SteelSeries has added a limited edition keyset for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to its offerings for the Zboard gaming keyboard. The Zboard has several keysets available for games including Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and World of Warcraft.

Business Wire lists the assets of theWAR Limited Edition Keyset for the SteelSeries Zboard as:

• An intuitive layout for faster reflexes in battle;
• 16 dedicated keys for commonly used chat, group and social commands;
• 12 popular single-press emote keys including Shout, Brandish, Mad and Laugh; and,
• Immersion in the epic war with official game graphics

Gamers who go for this keyset will get a bonus in-game item – Kemmler’s Arthritic Hand. Although it sounds more like something you might use in to curse another character with, this exclusive item actually gives you a temporary increase of your action point regeneration rate. Those hardcore MMO fans who anticipate total dedication to WAR should look into this keyset.

Mad Catz has shipped out the first ever bass controller for Rock Band. The new controller is based on the Fender Precision Bass Guitar and works with the Xbox 360. According to the press release on Business Wire, it will be compatible with Rock Band 2.

The unique Split Strum Bar allows gamers to strum and pluck notes faster and with more precision, vital for fast tempo tracks. The genuine Fender Precision Bass does not have a whammy bar. To respect the accuracy of the bass, Mad Catz has engineered whammy compatibility by discreetly incorporating it into the volume knob of the bass, providing gamers with essential functionality when playing both lead or bass guitar portions of the track while preserving the timeless authenticity of the original design.

Yes I know it isn’t necessary to have a bass controller when you can just use a second guitar, but cool things hardly ever are. Mad Catz has a contract with Harmonix and MTV to produce a line of Rock Band peripherals so this is only the first of several awesome looking products.

Logitech is bringing out a real Force Feedback wheel for the Wii system. That lame wheel that the Wiimote snaps into is almost worthless. It’s about time the system got a grown up peripheral although I can’t quite imagine playing Mario Cart with one. Fortunately, the Logitech Speed Force Wireless racing wheel is designed for the upcoming Need for Speed: Undercover game. Here are the specs from the press release in Business Wire:

Easy to set up and store, the Logitech Speed Force Wireless features a one-piece design that is convenient to use whether you’re sitting on your couch, arm chair or living room floor. The built-in gas and brake controls are located on the wheel itself and the expandable lap rest is easily adjusted – allowing for comfortable game play without the need to use a table or a desk. Plus, familiar Wii controls make navigating game menus a snap. With Logitech’s 2.4 GHz wireless technology, you can enjoy lag-free racing from up to 30 feet away from the console.

The Logitech Speed Force Wireless racing wheel will be available in stores across the US and Europe in the beginning of November for $99.99.

Performance Designed Products is giving gamer girls there own specially designed Aly & AJ guitar controllers to use with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The pop-rock star sisters worked with PDP to come up with controllers that reflected their personal sense of style. According to the test group of girls 8 to 17 and my own two tween, the final designs rock.

PDP is honing in on a market that has been almost entirely ignored. Considering how most girls love to accessorize, there’s a lot of money to be made. The draw back is that these controllers will only work with the PS2 and the Wii. You can grab one in stores in mid-October $69.99. Thanks to Business Wire for the heads up.

Anyone who has tried to play any game on the Xbox 360 using the D-pad knows one thing: the D-pad sucks. Thankfully, it seems Microsoft has finally listened to all those complaints and produced a new controller with a D-pad that can register 32 different directions. That should at least reduce the number of accidental deaths I’m sure we’ve all had due to the controller’s poor design. Wait, wait, don’t get all excited just yet; there’s a catch. The controller is a promotional item for the upcoming Pro Evolution Soccer…and it’s only available in Asia, Latin America, and Europe (which makes you wonder they aren’t calling it “Pro Evolution Football,” since no one outside of the U.S. calls that sport “soccer”). According to Microsoft:

“The new limited-edition green wireless controller offers enhancements to D-pad functionality, which will add to the experience of playing games where the D-pad is the primary control mechanism. We’re always looking to improve products and we made these changes based on feedback from gamers.”

Great. For a change, it looks like those of us in North America are going to be out of luck with this one. Microsoft did also mention however that the new controller was designed for Street Fighter IV as well, so maybe we’ll see a D-pad that actually works sometime in the future.

Via EuroGamer

Let’s face it: the music game genre is so muddled with peripherals now that it’s hard to keep straight just which ones will work for what games on what systems. To make matters worse, there’s a whole new batch of peripherals along with new games — Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Rock Revolution — set to hit store shelves later this year. At this rate, it was looking like anyone wanting to play all three games was going to have to buy all three sets of fake instruments. Thankfully, someone has finally stepped up to sort out this whole mess, and that someone is Sony.

Director of Public Relations with SCEA, Michael Shorrock, recently announced that they had reached an agreement with Activision, Neversoft, Harmonix, and Konami regarding the compatibility of their peripherals with each game. The result is — for the PS3 at least — universal compatibility between all new games and all new peripherals. That’s right: your Rock Band 2 drums and guitar will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Revolution and vice versa. In addition, the SingStar microphones will also work for all these games. Sony’s still also “working hard to ensure compatibility between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles currently on the market.”

