NewsHaven

BioShock 2 is Entitled to February’s Top Spot for U.S. Sales [Npd Group]

NewsHaven — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

BioShock 2 ended New Super Mario Bros. Wii’s two-month hold atop the U.S. console sales charts, edging the Nintendo platformer by 7,000 units to take February’s top honors.

Both sold more than 500,000 copies - BioShock 2’s 562,900 to New Super Mario Bros. Wii’s 555,600. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came in third with its 360 version. Combined with its PS3 sales the game moved 567,100 copies.

Somewhat of a surprise, Dante’s Inferno triumphed over a mixed-bag of reviews to capture the eighth and ninth positions, selling more than 460,000 copies overall. Console exclusives Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain returned respectable performances at seventh and 10th place, respectively, with Mass Effect having a one-month head start.

Here are February’s top ten games in the U.S., according to the NPD group.

01. BioShock 2 (Xbox 360) - 562,900
02. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) - 555,600
03. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) - 314,300
04. Just Dance (Wii) - 275,400
05. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) - 272,500
06. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) - 252,800
07. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) - 246,500
08. Dante’s Inferno (PS3) - 242,500
09. Dante’s Inferno (Xbox 360) - 224,700
10. Heavy Rain (PS3) - 219,300

U.S. consumers dropped $624.4 million on video games during the month of February, down 18 percent from February 2009, when software sales reached $736.7 million.

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AN ESPN VP Joins The Olbermann-Simmons Pillow Fight [Media Meltdowns]

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:35:27 +0000

ESPN Executive VP and Editor John Walsh snarks back at Keith Olbermann in today’s SportsBusiness Daily, and suddenly the Olbermann-Simmons feud has become one of those great Greek tragedies full of incest and bloodshed and men with stately white beards.

Earlier this week, Olbermann mentioned that he’d received e-mails from “some of Mr. Simmons’ bosses,” complaining that the Sports Fella had now become “the most uncontrollable, unmanageable talent in the history of ESPN.” Now Walsh — the guy who brought David Halberstam and Hunter S. Thompson to ESPN.com and who is largely responsible for that small piece of ESPN that isn’t yet the journalistic equivalent of a cymbal-clanging monkey toy — tells John Ourand:

We at ESPN are happy that Keith retains an interest in the hiring procedures at our company. We have fond memories of his collegiality and counsel for executive decision-making. But alas, we have moved on from the KO Era. His colleagues at MSNBC no doubt appreciate Keith’s management talent.

Olbermann’s response? He writes in an e-mail:

Does Walsh notice that amid the beautiful shapes and sounds of his words, he didn’t deny any of it?

ESPN’s John Walsh Weighs In On Olbermann-Simmons Feud (sub. required) [SportsBusiness Daily]

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HP rolls out ‘Let’s Do Amazing’ ad campaign

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:31:00 +0000

We’d already gotten word of HP’s new $40 million “Let’s Do Amazing” ad campaign earlier today, but the company has just now rolled out its first series of ads to give us some indication of how all that money is being spent. Somewhat curiously, for an ad campaign partly intended to reintroduce the HP brand to consumers, the ads stray pretty far beyond HP’s consumer products (including a trip to a UPS sorting facility and the Venetian’s IT department), but we do at least get to see Dr. Dre extol the benefits of HP Beats audio — not to mention a little beatboxing from Rhys Darby of “Flight of the Conchords,” who serves as the host of the ads. Head on past the break to check out the Dre ad and HP’s introduction video, and hit up the link below for the rest of the series.

Continue reading HP rolls out ‘Let’s Do Amazing’ ad campaign

HP rolls out ‘Let’s Do Amazing’ ad campaign originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ModernTube: Phils’ daddy and daughter return to spotlight

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:30:13 +0000

You remember Steve and Emily Monforto, right? They were the daddy-daughter duo that earned Big League Stew about eleventy billion hits when video of Emily’s rejection of her dad’s foul ball gift at a Phillies game went viral. They then appeared on various morning shows.

Proving that adorable extends the concept of 15 minutes, the Monfortos just made an appearance with Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 as part of a series that allows viral video stars to earn "redemption" for their filmed mishaps. While posting this is no endorsement of Tosh’s brand of humor — it’s an, uh, "acquired taste" — the clip is worth the watch for another dose of Emily. Six months after winning the Internet, she’s still the star of the show.

