Hellgate: London Elite Multiplayer $9.95/mo

As an update to January’s post the latest issue of Games for Windows Magazine has revealed the elite subscription pricing behind Hellgate: London, which will be free to play online should you opt out of subscribing for additional features. These features, which will be available for $9.95 (depending on location) are as follows:

• Elite subscribers pay $9.95 a month
• 24/7 phone- and internet-support
• No (server) queues for elite subscribers, with preference over non-paying customers
• 3 chars per account for non-elites, 12 for elite-customers
• Elite subscribers can store up to 40 items (instead of 20 for non-subscribers), which can be accessed from any char in an account-wide item vault.
• Visible distinction from other players. Elite subscribers are recognisable from their equipment and may trade subscriber-only equipment to other elite subscribers.
• VIP-Shuttles to remote areas
• Housing and founding of guilds are enabled for subscribers. Elite subscribers may attain officer/leader priviledges within their guild.
• Elite subscribers have access to additional game modes, including Hardcore mode.
• Elite subscribers and non-subscribers can play with each other.
• Costs actually depend on where you live. Subscription fees in the Asian market will cost considerably less, in accordance to the market conditions and expectations of the players and local publishers within the region.

The subscription costs make it possible for Flagship Studios to produce additional content for Hellgate: London twice a month, or more. New content includes new items, monsters, areas, character classes and other content which are not present in the retail version of the game. It is not known as this time whether this additional content will only be available to paying subscribers.

» View: Original Story @ Hellgate Guru
» Link: Shacknews Coverage

Playstation 3 to Win Console War Because of Blu-Ray?

In a massive 207-page report on the interactive entertainment industry for 2007, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter notes that while “the main driver of console hardware sales is the quality and quantity of the underlying available content,” the high definition format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray could be a key factor in determining the console war outcome.

Capacity of Rechargeable Batteries Doubled

New research results presented today could bring companies such as Intel much closer to that goal of offering notebooks that achieve a battery running time of 8 hours and more.

Researchers of the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory claim to have developed an enhanced approach to building of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

Scheduled for an unveiling at the meeting of the Electrochemical Society today, the new technology is based on a “manganese-rich” nano-crystalline, layered-composite structure that is used as material for the positive electrode. According to an early announcement, the researchers are using a two-component “composite” structure: An active component for charge storage is embedded in an inactive component that stabilizes the structure.

US Infiltrates Internet Communities

US officials championing freedom and democracy are well aware that they cannot try to silence Islamist militants by censoring or blocking the growing number of Al-Qaeda related web sites.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said the Internet has created a “largely borderless world. Internet chat rooms are now supplementing and replacing mosques, community centers and coffee shops as venues for recruitment and radicalization by terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.“
To fight that, Cilluffo noted that “it is possible that an intelligence officer posing as a sympathizer could infiltrate an online extremist community. Seeds of confusion, doubt and distrust could then be planted in order to chip away at the ties that bind individual extremists into a cohesive and dangerous group.“

Disney Channel Broadcasts Hardcore Porn

Cable operator Comcast is investigating how hardcore porno- graphy was broadcast during a popular cartoon program on the Disney Channel.

Customer Paul Dunleavy would also like to know. He was stunned Tuesday morning to find his 5-year-old son watching something other than “Handy Manny,” a cartoon about a bilingual Latino handyman and his talking tools. “It was two people doing their thing, it was full-on and it was disgusting,” the Middletown father of three told The New York Daily News for Wednesday newspapers. “I couldn’t believe it.”