It’s nice to see some of this bickering finally put aside, since it really only seems to hurt the consumer. We’ll have to see if this same level of compatibility remains true on the Xbox 360 side.

Via Playstation Blog

ASUS’s delayed launch of their HD 4870 based cards felt like the manufacturer was stringing gamers along with promises of giving NVidia some serious competition at a reasonable price yet failing to deliver.

The HD 4870 is a more budget oriented model that normally would result in lower performance along with a lower price point but the GDDR5 memory and a change from the 4850’s RV770 Pro chips to the less costly RV770 XT architecture puts a card into the sub $300 price range that is built to match NVIDIA’s 9800 GTX+ Line of cards.

There’s a review of the ASUS EAH4870 Radeon HD 4870 graphics card up on TechARP that gives all the spec munching details.

Fortunately, ATI finally delivered what they promised their fans for years – NVIDIA-thumping performance at a competitive price point.

ASUS currently offers three different Radeon HD 4870 models – the basic EAH4870, the EAH4870/G game bundle kit and the top-of-the-line EAH4870 TOP overclocked card. The card we are reviewing is the ASUS EAH4870/G, which essentially consists of the basic EAH4870 card and the “Alone In The Dark” game.

If you compare the specifications of the Radeon HD 4870 with that of the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+, you will see that the NVIDIA card has a 31.2% advantage in texture fillrate. However, the ASUS EAH4870 was still faster than it in every single benchmark we ran.

I know that as gamers we’re used to spending hundreds of dollars for the highest end hardware but it looks like ATI and ASUS might just deliver a piece of hardware worth the cash and reasonable enough that it won’t break my back trying to upgrade everything else to allow it to run.

Only 110 of these Dark Knight-themed Xbox 360 systems were made and given away in various contests. As if the lucky winners hadn’t already made everyone jealous enough, they’re now looking to cash in on the year’s biggest movie.

A quick trip to eBay will net you a number of results for the limited edition consoles, which sport The Dark Knight logo on one side and a menacing image of The Joker on the other. It looks extremely sleek, and they certainly caught my interest… until you notice the prices, which range from $500 to over $1000. That’s a lot of cash for a system whether you already own one or not, and personally I don’t know if I’d want to play games with the thing or display it somewhere in my home where no one is allowed to touch it.

If you’re impulsive and actually have some money available, I’d recommended not clicking the link above. It’s (probably) not worth ending up without electricity for a few months just to get your hands on one of these suckers.

via Xbox 360 Fanboy

Christopher Kline, technical director for 2K Boston, took time to talk about the challenges faced in making BioShock in a recent interview with Gamasutra. The interview covers developing for the hardcore audience, the future of PC gaming and developing with middleware, in this case the Unreal Engine 2, rather than building an engine from scratch and UI design. The Adaptive Training System used in BioShock is discussed as well.

Kline goes over mistakes made and obstacles overcome in producing BioShock for the Xbox 360, PC and now PS3. Much of the article deals with more of the technical aspects and philosophical choices made in developing the game. Gamers interested in videogame development will get a lot of good advice from the article and hopefully learn from 2K’s experience rather than make the same mistakes themselves.

Last month you may recall that some PC specs for Ubisoft’s FPS Far Cry 2 were leaked along with a supposed tech-demo for the game, which turned out to be a fake demo released by a Chinese site. Today, however, Ubisoft has released the actual PC specs for Far Cry 2 and while gamers were crying foul over how over the top the “leaked” specs were – the official ones are not that different in some respects. You will still have to have a decent system to run the game, but not a “super duper” gaming system like what was previously suggested.

Minimum Requirements:

CPU: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better

RAM: 1 GB

Video card: NVidia 6800 or ATI X1650 or better; Shader Model 3 required; 256 Mb of graphic memory

Media reader: DVD-ROM

Hard drive space: ~12 Gig of HD space. (TBD)

RECOMMENDED:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Family, AMD 64 X2 5200+, AMD Phenom or better

RAM: 2 GB

Video card: NVidia 8600 GTS or better, ATI X1900 or better; 512 Mb of graphic memory

Sound: 5.1 sound card recommended

SUPPORTED VIDEO CARDS: NVidia 6800, NVidia 7000 series, 8000 series, 9000 series, 200 series. 8800M and 8700M supported for laptops.
ATI X1650 – 1950 series, HD2000 series, HD3000 series, HD4000 series.

Now remember, these are just the recommended specs. The game will still run on your system if you have only the minimum specs instead of the ones suggested. It probably will not look as great, but you will still be able to play it – and in the long run that is what matters most.

Far Cry 2 is the sequel to Ubisoft’s legendary shooter featuring the Dunia Engine which was specifically built for the title. Amongst the new features in the engine are more realistic destructible environments, real-time night-and-day cycle, and a dynamic music system. In this sequel players are placed in war-torn Africa where the mission is to kill the mysterious character, “The Jackal.”

The game is expected to hit retail shelves on December 15 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Thanks: VG247