If it seems to you that HBO is down, blame the weather: a lightning strike has apparently taken out the router that feeds HBO's DNS servers, which make make the site unviewable for a lot of folks. At the moment, we can still see it, but that's probably because we have one of the "lazy" DNS servers Louis Wu mentions in his post.
On the assumption that most people can't see the site right now, here's the entirety of that post:
Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Silicon Valley startup Transitive Corporation, has stated in an interview with Wired that his company's QuickTransit approach to emulation will allow the Xbox 2 to run games that run on today's Xbox. However, despite this, the company refuses to name any of their six clients, all of which are described as "OEM PC manufacturers" which would not be Microsoft unless you called the Xbox a PC (which is a no-no).
Geek toy site Engadget has put up a pair of photos that purport to be designs for the successor to Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. GameSpot is reporting that these are most likely fakes, but on the off chance one is a real design under consideration, you could go take a look.
MacSoft has put out a patch to Halo on the Mac to keep pace with the recent update to the PC version. This one supposedly addresses issues with GeForce 6800 cards and patches to "exploitable code". Thanks Nick at Halo Mac Development for the story and HBO for hosting a list of mirrors of the patch.
GameSpot is reporting that ATI's CFO, Terry Nickerson, has been quoted as saying "We're actually winding down development on some of the Microsoft product" at the Smith Barney Citigroup 2004 Technology Conference in New York. Some are taking this as evidence that the release of the Xbox 2 may be closer than indicated by statements by Steve Ballmer indicating it would not be earlier than August of 2005.
Thought PC Halo would never get patched again? Well you might think. But you weren't counting on the wonder that is Windows XP Service Pack 2 to create a remote crash possibility, did you? No. Well, after tomorrow it won't matter-- Bungie will release a hotfix for PC Halo to close this as-yet-unexploited hole.
The Inquirer is reporting today that MS told them at the ECTS show in London that there are plans to allow PC games and Xbox games to share codebases. The Inquirer describes this as a "shift from its past strategy".
Achronos has posted up at Bungie.net that the Seventh Column will be shut down next week, on September 7, for major upgrades including a new look, new forums, and a new user database. Some important notes:
SPOnG has a story that says Konami is confirming that the next installment of the Silent Hill series of games will not be released for the current generation of consoles-- meaning it will instead be released on machines such as the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 2. Silent Hill 4: The Room is the latest in the series so far, due out this September.
It looks like the new Bungie.net forums are powered by IdealBB 1.5, a Windows-based online collaboration system developed by Ideal Science. (Their company is linked from the bottom of the forum pages.)
Users of the new Bungie.net site might find one thing to be problematic- linking their Xbox Live GamerTag. Although Bungie.net allows you to choose whether or not to display your GamerTag if it is linked, you can't actually link it there if it isn't already. To do that, you have to sign in to Xbox.com using the same Passport you use for Bungie.net.
Those of you with truly nothing better to do may remember that my Christmas wish to Bungie was a flexible statistics system, linked to Xbox Live, that would have hooks that external fansites could link to in order to develop their own customized leader boards.
Jake "Evergreen98" Billo of The Junkyard has put up the first of a three-part series on Xbox Live 3.0, codenamed Tsunami. Thanks to Dan Chosich for the heads-up on #HBO.
If you had an account on the old Bungie.net system and want to link it to a Passport account so you can keep your nickname, you have been warned: your last chance to do so is before this Sunday at 5 PM. After that, the non-Passport accounts will be deleted. Check Achronos' post at Bungie.net for the details.
Editor's note: this probably means that Bungie is a step closer to revealing what they've been working on for the new Bungie.net.