Windows XP has squeezed by with partial reprieve from its mandatory retirement June 30. Microsoft has decided to allow makers of low-cost desktop PCs preinstall XP Home through the end of June 2011. Some major manufacturers will continue to sell PCs with XP through the “downgrade” clause.

Dell is one of those manufacturers. Although the company will no longer offer XP on most of its machines after June 18, there are some specific models that will still come with XP until 2011. Consumers will be able to get XP Pro as a downgrade on XPS 630, 720 H2C and M1730 systems.

via ComputerWorld

CamTrax has figured out a way to give every one a Wii without the console. CamSpace is a software solution that allows nearly any ordinary Windows PC webcam (95% are supported) to track up to four objects as small as 5mm in real-time. locking and tracking is automatic, and CamSpace has tested with very high accuracy and reliability.

Here’s a video on how it works.

Assuming there’s no copy right infringement involved, CamTrax intends to provide a portal where emulations will be rated based on popularity and offered for download once its got a good portion of popular titles emulated.

via TechCrunch

The University of Central Florida has announced that according to research, students using Tabula Digita’s DimensionM educational video games scored higher on math. The students that used the edutainment programs over the 18 week study scored significantly higher on district math benchmark tests than students in the control group.

“These research results are remarkable and support previous studies which have concluded that interactive games are more effective on learners’ cognitive gains than traditional classroom instruction alone,” said Ntiedo Etuk, CEO and co-founder of Tabula Digita. “We are teaching a new generation of students, which requires unconventional teaching strategies be put into practice in the classroom. And when schools use our games, the student benefits speak for themselves – a greater desire to learn and higher test scores.”

This study proves once again what common sense should tell you. Students are going to learn more when they’re having fun. Edutainment is almost always going to get students more involved and more willing to participate in the learning process.

via Business Wire

Well, this has got to be one of the strangest studies I’ve heard about in awhile. Scientists recently studied the outcomes of 1,347 team matches on Unreal Tournament 2004 using data collected from public servers. You’d think they would have found that both the Red and Blue teams won almost an equal amount of times. But their findings, which they published in Cyberpsychology & Behavior this week, showed that the Red team wins 55% of the time over Blue. The researchers reasoned that this was because the color red can be a psychological distractor for men, which could be related to why men turn red when they’re angry. According to Mark Rein of Epic though, these findings aren’t going to have any impact on the Unreal games:

“While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years. We don’t anticipate any immediate changes to team colors.”

On the other hand though, I wouldn’t be too surprised if more people were vying for the Red team when playing now. I wonder if this applies to Halo as well…

Via News-Leader

Packard Bell is hoping that its new ipower line of gaming machines and Asetek’s liquid cooling solution will equal Nirvana for PC gamers. Asetek’s liquid cooling solution is now standard with any ipower PC. The Asetek liquid cooling system uses hybrid cooling technology which cools the GPU with a liquid cold plate while the memory and power sub-systems are cooled by forced air convection. Its already in use for the new nVidia GeForce 9800GTX and GeForce 9800GX2 graphics cards.

According to Philippe Henry, Digital Home Product Marketing & Sales Director at Packard Bell, “Our users are heavy gamers. They demand fast and powerful systems capable of handling the challenges in terms of graphics and speed. However, when pushing the speed and performance envelope, heat, noise, and reliability are put at risk. With Asetek’s liquid cooling solution, our heat, noise, and reliability specifications have been met — and exceeded. Liquid cooling is the new standard for gaming computers rapidly replacing inferior air cooled designs. The Asetek solution is simply the best we can find.

Although not as well known in North America, Packard Bell ipower systems are reported to be very popular among serious PC gamers and computer enthusiasts in Europe. The inclusion of the Asetek’s liquid cooling solution is a nice bonus.

via Business Wire, Asetek

Lorenzo Wang, designer for Page 44 Studios (Freekstyle), has published a piece on translating human happiness to video games. Creating a game that will hook players with a rush of pleasure and keep them happy is the goal of every designer. There are six key findings from recent happiness research to consider when designing video games.

Part of the problem is separating happiness from pleasure which don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

For example, we all know friends who play a certain game constantly while complaining about its every flaw, like my wife when she plays World of Warcraft. She gets no happiness, having played the game to death, alone and guildless. But she gets a visceral pleasure in continuing to kill mobs, farm items, and level new characters

So here’s the list of truths on human happiness.

