XBox 360 Rally

Ah, the digital age. Soon, I won’t even have to stop playing games in order to go out to my mailbox for a new arrival from Gamefly. No, seriously, I don’t play games that much — I have a life, thank you — but Xbox Live is going to make it easier for us lazy gamers to get our crack, I mean, video game experiences.

Microsoft is slowly letting the cat out the bag about the upcoming Games on Demand service through Xbox Live. I try Microsoft’s press archive and nada. I guess the announcement came after the E3 all-press conference at a lunch for VIPs and the elite press corps. But I ran across an interview on Eurogamer with John Schappert, who is the exec in charge of Live, and he gives us a bit more detail as to what this whole on-demand service will be.

Shappert: “Right now the plan is to have classic titles. We’re talking about 30 titles at launch - I think we mentioned BioShock, Mass Effect, Sonic, Civilization Revolution. Some of these titles are great titles, but retail shelf space is at a premium, and not everything manages to stay at retail for as long as consumers would still like to buy it, and we generally think there’s a lot of legs left on the 360 - we think we’re only halfway through our cycle - so we want to pick up some of these older, great games you can’t buy at retail.” –Eurogamer

So, part of me is happy about this new service. It may be a nice way of picking up older titles (if you have yet to play them or don’t already own them). But my big question is how will the Xbox’s hard drive handle more than a few games? Maybe Microsoft could also offer some additional storage space, maybe on Xbox Live with some extra server space? I’m sure they will charge us for the off-site storage, but would it be cheaper than buying additional hard drive space? Maybe. I mean, I hope I don’t have to buy a new Xbox in order to accommodate full games on the darn thing.

And even though I am interested in the Games on Demand Xbox Live Service, I am really not sure how practical or useful it will be over time. Especially if I am strapped for memory, I may be inclined to delete a game or two, and if that were to be the case, perhaps I would be better off buying the disk for easy removal and easy “come back to later”.

Furthermore, this whole attitude that older games are not available to buy through retailers and thus that is the reason that the service will be offering only the older games is a little out of whack. There are plenty of copies of anything you would want out there, and I can guess those copies would be cheaper than a Microsoft product (call me crazy). But if you don’t like hunting down an older game, then perhaps the GOD (ha ha ha) service would be good for you. However, then there is the whole “how many older games and which ones would be offered” problem.

So, I guess, in conclusion (as if this were a coherent essay), the announced GOD for Xbox Live may be a good thing, or may be like the Netflix thing and rather redundant. We shall see…

Xbox, Microsoft, Xbox Live, Xbox 360, E3, games on demand, video games

Ok, first the name. Project Natal? That sounds super creepy in a wireless Matrix-y sort of way, doesn’t it? I’m sure the team that came up with the working name were trying to allude to a new birth in gaming, but I just cannot help but think of actual human childbirth. Ew. Or maybe the name is referring to the Brazilian city.

Either way, Microsoft shill Steven Spielberg came out to show off the Project Natal prototype at this year’s E3. Don Mattrick, the SR VP in charge of this kind of thing at Microsoft, introduced Natal (which is only a code name, whew!) as not a motion-control controller but a “breakthrough sensor that tracks 3D movements, and recognizes voices, this is controller-free games and entertainment”. No controller needed at all. Take that, Wii!

The Natal is instead a camera that tracks your movements in 3 dimensions and uses your motions to control the game. The sensor also takes cues from voice commands, both for games and for the Xbox itself. At the press conference, Spielberg and Mattrick claimed that the reason that Natal was needed was to get more people into games, because thumb-based controllers are intimidating to people.

And jumping around a room isn’t intimidating?

As a lazy gamer with a low BMI, I tend to see video games as a way of relaxing on the sofa after playing real golf or hiking. So the Wii has little to no long-term interest for someone like me. But the Natal on the other hand is something that I like, so far. Project Natal’s camera is a peripheral, and therefore not required for many games (I’m sure that there will be plenty of games that will utilize the Natal’s capabilities, but there will still be regular games, too). I like the fact that I am not forced to play with a little wand, when all I want to do is use my thumbs.

