it self too seriously and that is a good thing. It is not a mega-production like other music games you might think of but it is in all a pretty simple but ultimately fun music game. This game is "Full of Wii".

It’s not like anyone stole a virtual car, ran over a bunch of virtual people, have virtual sex with a virtual hooker and then set them on virtual fire and got the virtual money back.

My theory is that this post should generate a whole slug of angry hastily worded comments by folks that can not stop themselves from hitting the comment submit button when they see the words Grand Theft Auto IV, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

The report named Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, and Nanya as being on the Xbox manufacturing gravy train.

This would put the Jasper motherboard on track to be manufactured in August. That means that I am probably going to be buying a new Xbox 360 in early September. The Jasper motherboard is going to feature a 65nm CPU and 65nm GPU that is going to use less power, generate less heat, have a quieter cooling system and hopefully not melt down and die in a marathon session of Gears of War 2.

Now the report also named TSMC as a candidate to manufacture the Valhalla unified CPU/GPU super chip but I am not so sure that they are going to get it done by winter 2009 and we might not see it until early 2010. The things that I’ve learned puts them in the early stages of working on the Valhalla chip set and it is essentially a new CPU/GPU and is going to require a new motherboard, cooling systems and testing regimen for it. That would give them about 20 months to completely rework the Xbox 360 chipset to get Valhalla finished by Winter holiday shopping season 2009. If you see Nick Baker or Todd Holmdahl offer to buy them an espresso cause they have a lot of work to do.

I am currently reading Dean Takahashi’s two book on the making of the Xbox and the Xbox 360.

LIVE Activity for week of 4/28 (GTA is #1)

Rumor: Wii Samba de Amigo Has Downloadable Songs

Hardware Analyst Breaks Down Cost Of Xbox 360ís 120GB Hard Drive

Sony: European PS3 sales surpass 360's

Grand Theft Auto IV Video Comparison: MTV Vs. MeTV

Rockstar patches PS3 version of Grand Theft Auto IV

Zelnick: GTA IV is glitch-free, Us: There's a GTA IV patch coming today

Rumor: Wii Samba de Amigo Has Downloadable Songs

PS2, Wii Rock Band to get new song packs on July 15

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technical Preview now available

Here are the reasons why I am glad that I chose the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV instead of getting a PlayStation 3. Sure this could be considered gratuitous fanboy baiting. I've been working with computer graphics for over two decades now so forgive me if this post is a little Siggraph wonky.

1. Higher Native Resolution : The native resolution of GTA IV on the Xbox 360 is 720p while the PS3 is "640p". A game's native resolution is the dimensions that the image is rendered at before it is scaled to match the resolution setting on your HDTV. The PS3 hype about games at 1080p is pretty much pure hype. There are no complex 3d games that run at that resolution. The graphics on the PS3 version of the game is rendered at a lower resolution and stretched more giving it a more blurred final image, while the 360 game had more pixels at the start and ends up a crisper image.

2. The ANA chip : The Xbox 360 has hardware based scaling of images to scale images to whatever resolution is needed on the fly. Since this is done in a dedicated chip this leaves the Xbox 360 CPU and GPU free to work on the game. The PS3 requires that all graphics scaling to be done in software by the CPUs. Granted it has a lot of CPU power but hardware based graphics scaling is a much more elegant way of rendering 3d images at multiple resolutions.

3. More available RAM : The PS3 operating system is a memory hog that eats up a lot of system memory. This means that it needs to either load a massive install on the PS3 hard drive to cache texture data or use lower resolution textures. The Xbox 360 on the other hand as a very efficient minimalist operating system (It's not Windows) that leaves a lot of memory resources left over for game developers.

4. CPU GPU architecture : The PS3 CELL architecture is great at chomping long numerical calculations but breaking down computational tasks to that many CPU cores takes a serious juggle to get them all working at an even work load. Using multiple CPUs didn't work out so hot for the Sega Saturn. You can thank Microsoft's Nick Baker for the awesome work he did on the 360 graphics capabilities. I have pretty good hunch that he is working on the early planning phase of the "Xbox 720" or the Xbox Valhalla chip set.

5. Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers! WOOO! - MS CEO Steve Balmer : Microsoft's first product was a programming language. Software development tools has been a major part of their DNA from day one and both the Xbox and Xbox 360 were designed to be a very effective platform for game developers. To Microsoft development tools are not something to be trifled with. The Xbox 360 game development software libraries are hands down the best in the world from what I've read about them and the company has worked a long time in garnering a strong supportive relationship with software developers for their platform. It is easier for game developers to get results quicker using the Xbox tools then the PS3. Just look at what a major programmer on Rock Band had to say bout it.

6. Faster optical disc access : Blu-Ray might be great for movies but when it comes to moving data off a disc and into RAM quickly for games DVD is a better way to go. The Xbox 360 version does not require you to hand over close to four gigs of hard drive space for an install that needs to be there for as long as you own the game.

7. Exclusive downloaded content : Microsoft probably had to whisper some sweet nothings into Take 2's ears and possibly open up their pocket book to guarantee that extra downloaded content for GTA IV would only come out on Xbox 360. We don't know if it is going to be new weapons, cars, missions or full islands but I know that it is going to rock and the only way to get it is via Xbox Live

8. In-game messaging via Xbox Live : I can hit the guide button on the Xbox 360 and see if my friend BBQ is on his Xbox 360 and send him a message inviting him to play a game right from the game. We then might throw it down in GTA IV or kick it Puzzle Fighter HD style with a cross game invite.

9. In-game network data : I can tell what level my friend BBQ is playing from looking at his gamertag. that is pretty Meta Web 2.0.

10. Achievements and Gamerscore : I can tell how far he is and if he has gotten that taxi service achievement yet.

11. On the Xbox 360 version The network code in the game does not crash the game, the multiplayer servers are actual dedicated Xbox Live servers and not GameSpy and there is no file corruption glitch in the 360 version.

12. Better controllers : There is rumble in all the wireless gamepads on the Xbox 360. The old default PS3 controller has always feel way to light to me and I do like having rumble. GTA IV makes use of the analog triggers for driving and the 360s top triggers are much better for precision driving controls.

I am sure that there is a lot of fun to be had on the PS3 version of the game, but I think the best way to experience it is on the Xbox 360.

Update : Ah! I just realized I published the pre-spell checked version. Doh!

They make a lot of money off accessories for the 360 and despite the HD-DVD player only having a 3% attach rate they made money off each one sold.

I still would be pretty shocked if Robbie Bach did not whip out an external Blu-Ray player for the 360 at E3 along side the “Newton” motion sensing controller.

I have never hid the fact that I don't own a PS3. I own a PSOne, PlayStation 2 and a Playstation Portable. I only own one Microsoft game system and I remember just a few posts ago I was being accused of being a super pro-Sony fanboy when I reported on reasons behind the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death.

"But according to your gametag you have not finished the game". Oh for Pete's sake. I had to buy this game in the store the day after the midnight launch. You can check my "Off the Boat" Achievement to confirm that. Excuse me for trying to having a life and a job outside of this blog. There were some sites that got early copies and they got to publish exclusive early reviews that were detailed and full of all sorts of sugar coated praise for the game. That is a little ethically troubling. I will play a game until I think I have enough to base my review on. There are also thousands of other reviewers that are not as generous as to hand out their Xbox Live gamertag so you can give them flack about where they are at in the game.

The PS3 version can be hit with a hard lock during the opening intro causing the game to be unplayable after that point and sometimes random locks and crashes rumors to be the connection with the PlayStation Network. The Xbox 360 version has not been hit with any of those issues and this is a pretty big failure for Sony. With major games like this game publishers will send testers, software developers and hardware engineers to special clients like Rockstar to help them polish their games. The 360 version went off without a hitch while the PS3 version launched with some pretty sucky bugs that can cause the game to crash and lock up.

We don't know if the extra downloaded Content is going to be extra weapons, extra mission, extra cars or whole new islands. But as soon as they come out you better bet your sweet hiny that they are going to fly off the virtual shelves and Microsoft is going to toot their horn about them. It is just business but it was a pretty major coup for them to get exclusive extra content for GTA IV for later on this year. Probably right around the holiday shopping rush.

