GameTap-gold is not available in Europe any more. Somewhere in January 2008 I opted to temporarily become a non-paying subscriber to Gametap with plans to reactivate the gold status somewhere later down the line - just to save a little money I thought.

December 4th Microsoft will roll out a new update for the Xbox 360; this will make 'movies on demand' also available in Europe.

Live messenger or MSN as most people know it is filtering the transmission of possible dangerous files. This has been a known fact for quite some time, but recently the MSN filtering practices have lead to some more upheaval because it has been proven that the popular communication software is filtering text messages.

As you know, running a site such as Armchair Arcade takes money, and, while we'd still do this even if the Website didn't generate a penny to help offset our hosting and bandwidth costs, it's nice when something we offer does work. This brings me to our affiliate program with PlayFirst, publishers of fine small form games for platforms like the PC, Macintosh and Web. That's been by far the biggest hit of our modest efforts and we just wanted to take a moment to thank all the AA'ers who took the time to click on the links, play some of the games offered and make purchases of their favorites. It's very much appreciated! For those who haven't checked it out yet, click on over to PlayFirst with the following links:

Soul Calibur IV will be supporting real time online gameplay on both Xbox360 and PS3-versions. This is not the first time a fighting game supports online gameplay - both Tekken and Mortal Kombat (2004) are examples of that.

For anybody interested in the up and coming websurfing capabilities of the Nintendo DS-Lite take a look at the YouTube video below. The European version should be available somewhere in August/September I've read in numerous places. Caution the Opera software comes with a memory expansion unit that will only fit inside a DS-Lite machine!

psx to ps3The French site www.overgame.com interviews Sony France Richard Brunois about the upcoming PS3 console on the subject of the HD capabilities of the device. The much debated 1080i and 1080p topic. For now the 1080p has no real advantage due to the lack of true full HD televisions capable of displaying a 1080p signal, but that could change in only a couple of months according to mr Brunois. (I find this to be rather quick and personally think it will probably be halfway the lifespan of the ps3 for 1080p tv's to be more of a mainstream thing).