XBox 360 Rally

Following on a rumor first reported by… well, us (you’re welcome), XueCast is now reporting that they have been able to confirm that Microsoft is currently working with DivX to bring their popular MPEG-4 format to the Xbox 360.

According to the article, DivX CEO Kevin Hell stated that, due to Microsoft’s restrictions and requirements, the Xbox 360 DivX project is running much slower than the PlayStation 3 counterpart. PlayStation 3 DivX support has already been partially implimented.

[XueCast]

Microsoft, Xbox 360, DivX

If you live in Europe, I’m really starting to hate you. First you get the exclusive Xtival 07 from Microsoft which gives you free Xbox LIVE Gold (limited time) and exclusive downloads. Then you get the Simpsons Game PSP bundle. Now, seemingly not pleased yet, Europe has snacked another nugget of shiny awesomeness as, during the Xtival 07 event, one lucky Guitar Hero III fanatic will get the chance of a lifetime by playing a few rounds with Steve Jones.

If you don’t know who Steve Jones is, I’ll give you a helping hand:

Now, the rules for this Game with Fame contest are slightly different. This time around, you have to play through the demo of Guitar Hero III (not available on Xbox LIVE), and when you’ve completed the demo you have to send a picture of your high score to sexpistols@gamewithfame.net, along with why you want to play with a punk rock God. The winners will be sent a copy of Guitar Hero III, and the top three will join Steve online.

The winner will be crowned European Champion, and win a guitar signed by Jones himself.

Once again… I hate Europe.

Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Guitar Hero III, Steve Jones, Xtival 07, Sex Pistols

Hey boys and girls! I’ve gotten bored and missed working for the ol’ green and grey, so I’m back (at least temporarilly) until we get some new writers for Xbox 360 Rally. And, I come bearing news about potential X-Mas gifts!

According to Punch Jump, Best Buy will be having a couple kick ass deals on some Xbox 360 stuff for the annual “Black Friday” shopping bonanza! First, Best Buy will be selling Xbox 360 Premium consoles bundled with Guitar Hero II and controller for the standard Premium price of $349.99. Naturally, if you’re visiting this site, you probably don’t need a 360. But it’s still something nice to get your friends.

But wait, there’s more! In addition to the bundle, Best BUy is offering both Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (the last GOOD Tony hawk game) and Def Jam Icon for the low, low price of $14.99.

But that offer is on November 23rd, and November 23rd ONLY. So don’t slouch.

[Punch Jump]

Microsoft, Xbox 360, Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Def Jam Icon, Best Buy

Hi, boys and girls. It’s just me, your friendly neighborhood JW, here to remind you all that we’re currently looking for people to replace us here at Xbox 360 Rally. All you have to do is go HERE, fill out the form, and wait to hear back. It’s really not that hard.

So, get to it already — so Paco and I can get to the NEW site!

I want to give you all a heads up on a pretty f’n nice contest being put on next Sunday by our good friends at PlatformNation.com (Home to XBL Radio, The Gamers Pub, The Fanboys, and PSH Radio). The full list of prizes are:

Halo 3 Legendary Edition

20 dollar MS Point Card

10 dollar MS Point Card

5 dollar MS Point Card

Speedfreek from KontrolFreek.com

A Xbox 360 skin from GamerGraffix.com

You are all in luck, as the tournament will be taking place on a Sunday, a day I normally work, so I probably won’t be present, which means you have a chance of winning, as well as I have played with JW, he is a Halo 3 noob who poses no challenge to you if he gets in. Here is the official rules and all that fine print stuff that you need to know:

To sign up add your gamertag to this thread (click the link), nothing else but your gamertag.

The times will be Sunday nights, 6pm Pacific time, so if your unable to make it, please don’t add your name to the tournament.

Teams of 4 people each will be chosen at random, chosen by my tournament software, not any people

This is a single elimination tournament

Sign up will end on the 19th

The tournament will start on the 21st

All the round details (who is playing who, maps and game types)will be out on the 20, you must check the forums to keep yourself updated, I don’t have the time to prep everyone every round.
Each round will be a best out of 3

The final two rounds will be a free for all with the top 4 advancing to the finals and then the top 4 battling it out for the grand prize.

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Halo 3, Legendary Edition, Contest, PlatformNation, XBL Radio, Tournament, KontrolFreak, GamerGraffix, Microsoft Points

Folks, I don’t think you know how hard it was to find a winner for this contest. Every entry received was like a gift from God herself, yes, corny, I know, but seriously, too many entries kicked mucho ass and it took much fighting between JW and myself to pick the final winner (we do it American Gladiator giant q-tip style if you want to know…… for the younger audience, it looks like this).