Yeah the PS3 version requires a one time install. If you have a 40 gig PS3 I am not sure how many games you can have install like this before you start to run out of time.There is only a few moments of loading when you start the game on the Xbox 360 but there is no load time in the Xbox 360 version driving around the city and doing most missions.

There are anecdotal internet rumors that there Xbox version does not have as many crowd scenes and the lighting is not the same as the PS3 version but I have not seen anything to complain about. There is also anecdotal internet rumors that the PS3 version does not run at a high native resolution and frame rate as the Xbox 360 version.

All of these are pretty stupid internet fanboy arguments and I am sure that both versions are a blast to play but I am sure that there will be Internet fanboys arguing about their favorite video game platform for a long time. Colecovision Donkey Kong FTW!

The Buzz! game series are game show quiz games build around four simple remote control button controllers that are wired into a common hub and then plugged into the PS2 via a USB cable. The big red button at the top of the controller blinks and the many wires and blinking lights were very entertaining for my cats. It bears a striking resemblance to the Big Button Controllers that Microsoft includes with Sceen It! but the Buzz! controllers came out first and does not require messing with batteries, but the mess of wires is a decent trade off. The controller ergonomics was about right and it felt like a real game show would. I've sort of wondered if a super simple would really appeal to non-gamers but it's worked it's magic with Kymberly.

The Buzz! paddle controllers were bundled with the game. The series was designed in Europe and gained a decent following.

The Buzz! quiz master character is a sort of a muppet looking semi annoying smart Aleck with big thick glasses (He remind me of Terrence and Philip from South Park). The audio dialog and graphic design of the game is very well put together.

It is pretty cool that there is still plenty of PS2 games being developed and published but there is a good market for PS2 games. There is over a hundred million PS2 systems out there and the PS3 had some PS2 backwards compatibility before it got cut in later models.

There are several titles in the series but since Kymberly is quite a Hollywood trivia buff she is very well suited to the Hollywood Quiz game. The game featured a bunch of trivia questions spanning decades of Hollywood movies. Kymberly has won every single game that we have played together. She complained a bit about how I was originally faster than her when it came to quick button pressing but her overwhelming knowledge of Hollywood minutia make her unstoppable. It is not really a game for hardcore gamers like me but it is one of the only games that she will turn on the PS2 and play on her own and want to play it with me.

The story follows Niko Bellic a Serbian veteran of the Yugoslavian civil war who came to Liberty City to meet up with his cousin Roman. Roman is a screw up who has gotten fat, lazy and in debt with various organized crime groups. Niko is quickly drawn into the criminal underworld and has to do the dirty work of the gangsters and eventually take them on and take them out. Unlike other GTA protagonists Niko is pretty personable and the story is truly compelling.

The graphics are a massive step beyond previous GTA games and previous GTA like games on the Xbox 360. I did like Saints Row and I absolutely loved Crackdown but now that GTA IV is out I don't see myself spending my time to go back and play them when I can now play GTA IV.

The gameplay is a pretty decent evolution of previous GTA games. There is new enhanced driving and shooting game play mechanics but anyone that has played GTA games should have no problem picking up and getting a hold of GTA IV. It takes criminal violence and action to new grounds.

Instead of some period setting in the past the game is back in Liberty City. This iteration of Liberty City is not just roughly based on New York but the hard work of the Rockstar New York offices has raised the representation of the city to a whole new level that has never been seen in video games. It is not a street by street clone but it looks smells and feels like New York. It is an extremely impressive work of graphic art. It has been reported to be the most expensive video game to develop at around a budget of 100 Million. There was a pretty good size army of animators and programmers working on this game for a very long time and it shows in a big way.

It is not all just criminal villainy but there is a new dating sub-plot where Niko must take a girl out to dinner, a show, playing pool or bowling. The impressively rich mini-games could very well hold their own as XBLA arcade games. When you end your date you can try and get a kiss or press your luck and try to spend the night. When you do manage to get lucky with the lady the Xbox 360 achievement is called Warm Coffee is a nod to the make out minigame that got accidentally included in GTA San Andreas and generated a lot of controversy.

