Further to my earlier post about Xbox 360, I’ve just seen this story on Joystiq and it really is uncanny. It’s off-white, it fits the description of it being concave and “sucking in its cheeks” (originally seen on Eurogamer), and the weird patterns at the top and bottom look like cooling vents.

This could just be another example of Microsoft’s viral marketing but I really like the idea of us all seeing the design regularly for a couple of years before it comes out.

Another thing pointed out by IGN is that the car in the OurColony shot is a Ferrari 360. More covert confirmation of the details?

I’ve just had my attention drawn to a fantastic Half-Life 2 webcomic called Apostasy over at BrashFink’s WebWerx, made completely within the game’s engine. By using Garry’s Mod (great fun if you haven’t tried it – makes it possible to manipulate all characters and models using the physics engine and freeze the results, often with hilarious consequences) each frame was put together and turned into the pages of a completely original graphic novel set in the HL2 universe.

It’s incredible well done so give it a look if you’re a fan of HL2 or comics in general. It makes you wonder what could be done with that engine for a machinima project like Red vs Blue.

I’ve just seen that the Office of Fair Trading is set to investigate the potential acquisition of Highbury House (they own Highbury Entertainment, a games and computer magazine publisher who I’ve worked for in the past) by Future Publishing, the juggernaut of UK games journalism. Naturally the biggest company buying up its biggest competitor is going to do no good to the industry when it’s pretty much a two-horse race anyway. Many of the new magazines are simply one of them responding to one of the other’s publications – just look at the apparent synchronicity between the review scores of gamesTM and Edge. Would there be any reason to run two directly competitive magazines from the same stable? It’s only going to lead to people who might buy both picking one and sticking with it since they’ll be perceived as so similar.

I’m no big businessman and so can’t even attempt to try to put a spin on how this would affect the economics of games journalism if it is allowed to go ahead, but as someone who hopes to have a future (no pun intended) in this sector of the industry I would definitely support anything to keep as much variety and vitality around as possible. Combining Future and Highbury would be like combining EA and Ubisoft or Microsoft and Apple. There would be no synergy and no creativity coming from it, resulting in it being ultimately bad for everyone.

Edge are running an interesting article about the name of the new Xbox, which is now apparently going to be called Xbox 360. Even if the name isn’t as cool as Xbox Next, I definitely like that they’ve made it white. That’s a nice break from tradition and you only have to look at the Dreamcast to see how good a white (OK, dirty white if you want to be pedantic) console can look. I’m sick of the multiple shades of grey and black and find the GameCube’s purple to be a step too far in the opposite direction, so white is good.

Anyway, that article certainly shows some really fucked up names for a console. Odyssey of the Mind? Optimal Ozone? The irony of the Xbox being called P2P at one point is also very apparent. I’m actually going to be watching MTV when it’s unveiled (or, rather, watching the fallout online as it will be shown in the US and posted online a long time before it comes here) just to see what they’ve done to improve what I thought was the best console of this generation.

White is good. Xbox 360 is acceptable. The hardware is excellent. No hard drive is bad. Wireless controllers are good when done right. The supposed picture of Project Gotham Racing 3 is incredible. Whether any of those rumours turn out to be true will have to wait until then. It’s just sad that such a potentially huge announcement is coming through a channel as malapropos as MTV.