As you know from JW’s recent posting, we are both out of here, but, man, we are leaving whoever comes in to fill our giant shoes (hitting G4’s The Feed giant shoes! Hitting the front pages of DESTRUCTOID, Kotaku, Joystiq, and so many other great video game blogs giant shoes!), err.. what was I saying.. oh yeah, we are leaving whoever comes in some of the coolest readers to any site I have been a part of. You know who you are you regulars that may not have always commented, but I check the stats and IPs of who visits like a weirdo (I seriously have OCD about that stuff). This contest really proved it. I can’t put up all entries for this contest (out of pure laziness I assure you), but I really wanted to show some off that made it into the final rounds of the giant q-tip competition.

Note: The following are in no actual order, just wanted to show off some of the work you guys yourself put in, don’t worry if yours isn’t shown below, it was received and treated with as *almost* as much love as the winning entry, which of course you can now see at the top of every page on the site.

(Reading this and want to get in contact with any of the artists/designers above, feel free to hit me up at ocap1 at hotmail dot com and I will get with the designer to let them know you want to give them some freelance work and/or want to know their age/sex/location for hot steamy text sex!)

Yes. I am a Tetris nerd. I scoured 3 Wal-Mart’s the night that “Tetris Evolution” came out. Within a few days I had obtained 1000/1000 achievement points (still the only 360 game I have done this with). I lurk the forums over at TetrisConcept.com. I am even on the fence of buying a Nintendo DS just for that damn Tetris game! (Zelda DS is helping push that buy). Even with the terrible terrible terrible (terrible) d-pad that the Xbox 360 has, Tetris Splash is an instant buy. For all you old school Tetrinet players on PC’s back in the day (oh those IRC days), it is looking like there finally might be a near equivalent of that coming to the Xbox Live Arcade this Wednesday at 9am EST, yes, I will set my alarm clock so I can buy it, and no, I am not kidding. Taking the multiplayer mode of Tetris to a new level with the addition of teams, I honestly can’t wait for this. The details from Xbox.com are as follows:

Modes of play: Three different modes of play including Tetris, T-Spin, and Combo, plus a unique screensaver mode.

Multiplayer: Playable solo, competitively or in teams, with an online multiplayer mode via Xbox LIVE® for up to six players.

New twists: New, enhanced graphics, and beautiful aquatic backscapes add a real splash to the fun of Tetris.

Content and themes: Exciting downloadable content will be made available including themes and background aquatic creatures.

Achievements: Twelve new achievements to master and conquer.

[Via 1pstart]
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Tetris Splash, Tetris Evolution, Tetris, Xbox Live Arcade, XBLA, Xbox 360, Best Game in the World

Get ready, October 10th, just a couple of weeks away, the Orange Box will be hitting store shelves and hopefully will not be ignored because of some other first person shooters recently released *cough*. Honestly though, I do wish this game well, as I love the Half Life series, however, do not care for keyboard/mouse as my FPS preference (yes, blasphemy for a PC user not to be a PC gamer, I know), so this is a set I honestly have been waiting for, specifically to check out “Portal” .. however the set also includes Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2. At the cost of a regular priced game you honestly can’t go wrong picking this baby up or at the very very least giving it a rental, remember, this is the PC game that can only be second to World of Warcraft, but before WOW, it was #1 for quite some time, if you are like me and have not given this game the attention it deserves, now is the time (well not right now, but very soon!).
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Valve, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Orange Box, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC, Keyboard Mouse Sucks

Great news! Yesterday at 10am (PST) the Call of Duty Beta raised the cap for levels to a rank of 25.

So if you aren’t leveling up and taking on challenges, now is the pretty obvious time to get on it to get the extra weapons and crap (crap includes some cool perks and an upgraded weapon in each category.. read full details at FourZeroTwo’s page).
Bad news! Sunday the 30th (11:59pm) the Beta will be done

So what have we learned from this great experience? Fast action first person kicks ass. It may be an acquired taste for all you Halo gun battlers, but this Beta convinced me that this just could be the best way to have objective type games, everyone was very talkative, a big plus, I know you silent players are out there, but stick to deathmatch only games please. Anyways, it was fun, good job Infinity Ward.