The music and radio stations are probably the weakest part of the game. I found the music of GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas is much more notable. There is tons of stuff to listen to but the tracks are not as bitchin as the other games. The voice acting is really top notch. Ricky Gervais and Wil Wheaton were contributing actors for the TV programs. The dialog is well done. The writing is genuinely funny and I found myself chuckling along.

This game integrates simulated cell phone and in game Internet use that is really innovative. Liberty City does not just look like a breathing city is communicates like one. Niko with send and receive calls and messages as he carries out is dirty work.

This is the first console GTA game to have Internet multiplayer. There was Ad-hoc in-room multiplayer with the GTA PSP games. Last night my pal BBQ and I had a pretty good time in a multiplayer death match with a bunch of other virtual gangsters over Xbox Live.

This was the first GTA game to be released on both PlayStation and Xbox on the same day but there were a number of differences between the version of game. Microsoft has secured the exclusive rights to extra downloadable episodes. The PS3 version requires a nine minute install that takes several gigs of hard drive space and has a corruption file save glitch that causes random lockups. That is not so good for Sony since they really needed this game to help sell the PS3.

This game is not for kids. If you let your kids play this game than you suck as a parent, pure and simple. The games writing is extremely self-aware of the controversies and reputation of the previous games. It is unapologetic in it's content but it is not as bloody as other games on the market. I completely agree that kids should be protected from content that is inappropriate for them. There is millions of gamers all over the world that are over 18 and I don't want the medium of video games to be regulated and censored to the point of blandness.

I don't think that government regulation of video games in other countries has been effective. I have a reader of my blog who lives in the UAE (hey Monkey! I see they just banned GTA IV in UAE. Now you would never ever think of defying the goverment ban and order a copy over the net would you?) and while they have banned Call of Duty 4 and God of War it is readily available played and enjoyed by gamers. Just because something is regulated and banned by the government doesn't mean that it does not exist. You can't buy Gears of War, Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 or River Raid for the Atari 2600 in Germany but I would hardly call Germany a bastion of family friendly media. Of course I played Mortal Kombat and Night Trap for the Sega CD and my mind was warped by it. You can go ask Joe Lieberman and Jack Thompson to confirm the extent of mind-warping power of casual exposure to Night Trap.

If you love video games, own an Xbox 360 or PS3 and are old enough to buy a six pack of beer than there is no real reason to not get copy of this game. The game was worth the wait that Rockstar needed to polish the game it its shine. It lives up to the immense expectations and lives up to every single word of the hype.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Responds To Microsoft's Proposed Motion Controller
"All I can say today is, it is not that easy to develop software which leverages the characteristics of the Wii Remote," he said. "We are not concerned about what other companies may do."
Oh.. Diss! Kyoto-Waggle controller style

'Grand Theft Auto' Steals the Spotlight
Jack Thompson debates Adam Sessler on GTA IV

Activision CEO says US economy could cause console price drop
Or it could mean that the European, Canadian and Japanese markets just got more important because their money is actually still worth something.

New Street Fighter IV screens punch out classic bosses

Looks great but I am still sick of playing people that only know how to play as M. Bison and his damn super combos

GTAIV Budget Tops Gaming Records

It looks like they topped Shenmue and Metal Gear Solid 4 to have the biggest development budget.

Iwata Teases Possible Wii Storage Solution

Well it is long passed time. My Wii is still full and I have not bought a Wii VC game in a long time because of it.

Another Manufacturer Says Xbox 360 Blu-ray Coming This Year

This is yet another bit of confirmation from a source at Asus that Microsoft wants some Blu-Ray drives to sell this year.

Chewing Pixels: 'GTA IV: The Immigrant Issue'

GameStop may have prioritized walk-in GTA IV customers

Yet another example of why pre-ordering games that don't ship with hardware is pointless

Track list revealed for DS Guitar Hero

This is going to ROCK

Obama Says Games Are Raising America's Children

I am currently reading his book. I agree with his tech policies 100%.

We went over on a shipping off party, gave him some care packages, told him how much we are going to miss him and how proud we are of him.

I got him Grand Theft Auto : Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto : Vice City Stories for the PSP. He has played GTA games before but didn't have a copy of the PSP games. They were both twenty bucks a piece and I am sure that he is going to have fun until he comes home again.