By the way, at the E3 press conference, Spielberg described compared the birth of Natal as “a moment as significant as the transformation from the square shaped movie screen to Cinemascope…” Dork.

Microsoft, Project Natal, motion control, controller, gaming console, Xbox 360, Steven Spielberg, Wii, controller-free, peripheral, E3

Maybe “super-strength” is going a bit overboard, but maybe, just maybe, video games are helping some of us evolve into humans with better eyesight.

A new study is claiming that the evidence they gathered from experiments with hardcore gamers and casual gamers shows that those hardcore geeks, er, I mean, gamers have elevated contrast perception (the contrast among different shades of greys). Usually contrast perception issues are the core of eyesight problems that require corrective actions, such as surgery or corrective lenses.

But it seems that some video games — especially the violent variety — are doing some of the corrections for us.

Daphne Bavelier is a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, and she has been studying how video games affect players for years. Two years ago, her research showed that video gamers could pick out items in a cluttered screen better than those lame non-gamers. And in that study, it was the violent first-person shooter games that showed the best results.

See, I’m not wasting my time playing hours and hours of video games, I’m brain-training.

In Bavelier’s latest study, she broke her subjects into two groups. Each group had their vision tested, and then forced to play 50 hours of games before being tested again. The first group played violent FPS games Unreal Tournament 2004 or Call of Duty 2, and the second group played The Sims 2. Ok, you know that science research dollars are tight if Bavelier is using these old games in her testing.

Anyway, the FPS-gamers showed better contrast perception (about 58 percent better) after the 50 hours of “work”. Bavelier likened the improvement to the ability to see a car ahead of you on a foggy night when you wouldn’t have noticed it before.

Hey, any excuse to not feel badly about the time I waste playing violent video games is cool by me, and I say give this woman and her team more grant money…

video games, eyesight, health, gamers, study, contrast perception, University of Rochester, brain, FPS

Since last September, I have wanted Spore, but I’m going through a phase right now where I am just over PC games. Don’t get me wrong, I still play them incessantly and I will get Spore, but it would be nice if Spore were to come out for the Xbox 360. Sometimes a girl just wants to sit on her couch, backward and upside down and play video games. You just cannot do that on a computer.

Maxis created crack for nerdly gamers back in the day and it goes by the names of the Sims or SimCity. Well, Maxis is trying to capture lightning in a bottle once again, and it could happen with Spore.

But Spore, if it does evolve into the game of choice for all levels of game addicts, will only be a PC or Mac-based game…oh, yeah, and a DS and a Wii game.

That’s right. Spore is being developed for play on the Wii and the Nintendo DS, but not the damn Xbox. Why, for the love of jove, why? Maxis and Nintendo are the evil heart of this conspiracy, and players like me that would like to be able to play all games on a large LCD HDTV instead of my 17″ laptop screen are the ones who suffer.

Bad Maxis, bad.

However, for all those who play on PC’s or mac’s, DS’ or Wii’s, you will be getting Spore either for the first time (Wii and DS) or you will have available for your gaming pleasures two new Spore games in Spore: Galactic Adventures and Spore: Creature Keeper (developed for younger players, and kinda like a sim-habitat-thing).

To be fair, the exec in the interview does not not say that Spore is being developed for the Xbox and PS3.

Xbox 360, Maxis, SimCity, Sims, video games, players, Spore, Galactic Adventures, Wii, DS, PS3

Having had my Xbox 360 since August 2006 (when my Xbox was dropped during a move), and having gone through the whole Ring of Death Debacle, I am happy that a Microsoft exec let it slip out that the Xbox 360 will not be replaced/upgraded anytime soon. With as much as I spend on games, I don’t have enough for a new system just yet…

Xbox division president Robbie Bach told Bloomberg this week that flashy graphics won’t be enough for consumers to adopt a new platform.

“Just coming up with something that’s faster and prettier isn’t going to be sufficient,” said Bach.

Additionally, he predicts products from Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co. will hold a longer life span.