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Call of Duty 4, COD4, Beta, Infinity Ward, FourZeroTwo, Good News, Bad News, First Person Shooter

I know Metal Slug has a large following, sometimes I wish I was a part of that, however, I missed that boat so I don’t get that feeling of retro fun while playing that. However, I do get that feeling with Samurai Shodown 2, one of the many “Street Fighter” clones that had a following of its own. Of course when I was a kid I couldn’t afford the massively price Neo Geo system to play this on, but when I was in a good enough arcade, I would let the quarters fly on this ‘cool at the time’ yet still very cool now, Asian fighting culture based fighting game (Made GameSpot’s 10 greatest fighting games of all time!). Check the press release below:

(more…)

We knew it was going to happen, and true to the hype, Halo 3 has indeed set a single-day entertainment record, gmabbing itself a cool $170 Million in the US alone!

Inside the first 20 hours, over a million users signed onto Xbox LIVE to play Halo 3, which makes September 25th the most active single day ever.

Now, it’s going to take a little bit to find out what Halo 3 made worldwide, but if the US sales chart is any indication… everyone who even touched Halo 3 during production is rolling in money.

(more…)

As the time of Halo 3 draws near and there is some sort of news about the game every.. eh.. 20 minutes or so, comes the biggest news of them all…. Halo 3 will have DLC!! This comes from a recent sit down with Next-Gen, having Jonty Barnes and Jay Weinland representing Bungie. When asked about what will happen after Halo 3 is actually released, their reply was:

JW: Although we haven’t announced details, we have talked about downloadable content at some point.

JB: Yeah, I think that’s inevitable. We have released DLC in spring this year for Halo 2, a game that is two-and-a-half years old. We’ve still got 300,000 players of Halo 2 still playing the game. The last DLC was purely to support the call-outs from the community. I imagine seeing more of that in DLC for Halo 3.

I’m really excited by the Forge [Halo 3's map editing feature], and we don’t really think we understand what the people are going to create.

Being a huge Time Splitters fan, I can’t lie, I am very excited about the map editing feature myself more so than having to pay for levels. All I can do is remember the days when they were free, hopefully Bungie will do the honorable thing and stick with what they did with Halo 2 and have a certain time frame for people to buy the levels or whatever else they offer, then give it for free 3 months later or something).

Another note from Barnes sitting down with GameSpot was a quick quote about the Beta and preparing their servers for the horde that will be playing very soon, “The amount of polish feedback was especially helpful, and we also found we had to triple our server capacity.”

[Source 1Pstart.com | Header image stolen from JW because it was too damn funny I had to steal it]
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Halo, Halo 3, Next-Gen, Microsoft, DLC, Downloadable Content, Map Editing, Jonty Barnes, Bungie, Duh, Jay Weinland, Too Much Halo 3 News Daily, Xbox 360

As reported at 1PStart… by me… Microsoft announced at their 25th anniversary bash in London a new HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. No price tag has been revealed, however we were told to expect the new drive sometime in ‘08.

Director of Business for Microsoft Europe, Mark Bennett, showed off the new features of the upcoming upgraded drive:

The interactive features actually work on HD DVD whereas Blu-ray titles are six to nine months away from getting features that actually work… there are more plans to incorporate HD DVD into the PC platform in the future.

I have to think that those of you who bought the HD-DVD drive for the 360 may be a little ticked off about this. I know I would, especially when you consider just how much this damn thing costs.

[PCW]

Microsoft, Xbox 360, HD-DVD

For just the cost of under one gig of your hard drive, you can be the proud owner of a demo for Viva Pinata Party Animals. This complete Mario Party rip off game looks pretty damn good (Overlord ripped off Pikmin and that was fine and dandy by me). To see what you are getting yourself into, check a little video of some game play below:

Also note, when you did fire up your ol Xbox, there was a system update. Keep in mind, this is not the huge system update we are all waiting on, this is all about that big-button controller preparation, in fact, Major Nelson makes sure to point out “no new features beyond this big button pad support are included in this update and, once again, this is not the ‘fall dashboard upgrade.’ When I have firm details on the next major update, I will share them”
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Viva Pinata, Party Animals, Rare, Rareware, Microsoft, Demo, Update, Xbox 360

Ok, people, here’s the deal — Paco and I are on our way out. We’re taking over at 1PStart.com in an effort to restore it to it’s former glory. …that, and I just plain want to write about another game every once in a while, is that so wrong?!

Anyways, here is what we’re looking for: A competent, capable writer with a love for all things Xbox. Now, by competent writer, we mean someone who spells “you” correctly, and knows when to capitalize. If you can do that, you’re a shoe-in. So, CLICK THIS DAMN LINK, do the required stuff, then get paid to play video games and write about stuff.

…hell, Mike and I did the hard stuff already, and YES, the GTA4 Banner contest will continue, and I will still give you a copy of GTA IV… or something. So, hop to it.

Xbox 360 Rally, JW, Stuff, Job Openings