Despite him being several years younger than me he is already a veteran of a foreign war. I am pretty sure that he can handle a over exaggerated video game gangster story in his down time on one of the greatest weapons of war ever build by mankind.

All the talk of simulated video game violence seems a bit silly when you realize that there are people shipping off to a very real war and putting themselves in harm's way every single day.

Oh no! We can't have them playing GTA!

Just click over to the right to the System tab and then down to Family Settings.

Select Console Controls and then Game Ratings

Then we need to set a Pass Code, so go down to the brilliantly titled "Set Pass Code" tab.

Pick the highest level that you want your little ones playing. Since my kitties are not that hardcore they are going to stick to E rated games. I do worry about the level of sex, violence and hairballs that they are exposed to.

Enter a pass code using the directional pad or buttons, I am going with the first part of the "Konami Code", That's "Up Up Down Down"

Then set a pass code reset answer in case you ever forget it. I went with "Scramble" since it is an early Konami game that I used to play on my Colecovision.

Then when anyone using the Xbox tries to play a Xbox 360 game, game demo, Xbox Live Arcade game or Xbox one game that is past the E rating that you set it will ask for the pass code.

If the correct pass code is not entered then the game will not start.

There not they don't have to make a federal case out of it, You get to enjoy GTA IV and the wee ones little brains are saved from video game induced decay.

Additional I would suggest keeping your M-Rated games in a seperate folder and not keeping it in the same place as the E rated games.

Talk to your kids and explain that you trust them but you need them to be responsable partners. Being responsable is a part of the privilege of owning a video game system. Back in my days we had a Colecovision and we had to walk ten miles in the snow to buy these things called "Cartridges".

Don't let Jack Thompson, lazy tabloid media and glory hogging pias politicians muck things up.

I remember watching Senator Joe Lieberman and is friends call Nintendo and Sega before congress because of Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. Since the video game industry and video game fans have worked very hard to create a fair rating system for games and it is your responsibility as a gamer to keep it working and that means giving a darn and caring what your kids are playing with.

I just got a copy of Dean Takahashi's book Opening the Xbox, It covers the creation of the original Xbox and I am due to get his book on the making of the 360 any day now. It is going to be interesting to compare his version of events to what I was able to figure out.

Things I learned to far from the first book :
The PlayStation 2 really really freaked out Microsoft
Sega started making the Dreamcast 2
There was a proposal to make an "Xboy" hand held game player in 2002
the former executives for WebTV really hated the Xbox project, (I always thought WebTV sucked hard)
the promise of a windows powered game system was used to sell the Xbox concept to Bill Gates and once the project took off they took Windows out of the picture much to the shock of Bill.

Only one more day to go until Grand Theft Auto IV hits stores!

Xbox360Achievements.org - Grand Theft Auto IV Achievement List
MTV Multiplayer » ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ — Impressions Of An Impressive First Seven Hours
GTA IV FAQ: Everything You Wanted To Know About GTA IV (So Stop Asking!)
Exclusive Reviews: Ethically Troubling?

Xbox Division Posts $89 Million Profit in Q3 on 'Robust Demand' for 360
Halo 3, Accessory Sales Key To Microsoft's Q3 Profit | Game | Life from Wired.com

Valve: No Portal sequel in 2008 - Xbox 360 Fanboy

Casting call put out for original Xbox Live show

Gaming consoles helping HDTV adoption

Nintendo to end Wii shortages? - Digital Spy

Guilty Gear Creators Take On Steampunk With BattleFantasia | Game | Life from Wired.com

Video game demos require the developers to fork their code and divert programming and art resources away from the final game and focus on the interim release of the demo. The certification and quality assurance testing of demos is not a small or simple effort. Now I am only talking about demos of full games and not Xbox Live Arcade games. I think demos there are sweet and a good idea.

Also a good game trailer should be composed of a good plenty amount of actual game play running on a real in-game engine. I have a hard time thinking about a game that I've purchased because of a demo but if a trailer is done well they can be very persuasive. Sure there are times where that I demo has helped me decide to get a game but more likely they have helped me decide on the games that I would NOT be getting because I didn't like the demos.

I would rather see a game developer put out several good game trailers rather than focusing on a big demo several hundred megs of work.