“The life cycle for this generation of consoles — and I’m not just talking about Xbox, I’d include Wii and PS3 as well — is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations.” -PunchJump

Faster and prettier is always good, but I tend to agree with Bach. Something very new needs to happen, kind of like what has happened with the Wii, insofar as a new way to game must be the next step and the reason that I will trade up my gaming console.

Not to mention, Microsoft is still paying through the nose to correct hardware issues with the Xbox 360, so I doubt that the R&D budget for the new-gen Xbox has not been affected by the ongoing problems.

Xbox 360, Wii, Ring of Death, Microsoft, gaming console

In a year when just about everything didn’t sell as well as last year, sales of the Xbox 360 increased by 8 percent this lame holiday season over 2007’s sales figures for December. The 360’s final yearly sales showed an increase of 19 percent over 2007 sales.

Not bad, but the bigger news is that the Nintendo Wii won the Holiday sales war with over 3 million units sold. The PS3 didn’t come close to a million at a bit over 700,000 sold. The PSP topped over a million units sold, and for some reason, about 400,000 Playstation 2’s were sold. Do people really still buy those and why?

The Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 nearly 2 to 1. Prices may have something to do with that. The Wii package runs about $250 base and you have to spend another $40 to $50 on a second controller. The Xbox 360 runs about $300 for the mid-level model and another $40 for an additional controller. The PS3 runs about $400 for the base model.

More news this week…Xbox 360 games topped the rankings for video game rentals. Xbox 360-platform games took all the top five spots in the list, and took another two spots among the top ten. Three Wii games placed in the remaining tops spots. And missing from the top ten were any PS3 games.

The Top Ten (as compiled by Rentrak)

PC World Mag also published a listing of anticipated Xbox games for 2009. You can click here to see the article. Notables on the list include Halo Wars, I am Alive and Alpha Protocol.

xbox 360, nintendo, wii, playstation, consoles, games, video games

Even if you can’t read a lick of German, numbers and percentages shouldn’t escape you. Take a look at the image at the bottom of this story a moment. Do you see that “90% Komplett”? Yeah, Unreal Tournament 3 (talk about retro linkage) is almost done. So done, in fact, that according to this very German article that you can easily view below, UT3 will be storming the people next April.

If you remember back to E3, there was a big stink about how the PlayStation 3 would be getting UT3 before the Xbox 360. In fact, many PS3 fanboys got ahead of themselves and started bragging on various message boards that Unreal Tournament 3 was in fact a PS3 exclusive. Obviously that isn’t the case, and I would even venture to guess that the Xbox 360 version, like so many other games brought to both systems, will be the superior effort.

But only time will tell, and we’ll know by April.

[MaxConsole]

Unreal Tournament 3

As picked by CVG. I can’t say that their list is too far off. I think most of the bigger named titles have already come out, and though the list below does have some “AAA” games, it just cannot compete with what has come out this year. CVG’s gives us a ‘top ten’ list of what is going to be available next year, for the most part I think titles we knew were of course coming, but when seen in list form, I can’t say I am greatly excited. I think Lost Odyssey, Condemned 2, Soul Calibur IV, and maybe even Battlefield: Bad Company (if it is going to rip of CoD4 as much as I think it will, it should be good):

Banjo-Kazooie
Too Human
Fallout 3
Grand Theft Auto IV
Ninja Gaiden 2
Splinter Cell Conviction
Fable 2
Devil May Cry 4
Halo Wars
Resident Evil 5

[See ComputerAndVideoGames.com for their full thoughts on each of these games]

I just wanted an excuse to use the above picture. XKCD is the best. Still, there is new songs to download for you, not my particular taste, but maybe something for you:

“Attack” - 30 Seconds To Mars (from 2005’s A Beautiful Lie)
“The Kill” - 30 Seconds To Mars (from 2005’s A Beautiful Lie)
“Dirty Little Secret” - All-American Rejects (from 2005’s Move Along)
“Move Along” - All-American Rejects (from 2005’s Move Along)
“Song With A Mission” - The Sounds (from 2006’s Dying To Say This To
You)

See after the break for the full break down from MajorNelson with cost and legal info:

(more…)

I own it. You own it. Odds are your friends own it. There is simply no denying that Halo 3 is an absolute beast of a game. In its first day in the US, Halo 3 made nearly $200 million, and helped Microsoft by being a definite system seller, pushing 527K consoles out the door in September. But just how impressive are the numbers?

