For the regular readers, you may have noticed the site has been down for the better part of the past two days.

The reason for this was that we were served with a DMCA copyright infringement letter from an internet investigator on the behalf of Microsoft. Last month, we posted a leaked copy of the Halo 3 manual (which several commenters exclaimed that it had to be a fake). All seven of these images were listed in the email specifically by filename. Our host, who received this letter, shut the site down. When we got in contact with the host, they forwarded the letter to us. After reading the letter and getting back in touch with our host we were given a 5 hour window today to remove all traces of the images from our site.

We have done so and the site has been restored.

We are going to further review the policies of our host regarding further instances such as these and based on that, make a decision to move to a new host or not. While we are willing to comply with letters such as these when they are valid, we are more than discontented that the host decided to shut our site down for such a length of time without any type of notice before, or during the outage, until we were forced to reach out to them.

I have copied the infringement letter after the jump.

But first, Zac made a couple videos about the fall and rise of Powet.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

The Xbox 360 may not be doing too well in the land of the rising sun, but that didn’t stop Microsoft from making some killer announcements at the Tokyo Game Show. Besides the formal announcement of the exclusive Ninja Gaiden 2 (shock!) a handful of downloadable titles were announced for Xbox Live Arcade including Treasure’s critically acclaimed shooter Ikaruga and a new, high-definition version of Sega and United Game Artists’ Rez with full 5.1 audio! 1up has got the screenshots here, commence drooling!

Looks like the good folks at Xbox Japan slipped up an released some screen shots before the official announcement of Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360. These shots were quickly taken down, but not before a mister bloke of NeoGAF took notice. More gory goodness after the jump.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

It’s been a big week for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. Between all the price drops, new models, and updates it may be difficult to keep track of all that’s happening in the world of Xbox. That’s why we at Powet have put together this Xbox 360 Week in Review to keep you guys up-to-date on everybody’s favorite concave & rectangular next-generation gaming device.

Read on for more.
[Read the rest of this entry…]

While many have been planning on playing the newest installment of Grand Theft Auto this year, Take-Two has just announced in a press release that both the Playstation 3 and Xbox360 versions of the game have been delayed until the second fiscal quarter of 2008. The cause of the delay is apparently due to Rockstar requesting “more development time”. This may be a shock to many, however rumors were floating around that there have been technical issues developing both consoles. While purely speculation, this coincides with the rumors that Microsoft may be allowing developers make games with a hard drive requirement.

You can read the official press release here.

Anyone with an Xbox Live account can find the Blue Dragon demo in Live Marketplace right now. There are 2 available levels, a dungeon and a forest. Both appear to be well into the game: you begin with 5 party members, lots of magic at your disposal, and in the middle of a quest.

Its nearly impossible to judge how good an RPG will be based on a demo because the things that make games like this enjoyable are the story, characters, and the scope of the adventure, none of which you can get a feel for in 2 hours of play. That said, the 2 hours is fun. Battles all take place with not yourself attacking monsters, but your shadow. If your party takes a beating, it raises a tension meter that when filled you can unleash a powerful summon attack. You can also charge your magic and physical attacks for more power (DBZ style!). I’m sure a lot of the nuances of battle were lost on me not having played the 50 levels before the one I was given, but I can see myself having a good time with this.

The battles are not random either, you see an enemy on screen and you can run from it or attack it to initial an encounter. you can also choose to take on large groups at once, which can give you a power up advantage as the battles progress, as well as more experience for inevitable level grinding.

This is a title thats been out in Japan for some time, but will come to the states August 28th. As many have mentioned its the first project since Chrono Trigger on the SNES that Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama have worked together on. I count Chrono Trigger as one of my favorite games, and if Blue Dragon can give me something half as good, I’ll have a worthy addition to the Xbox 360 Library

Event just started with a performance from Corpreal, the band of high school students who played the Halo theme to some success on youtube in the past year. They played in Peter Moore, who spoke briefly about the change of venue and then announced that every game they’d show in the conference tonight will be released this year.

Then Moore introduced some of the Harmonix crew to play Rock Band. After some stumbles and Peter’s off key adlib vocals while playing guitar, they wheeled out the evenings next big gun… Viva Pinata Party Animals.

Viva Pinata Party Animals will be a party game not unlike Mario Party with… Viva Pintata characters. Yeah, I’ll leave this one to aDam.

The Mass Effect trailer. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Released during the midst of the fighting game craze of the mid-90s, this game went largely overlooked due to the fact that so many other games came out during the time. Shame too, as it attempted to set itself apart from the many Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat clones of the era with it’s storyline and unique combat system, which was based off real fighting styles more so than other 2-d fighting games.
[Read the rest of this entry…]