1. Happiness is relative.
2. People suck at predicting their future enjoyment.
3. People rationalize their happiness.
4. People tend to experience loss twice intensely as gain.
5. Feeling in control is a significant predictor of happiness.
6. Happiness is a perspective.

Read the full article on Gamasutra to find out how Wang turns these key elements to happiness into addicting video games.

Twelve research teams from across the US have been chosen to receive major grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The $2 million in grants will help the teams explore how games can increase physical activity in patients as well as encouraging prevention and self-management of health conditions.

This is the first round of grants to be awarded from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its Health Games Research national program, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Funded studies explore topics ranging from how motion-based games may help stroke patients progress faster in physical therapy to how people in substance abuse treatment can practice skills and behaviors in the virtual world to prevent real-world relapses.

The winning research teams will be announced during a live, phone-based news conference at 1:30 p.m. EDT Thursday, May 29, 2008. There will be a full Q&A session with speakers Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., communication researcher, Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, University of California at Santa Barbara; and Chinwe Onyekere, program officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.

For those curious individuals who want to know what projects are being funded, a streaming audio replay of this news event will be available as of 6 p.m. EDT on May 29 at http://healthgamesresearch.org/.

via Press Release

Colleges looking to the future to fill the needs of their students and society, are a seeing video games. Over 200 institutes of higher learning now have programs to train the developers of the future.
Video games are seen by most as entertainment or stress relief. However video games are an excellent way to teach people through virtually simulating situations that are difficult to train for in real life. Doctors are honing surgical skills; fire fighters and other rescue workers are preparing for disasters online and both civilian and military personnel are logging hours of flight time without every boarding an aircraft.

Alternative controllers are also being tested at universities such as a head band the measures blood flow to the brain to activate in-game events. It’s fantastic stuff. Just be warned that just because a school slaps the word game in front of their program, doesn’t mean you’ll be employable after graduation. Choose your programs and your colleges carefully.

via The Philadelphia Enquirer

There’s been talk about Homebrew for the Wii since it came out. The homebrewers’ dream has become reality as The Homebrew Channel is now live. This interface is designed to make testing out new code and launching homebrew easy.

The Homebrew Channel is a tool that can be installed on any Wii (no hardware mods required) that lets you run unsigned homebrew software from an SD card, or upload executables via WiFi or a USBGecko. We’ve tried to make it friendly for users with a simple GUI, and powerful for developers with direct upload features and reloading which we hope will make testing less painful. The channel can be installed using a DVD if you have a modchip, or using an exploit in Zelda: Twilight Princess which only requires an SD card (or any future hack or booting method). Once installed, it simply shows up as a Channel on the Wii Menu, just like any official channel. Hopefully, this and other recent developments (such as the upcoming devkitPPC r15 toolchain, much improved and with many bugs fixed) will help make the Wii an appealing platform for DIY software. And yes, it also runs Linux.

Here’s a video of the beta version of The Homebrew Channel:

You can download the client from the official Homebrew Channel website.

via Slashdot

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Singaporean students have come up with video game that allows blind and sighted gamers to play together on an even field. AudiOdyssey uses the WII motes motion sensing capability to allow players to create complex musical tracks, like a deejay trying to spin tunes to get things moving on the dance floor.

Eitan Glinert, a graduate student in computer science at the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab, said the idea for AudioOdyssey came to him as he was looking over games designed for people with disabilities. He noticed that the game were so tailored to a disability that they couldn’t be played by people without that disability.

As a sighted player, I was unable to play any of these.” The games had been so specifically adapted for sound and tactile play that they gave the visually impaired too much of an advantage, making it impractical for them to play with sighted friends. “There were games for sighted people, games for blind people, and never the twain shall meet,” he says. “I thought, maybe I could build a game that could be played by both, equally well.”

AudiOdyssey is designed to be controlled by Wii-mote or keyboard. The game is currently available for free download (Windows only) at http://gambit.mit.edu/loadgame/audiodyssey.php. A more sophisticated version of the game that will allow players to compete online is in development and should be available late this summer.

I can see where the game may have a certain appeal to a wide audience; especially those gamers that have always wanted to throw a rave in their living room.

via ScienceDaily