Well, according to the NPD numbers through November, 4.1 million copies of Halo 3 have been purchased in the US. Meanwhile, there have been 7.9 million Xbox 360 consoles sold in the US since its launch just over two years ago. Doing the math, a whopping 52% of all Xbox 360 owners own Halo 3.

That’s more than half, people. And with Christmas looming but a week away, you can expect both Halo 3 and the Xbox 360’s numbers to increase.

[GameDaily]

Microsoft, Xbox 360, Bungie, Halo 3

The Witcher a PC RPG which is in no specific terms contains mass amounts of both “epic” and “awesome”, is making its way to the Xbox 360.

Maybe.

You see, the developer of The Witcher, CD Projekt, has said publically that The Witcher is never, ever going to be on the consoles. However, the developer now has a job opening posting where they state that they are looking for someone who is skilled in “parallel programming” for the Xbox 360.

For those of you who are completely illiterate with computers, I’ll sum it up for you: They’re looking for people who can translate code from one platform to another… okay, I’ll dumb it down a little more: A port! They want to PORT something… make sense now? Good.

Now, unless they intend to port “Football Manager 2008″ to the Xbox 360, odds are we can see The Witcher sometime in the not-so-distant future. Cool, huh?

[CD Projekt]

Microsoft, Xbox 360, CD Projekt

Hey folks, figured I would pop my head in to share something as a new writer for the site here is being figured out (Applications still being accepted!). I love how to this day, KoToR 3 talk still persists and some peoples Xbox 360’s are being wrapped in towels, awesome.

Onto the news, the Halo 3 map pack is out. With it came the news that it will be free at some point. Awesome. Unlike Lost Planet, they never tell you that the things you buy would eventually be free!!! Ahem..apologies for that outburst, that is buyers remorse talking. Well if you want to buy now, it actually seems like a pretty decent set of maps. Want a little preview of them before buying ? Of course you do, so here is the great guys at Red vs Blue showing off the new DLC:

(more…)

Fulfilling my mandatory obligations to update this site once in a blue moon because some of you have yet to catch onto the fact that Paco and I take up residence at 1PStart now, I’m going to tell you a little story about a console that could. You see, in 2005 the Xbox 360 launched with much fanfare, and for a good long time was the only player in town.

…and then Nintendo came with it’s souped-up Gamecube with the powerglove controller, and in time surpassed the Xbox 360 in total sales. This still hasn’t deterred people from wanting the little guy, however, as Microsoft is struggling to meet demand for the console in the UK.

We’re struggling to meet the demand from every retailer every week. I think we’ve probably done it better than some of our cohorts out there, but it’s a weekly thing - we’re getting stock in, we’re getting it straight out to the retailers who need it

So things are going well for Microsoft, and it also seems like the UK is turning into a hot bed of gaming shortage. Earlier Nintendo made it clear they would be pulling its television advertisements for the Wii in a ditch effort to try and control demand in what I assume is an attempt to hide their own shortage.

If you get desperate for a 360, and aren’t too… hung-up about this pesky “Region Lock” thing, may I suggest Japan?

[Next-Gen]

Microsoft, Xbox 360, UK, shortage

A sting operation in El Paso, Texas where fugitives were informed that they had won free electronics including Xbox 360s, has resulted in over 100 arrests.

“Our goal is to try to keep El Paso safe and arrest as many fugitives as we can,” said U.S. Marshal supervisor Gerry Payan.

The operation was aimed specifically at targeting those with past illigal entry, violence and drug charges (because apparently all gamers are drugged up illegals with hot heads ). 129 warrants were cleared in all, and over $25,000 worth of traffic fines were collected.

Just more proof that the Xbox 360 draws you in. But remember south Texans… if you are told you won a free 360, in the words of Admiral Ackbar “It’s a trap!”.

[Shack News]

Xbox 360, El Paso, Texas, U.S. Marshal

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