A big BLS head nod to Walkoff Walk and The 700 Level for the redirect

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‘Eclipse’ Trailer: Five Burning Questions Answered

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:04:00 +0000

What’s up with Kristen Stewart’s hair, for example?
By Eric Ditzian

Bryce Dallas Howard in “Eclipse”

Photo: Summit

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart’s “Eclipse” trailer has arrived, and with it only more anticipation about the film, which doesn’t arrive in theaters until the end of June. With another three months to go until then, we know you’ll be poring over the footage again and again. Here are answers to five questions you might have after that first viewing.

What’s Up With Kristen’s Hair?
The first thing you might be wondering is why Kristen Stewart’s hair looks a bit strange. The reason is that after finishing work on “New Moon” in May, Stewart chopped off her locks for her role as ’70s rocker Joan Jett in “The Runaways.” Shooting on that biopic wrapped last August, just weeks before the start of “Eclipse.” To maintain continuity with Bella Swan’s appearance in “New Moon,” Stewart was forced to don the wig you see her wearing in the “Eclipse” trailer. Some might say the do looks oddly similar to the wig Taylor Lautner had to wear in “Twilight.”

What Happened To Victoria?
Just over a minute into the trailer, we get a glimpse of the film’s central villain: Victoria. But that’s not the Victoria we know from “Twilight” and “New Moon.” That’s because last July, only weeks before “Eclipse” was due to begin filming, Bryce Dallas Howard replaced Rachelle Lefevre in the role she’d played for two movies. “I was stunned by Summit’s decision to recast the role of Victoria for ‘Eclipse,’ ” the actress said in a statement.

“It was actually a really unfortunate circumstance where the actress who everyone really cared deeply about, who has done an amazing job in this role, was unavailable,” Howard told MTV News late last year. “They were looking for someone to fill that slot. It was right before production actually happened, so of course there was intimidation there and feeling a huge responsibility to do my best.”

How Is A Human Turned Into A Vampire In The “Twilight” Universe?
A key driving point in “Eclipse” is the question of whether Pattinson’s Edward will turn Bella into a vampire. “Why are you so against me becoming like you?” she asks at one point in the trailer.

Edward’s answer is that he knows the consequences of becoming a vampire, in that immortal bloodsuckers do not age, while all their loved ones eventually die. Also, there’s the matter of how a human is transformed from a human into a vampire. The answer is that it’s unbearably painful. The process begins when a vampire pierces a human’s skin and releases venom from his glands into the human’s bloodstream. For days on end, the venom courses slowly through the human’s veins, burning ferociously as it travels and eventually causing the heart to stop pumping. It would be no easy task for Edward to inflict such pain, nor would it be easy for Bella to willingly invite it.

Why Is Everyone So Scared Of Victoria?
Why, because of her army of newborn vampires, of course. See, freshly converted vamps pose a potent threat, as they’re often uncontrollably vicious killers. Victoria has been going around Seattle slaughtering humans and building a legion of newborns. Victoria on her own is a danger that Edward and his crew could likely face. But Victoria and an army of out-of-control vampires? That’s serious cause for concern.

What, No Werewolves?!
The first “New Moon” trailer blew fans away with its first glimpse at the transformation of Lautner’s Jacob Black from human to werewolf. But if you were hoping to catch some more shape-shifting action in the “Eclipse” trailer, you’ll be disappointed.

Yet have no fear! “Eclipse” is set to feature a slew of wolf battles. You don’t think Jacob and his crew are going to walk away from a fight with Victoria’s newborn army, do you? And besides, it’s hard to complain about a lack of a hirsute Jacob when the trailer delivers what you really want: the dude flashing those famous abs.

Check out everything we’ve got on “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.”

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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Washington Nationals: Go Natinals! [2010MLBPreviews]

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:40:21 +0000

Will Leitch will be previewing/musing on every baseball team each weekday until the start of the season. You can pre-order his book and follow him on Twitter. Today: Washington Nationals.

Here’s a crazy statistic via B-Pro’s Jay Jaffe (subscription required): Last year’s attendance at Nationals (Still Doesn’t Have A Sponsor) Park, the team’s second year at the new building with the goofy center field camera angle, was 6.5 percent lower than the final year’s attendance at RFK Stadium. This is astounding. That stadium cost taxpayers $693 million, and they actually did a better job of selling tickets at the lopsided old airplane hangar. It must have been all the amenities at RFK.

Perhaps the eventual corporate sponsor can work in some sort of tie-in deal.

It’s easy to forget now, but when the Expos turned into the Nationals and headed to DC, the thought was that this was going to be a potential juggernaut in the NL East. Certainly, MLB initially treated the Nationals as well as it treated the Expos poorly. (It even saved some love for the Orioles.) The combination of a re-energized organization with a fanbase supposedly desperate for baseball — it had been 34 years since the Senators left — was considered a threat to the rest of the NL East. All was set up for them.

