DigitMemo.com

Racked up $170 million in sales on its first day of availability, Halo 3 becoming the hottest selling title in video game history

Halo 3, which hit shelved on Tuesday, also broke industry records for pre-sales. Retailers took more than 1.7 million pre-orders for the game, which runs on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. More than one million gamers played the game online over Microsoft’s Xbox Live system on launch day — another record for the software maker.

Click for more on Halo 3 Sales Smash Game Industry Records »

In a bizarre move Aurora Technology the owners of the King of the World MMORPG has taken the unusual step of banning men who play women characters but the ban itself does not stretch to women playing men.

If you want to play as a woman now in game you have to prove you are a women via web cam. This is something that people ask for in many mmorpgs I myself have seen people say people who play women in EVE online as being some kind of degenerate but how long can a policy of verification by web cam last since its so easy to get around it doesn’t seem to solve much and is an insult to many.”

Aurora Technology is a subsidiary of Shanda (Nasdaq: SNDA).

Shoddy Halo 3 packaging leads to scratched game discs.

A lot of people will be buying shiny, new copies of Halo 3 this week, but some of them will get home to find scratched discs straight out of the box.

Early reports from lucky early owners of the Halo 3 Limited Edition on gaming forum NeoGAF found that the game discs have broken free from the hubs that were supposed to secure the discs into place.

Click for more on Early Halo 3 Limited Edition Owners Plagued by Scratched Discs »

A recent paper shows video games do hurt GPAs.

The paper is being published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that contains a careful study of the correlations between students’ use of their time and academic achievement. It also carries a detailed dissection of the use of two statistical methods to examine the raw data produced during the study. But, in the end, it will probably go down in history based on the headlines it generates, which are likely to be along the lines of “Video games hurt GPAs.”

Click for more on Deathmatch: video games vs. study time, a flawless GPA victory »

So what if the Wii can’t handle the awesome ‘next-generation’ physics engine the other consoles will enjoy when Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is released?

LucasArts announced today that Krome Studios is developing a version of the game for the Nintendo console, and players will finally get to use the Wiimote for its intended purpose — as a lightsaber. ‘The sword-swinging action will be exclusive to the Wii version, and even then, it will only be available in an exclusive “duel mode.” The description in the release says that this duel mode will be a multiplayer affair.”

Click for more on The Wiimote As Yoda Intended - A Lightsaber »

A study has concluded that casual gaming is the most popular online entertainment activity, with streaming video and social networking following behind.

There are all sorts of things you can do online and if you have ever wondered what most people do online for entertainment, you are not alone. From reading sites BBC, to watching videos on sites like YouTube or visiting social networking sites like FaceBook, what entertainment activity is most popular online? You might be surprised by the answer.

Click for more on Report: Casual Gaming is Most Popular Online Entertainment Activity »

A mod chipping company called Team Symbiote has apparently created an application for owners of its Wii mod chip that enables the console to play back DVDs.

This may not be the first mod to enable DVD playback, but since Nintendo still hasn’t got around to providing the console with playback capabilities, we thought it’d be worth bringing it up again. Nintendo, how about hurrying up and making it so normal people don’t have to buy dodgy chips to play a DVD or two on their console?

Click for more on DVD playback enabled on mod-chipped Wiis »

Beijing, China: The former information security company Rising vice president Tan Wenming, along with his wife and university classmate made 2.81 million Yuan($371,000) selling a game plug-in for Legend of Mir 3, an online game operated by Optisp in China. There was a hearing last year and Tan admitted to selling the plug-ins and apologized to Optisp at the hearing. Early this year, Tan was convicted and sentenced 2 years and 6 months in jail by Beijing basic people’s courts, A new and final justice, made by intermediate people’s courts this Friday, changed it to 6 years and 500,000 Yuan Fine($65,000). His wife and his classmate, sentenced 3 and 2 years in jail, with $12,000 fine respectively.

Tan, Graduated from Peking University, was the formal Vice President of the Chinese Anti-Virus company Rising until 2003. Then he started making and selling game hacks till 2006.

This is also the first criminal charge in China made against game hacker.

StartForce, the used-to-be-popular copy protection system, seems to get some market in China after other big game companies, like Ubisoft, EA, dump it to avoid damage to customers’ PC and potential lawsuit.

A new game title, The Legend of Swordsman & Fairy 4, released on August 2007 in both Taiwan and Mainland China, uses Starforce 5.0 Pro as anti-pirate system. The new Starforce 5.0 includes online activation and the traditional “key disk” verification. On the first day of release, the activating demand is so high that the authentication server was crashed and offline for 24 hours. However, 10 days later, a “patch”, let users bypass the online verification procedure appeared, also with a detailed guide on burning the “key disk” using standard CDR and CD-Writer. Thus the new StarForce 5.0 is completely defeated(again).

This also becomes another case that pirated versions work better than original, since the online system has a ridiculous 10 activations/per year limitation. Also, a paid user has reported that the new StarForce broken the optical driver in his Thinkpad T61 Laptop and was out of warranty since CSR claimed this as solely user’s fault as StarForce was a known malware.