Read The Arizona Shooter Suspect's Online Ramblings

 

 The man charged with killing six people and wounding 14 others in Tucson, Arizona last week once socialized online with a close-knit group of gamers, fans of online strategy gameEarth Empires. His online interaction with that group has just been published in full.

Jared Lee Loughner allegedly used the handle "Dare" when posting on the Earth Empires forums. He chatted about game strategy, his life and personal issues, but also posted barely coherent messages about grammar, having sex with the mentally handicapped and his battles with authorities at his community college.

Loughner bounces from questions about how to crack the top 100 rankings in Earth Empires and buying and selling game stock, to subjects like suicide and rape. He was active on the game's forums from April to June 2010, posting in more than 100 threads, 30 of which he started himself.

Most users on the Earth Empires forums appear to dismiss Loughner's ramblings as those of a troll or under the influence of drugs. The tone of Loughner's posts on the forum indicate an individual openly struggling with his issues, becoming frustrated that they didn't seem to understand him.

"The more I read Dare's posts, the more I think he's just drunk/high when he posts," wrote one Earth Empires forum member in response to a "Dare"-created thread about school, prison and employment that devolved into a rant about train whistles.

"I have no substance abuse problems currently," Loughner responds, adding "Dude....I feel as if there is something wrong...." Throughout the forums, Loughner refutes accusations that he is using drugs.

The Earth Empires team released the forums posts publicly today "to provide proper context for many of the quotes that have been surfacing in the media in recent days." The FBIrequested Loughner's communication records from the Earth Empires team earlier this week.

"As a community, we are absolutely horrified that someone who had been part of our relatively small group could be involved in such a horrible act," reads an official statement. "We're all shocked and saddened, and our hearts go out to the victims and their loved ones. The majority of us had little to no interaction with Mr. Loughner during his time here, but he did play various incarnations of the game off and on since high school, according to several of his former clanmates."

The posts tied to Loughner feature some potentially offensive language and images. They are available to read at the game's official web site.

Update: Looks like Earth Empires' site is experiencing heavy traffic. Read a PDF version of the post dump here.

Jared Lee Loughner Posts [Earth Empires]

Send an email to Michael McWhertor, the author of this post, at mike@kotaku.com.

Xbox 360 Only Console Up in 2010

NPD data showed today that Microsoft experienced it's best year for the Xbox brand.  The company sold 6.7 Million Units at a 47% increase year over year.  The official Microsoft Blog determined that with 6.2 billion dollars spent at retail more than any other current generation console.  Despite shortages, Xbox 360 console sales remained strong in December where it sold 1.9 million units.

Helping the console along were Call of Duty: Black Ops and it's rather problem free experience on the 360, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, and Kinect Sports.  These final numbers for 2010 helped seal the best year in Xbox 360 history where the console ended with over 50 million Xbox 360 consoles sold worldwide to date, alongside 30 million active Xbox Live subscribers, and 8 million Kinect sensors sold in the first 60 days.

The company noted that 2011 looks equally strong with titles like Gears of War 3, Forza Motorsport 4, and Avatar Kinect due to strengthen their gaming portfolio.

Aaron Greenberg noted about the console "Only console up in 2010". And I'm pretty sure he may or may not have said "Bitches!" after that.


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Microsoft Focusing on Xbox 360 with Kinect

With all of the news in the last week about Kinect at the Consumer Electronics Show, Steve Ballmer also announced that in time the Kinect would be supported by Windows PC's.  Perhaps this was a little of a premature statement by the CEO.  Microsoft recently sent clarification on the subject by stating that it's focus for the device is fixed on the Xbox 360 for now.
It doesn't look like Microsoft's full backing is stopping anyone from forming new and interesting uses for the device however.  The slew of applications that the device has been used for is already quite large.  With the swiftness of the Titanic,  by the time Microsoft gets around to integrating this device into Windows there will have long been software and revisions of software that have already enabled this functionality anyway.

As important as some of it's uses could become outside of the realm of video games, lets remember why you bought this thing in the first place.  To play games.  Hopefully 2011 will bring us new and exciting experiences for the device.

Source: CVG

Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 ‘Sexy Edition’

The Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 release date is coming soon and if you are a collector like myself you might want to go ahead and reserve a copy of the special edition if you intend to get one on launch.  If your local retailer stopped taking pre-orders, fear not.  The Capcom store still is.  Plus you'll get bonuses that you don't find elsewhere like free shipping and a limited edition shirt with your pre-order.

Here's what the special edition boxes look like :



Limited Edition Shirt For Ordering From The Capcom Store.



All the Goodies included in the Special Edition

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Sony Will Ban Jailbroken PS3s from Network

The PlayStation 3 console has been jailbroken with George Hotz's hack on the console, but what aside from the moral repercussions of hacking your PS3 and pirating software, what will Sony enforce in this new era.  It is being rumored that Sony will begin to ban jailbroken PlayStation 3 consoles much like Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 in the Fall of 2009.

Upon booting up your PlayStation 3 console, the machine communicates with Sony's servers.  And chances are that if you try to run games from an unauthorized source like back-up manager this will be associated with your PSN account and ultimately the console you are playing on via your console identification number.  Using this information, Sony could ultimately use this with a periodic banning tool much like Microsoft does with the Xbox 360.

So despite the possibility of breaking your PS3, and the fact that it is against the Terms of Service of the console, and the opinion that it is morally wrong, you have one more reason not to jailbreak your PS3.  That reason is the banhammer.

Update: Sony has now filed a lawsuit against George Hotz for more information HERE

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Nintendo 3DS is just a hardware gimmick

A recent interview with games industry veteran Jon Hare where the developer points out the flaws of the 3DS from a developer standpoint.  Hare is the developer responsible for bringing titles like Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder to gamers and had some pretty strong opinions on the new handheld.  In the interview which originally was published by BeefJack, Hare had this to say:

It's hard to argue with someone that actually knows the ins and outs of game design.  Gimmick or not, the 3DS looks fun and cool, but what say you reader?

Is the 3DS just a gimmick?  A flash in the pan that will fizzle out quickly or is glasses free 3D the wave of the future?


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Modern Warfare 3′ coming from Sledgehammer not IW

The next Call of Duty may not be a Modern Warfare title but it will be as close as legally possible.  One thing that is not up in the air however, is who will be developing the next 'Modern Warfare' be it Modern Warfare 3 or not,   Sledgehammer Games recently posted a job listing where the company is looking for a community manager for the next Call of Duty Game.  With the ousting of the Modern Warfare creators there has been no clarification made as to if the developers in place will be pushing forward with the series or even if it is legal for them to do so.

Many things have been rumored already about the next game who it will come from seems to be in place.  Will it follow the Call of Duty Modern Warfare story?  That remains to be seen.  Somerecent speculation has hinted to the possibility of a Modern Warfare title telling the story of Ghost in a prequel to Modern Warfare 1.


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Castlevania Lords of Shadow Reverie DLC New Details

Castlevania Lords of Shadow DLC is coming soon.  Konami recently teased a new downloadable content sequence coming for the game.   The game's Facebook Fan Page has been updated again, this time Kojima shows the time machine that will be part of the upcoming DLC.  If the last tease of the content got you anticipating this release, the development team released many more images from the content which have been inlcuded below.

All we have at this point is the information from the page.  No price, date, or other pertinent information has been given about the upcoming DLC.  Stay tuned for more information.