It hasn’t worked out that way, and the Nationals, with the help of Jim Bowden, have squandered all that goodwill and advantage. The stadium itself is unimpressive, blandly “new” and in an area of town that isn’t exactly known for its foot traffic. The team has been disorganized, confused and run, really, in a way that’s not all that dissimilar from the way the Expos were run at the end: like an organization that keeps waiting for someone to push the reset button. It’s not happening this time. It feels like an interim franchise. But it isn’t: They’ve got to make this work on their own now.

I’m as excited by Stephen Strasburg as anyone else is, but it is telling that when the Nationals earned the right to draft him, the general assumption was that the team would figure out a way to screw this up. The Nationals were the Clippers drafting Blake Griffin: Why should such a special talent have to play there? This is a long way from the initial plan, and that initial plan wasn’t put together all that long ago.

That said: The Nationals did make it work with Strasburg, and other than the bewildering signing of the corpse of Pudge Rodriguez, their offseason moves have veered toward the sane. (Chien-Ming Wang is a perfect fit.) This is beneficial to baseball as a whole. The game needs Washington to compete with the Phillies and Mets and Braves. The game doesn’t need another Kansas City, which is what the Nationals have been so far. In addition to Strasburg, Drew Storen and Ian Desmond (who I hope is happy with Penny and can stave off her villainous father) are on their way to the majors, and Jordan Zimmermann will be back by the end of the season as well. There is a rough skeleton of a team here. Still: Attendance should improve once Strasburg arrives, but it has yet to be proven that the supposed clamoring for a team in Washington is something that actually exists. I hope it’s there. But if it’s not, maybe they’ll give Montreal another chance. At least they could spell the team name right on the front of the uniform over there.

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PrimeSense talks full-body motion control at GDC, gives us a video demonstration

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:02:00 +0000

PrimeSense was formed in 2005, and unless you’re a sickly obsessed silicon junkie, you’ve probably never heard of them. All that changes today. We sat down with the company at GDC to learn more about the chip that it produces, and we left with an imagination sore from being stretched so severely. Put simply, the company manufacturers a microchip that, when paired with off-the-shelf optics, can create a 3D grid that a computer can understand. The purpose here, as you can likely glean, is to enable PlayStation Eye-like interactions, or as the company suggests, a “more natural” way to interface with devices you use every day. Rather than grabbing the remote to switch channels or snapping up that HTPC keyboard in order to flip through your stored DVD library, PrimeSense would rather you kick back on the sofa and gently flick your hands in order to turn to this week’s Gossip Girl or sort through those classic horror flicks.

It’s important to remember that PrimeSense isn’t in the business of creating hardware, but today we were shown a reference design that looks an awful lot like an enlarged webcam. The device is completely USB powered, and while the unit shown in the images and video here was obviously a standalone device, we were told that it would be possible to integrate the solution into displays and the like in the future. They also mentioned that the depth location — which enables it to map out a room and detect your entire body — was done on-chip, with only the associated middleware taxing the CPU. Still, they’ve had success running this on Atom-level processors, so there’s certainly no big horsepower hang-up preventing it from hitting up a variety of markets.

More after the break…

Gallery: PrimeSense motion control demo at GDC 2010

Continue reading PrimeSense talks full-body motion control at GDC, gives us a video demonstration

PrimeSense talks full-body motion control at GDC, gives us a video demonstration originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SOCOM 4 On The Move [Gdc10]

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Zipper Interactive’s recently revealed SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs is one of the games we were least expecting to be fully playable with the PlayStation Move controller. Can a hardcore online shooter stay competitive with a motion control scheme ?

Fortunately for the less curious SOCOM fan, the Move controller is not a requirement. The game can obviously be played with a DualShock controller. Based on my hands-on time with the Move in SOCOM 4, a game that requires both liberal use of motion controlled aiming and the numerous buttons, players will be more accurately served sticking to their familiar gamepads.

The control layout in the pre-alpha build of SOCOM 4 required aiming the ever present targeting reticule with the glowing Move controller. Character movement—strafing and running—was performed with the Move sub-controller’s analog stick. Movement and point-aiming didn’t take too long to get a grip on, but I was very happy to be playing as an indestructible SEAL, thanks to god mode. I took a lot of damage while playing my very first Move game.

The control complexity started to kick in when I was forced to perform any SOCOM 4 action that went beyond moving and shooting. The four face buttons—circle, square, triangle and X—are positioned not in their normal, familiar spots, but rotated about 45 degrees clockwise, flanking the Move logo button (aka the squiggle). My thumb’s transition from analog stick to d-pad on the Move sub-controller, which also sports its own square and circle buttons, was another awkward motion.

For the record, the squiggle button is not necessarily a replacement for, say, the L1 button of a DualShock. The squiggle zoomed in the camera in the control method we were using, but Zipper staffers indicated the button’s use may be defined per game.

Surely, some of this controller dexterity will come in time, after spending more than 10 minutes wielding both Move accessories, but it made my SOCOM 4 experience rather clumsy. Fortunately, Zipper Interactive reps say they have plenty of playtesting ahead of them, as well as plenty of development time before SOCOM 4’s release later this year, so it’s possible that Move control could eventually become the preferred option.

Is it likely? Maybe not, but at least adventurous SOCOM fans eager to play something more core-oriented with their Moves will be able to test their motion controlled headshot skills online against others.

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Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning Leave ‘Runaways’ Rocking On The Screen

NewsHaven — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:20:02 +0000

‘That’s as close as I’m ever going to get,’ Fanning says of avoiding a rock-and-roll career path.
By Larry Carroll

Kristen Stewart in “The Runaways”

Photo: River Road/ Road Rebel

BRENTWOOD, California — It’s been said that every movie star wants to be a rocker and that every rocker yearns to act. Over the years, everyone from David Bowie to Keanu Reeves to Tyson Ritter has proven that point, with varying results.

“The Runaways,” opening April 9, tells the true story of teenage girls from the ’70s growing up fast in the rock-and-roll lifestyle. In real life, actors Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning have been living as teenage girls in the ’00s growing up fast with the lifestyle of movie superstars. But if there were any urge to someday go all Billy Bob Thornton, the two claim the biopic got it out of their systems.

“We couldn’t be more [like rockers],” Stewart explained of the gig portraying Joan Jett during her early days in the hard-partying all-girl band. “This is the biggest opportunity to be a rock star.”

“Yeah, the closest I’m ever going to get is when I was performing ‘Cherry Bomb,’ ” Fanning said of the signature song for Cherie Currie, which she sings in the movie at several clubs and house parties while being pelted with trash and flipped off by the very punk-rock crowds the band attracted. “I guess that was the biggest moment of being an actor: pretending to be a rock star. That’s as close as I’m ever going to get.”

“You literally are suited up and put in the exact same position [where a rocker would stand],” Kristen explained of shooting the biopic for filmmaker Floria Sigismondi, who captures the ’70s rock scene with amazing attention to detail. “You couldn’t [be any more of one] unless you really were a rock star.”

“Which,” Stewart added, making sure to be clear, “we both are not planning on doing.”

As Kristen’s fans are well aware, the girl knows her music. Remember that Minor Threat T-shirt she wore to Comic-Con ‘09? Or when she was spotted with the rest of the “Twilight” cast at the Kings of Leon show? Keeping all that in mind, we had to ask the big question: If she could trade places with any rock star for a single day, who would it be?

“Joan!” Stewart shot back, without hesitation. “It depends on what period of life, I suppose. But on Joan and Cherie’s best day? Oh my God, I would definitely go with that!”

Much like Cherie and Joan in real life, Fanning immediately agreed with her rock-and-roll/ Hollywood sister. “That would be insane!”

Check out everything we’ve got on “The Runaways.”

For young Hollywood news, fashion and “Twilight” updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

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AC Milan’s VP knew they’d lose

NewsHaven — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:58:44 +0000

While most members of AC Milan held out hope that they could go to Old Trafford and overcome the hole they fell into during the first leg of their Champions League tie with Manchester United, the club’s vice president, Adriano Galliani, knew a day in advance that they had no hope. Said the Kojak-looking Debbie Downer after his side got eliminated:

“I
knew it was going to go badly yesterday afternoon. We had taken
Alexandre Pato, Alessandro Nesta and Luca Antonini in the squad, but
all three of them pulled out with injuries on Tuesday.

“Without such
important players and taking on a Manchester United side of such
quality, it was always going to be extremely difficult.

“I don’t think it will affect our Serie A form. Leonardo already did
very well in the locker room to reassure the players.”

Yeah, and I’m sure hearing you tell the press how hopeless they are after suffering a few injuries that confidence Leonardo propped up will be flying high.

Galliani went on to ramble about feline AIDS and how everyone dies alone in the end.

Source: Football Italia

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