July 03, 2007
recovering gamer tag - don't do it!
Right now at the Google Chicago office we have 2, count 'em, 2 360's on our floor. Not to mention a Wii and a PS/2.
I thought it would be good to use my XBox Live gamer tag at the office and at home. That's not the way it works! It's a token that moves around from machine to machine - so once you recover it at work and go home, you have to recover it again at home. Each time it takes about 15 minutes to recover. jeesh. that ain't right.
I should be able to play as myself quickly and easily at any XBox.
I guess we're going to have to develop our own game system at Google unless you can fix this Microsoft.
Posted by Steve at 10:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 07, 2007
Guitar Hero II Rox, of course
The 360 version of Guitar Hero II came out last week, and I was terribly worried about the game sucking up all my precious time. However, on medium difficulty, I finished the entire set list in 3 days. Man, there are some tough songs in there. I love the addition of "The Trooper" by Iron Maiden to the 260 version. Anyway, until they gimme some downloadable content or allow Xbox Live cooperative or compete modes, I am no longer so worried. Of course, if we get an xbox in the office (which we desperately need to do), all bets are off!
Posted by Steve at 09:52 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 21, 2007
BillG rockin' FIFA with Marquez
what's with the wired controllers? jeez, Bill.
Link to Bill Gates can't play soccer games (or he's a good faker) - Joystiq
Posted by Steve at 03:43 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 31, 2007
DaKing240 Presents:: The Next 10 XBLA Games
Starting with the first release in February, 10 highly anticipated titles will begin making their way to Xbox Live Arcade, including these (titles are not listed in chronological release order):
· “3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures,” from developer Wanako Games and publisher Sierra Online, allows gamers to putt their way through 36 fun-filled holes of manic minigolf action on wild courses that range from the Old West to outer space and feature a bevy of crazy hazards and obstacles.
· “Alien Hominid HD” from The Behemoth features side-scrolling, hysterical cartoon action with a quirky twist and exclusive Xbox Live Arcade features.
· “Band of Bugs” from NinjaBee is a fast-paced tactical strategy game that offers gameplay deep enough to satisfy tactical genre fans and friendly enough to appeal to casual gamers. Creative gamers can even design their own levels with the built-in level editor, then play them solo or over Xbox Live with friends.*
· “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night” from Konami is a faithful version of this legendary classic updated for Xbox Live Arcade and featuring the game’s full soundtrack and memorable side-scrolling vampire-hunting action.
· “Catan,” from developer Big Huge Games Inc. and publisher Microsoft® Game Studios, is a faithful remake of the immensely popular strategy board game.
· “Eets: Chowdown” from Klei Entertainment Inc. is a completely revamped version of the popular PC title of the same name. It offers new items, 120 new levels and the exclusive debut of Marsho Madness, a high-adrenaline action game in which players must keep the impending evil marshmallows at bay.
· “LUXOR 2,” from developer MumboJumbo LLC, sets a new standard for action puzzlers as players match and shoot their way through the land of ancient Egypt.
· “Paperboy,” from developer Digital Eclipse and publisher Midway, is a classic coin-op hit, specially enhanced for Xbox Live Arcade.
· “Root Beer Tapper,” also from developer Digital Eclipse and publisher Midway, features fast-paced reflex action as players scramble to keep thirsty patrons happy without dropping root beer mugs in the scramble to earn the biggest tips.
· “Worms” from developer Team 17 Software Ltd. features armies of adorable weapon-toting worms locked in tactical combat.
via 2 feeds you shouldn't miss from the microsoft team if you own a 360:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/GamerscoreBlog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DaKing240
Posted by Steve at 10:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 05, 2007
Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 Box Art and Bundle Picture - Xbox
Alright, now we're getting somewhere - packaging for Guitar Hero II for the 360 has been released. With downloadable content, that is, you aren't locked into the songs that come on the disc, this will have to be a winner.
Link to Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 Box Art and Bundle Picture - Xbox
Posted by Steve at 08:51 AM | Comments (376) | TrackBack
December 27, 2006
TVersity Website
Looks like a cool alternative to Location Free Server, that allows you to broadcast web media to your PSP and XBOX 360 with real time transcoding. It can even take video podcasts and make them available for streaming to the device.
Something to try someday...
Posted by Steve at 11:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2006
Gears of War hits 2 million mark - cool network effect
GameSpot is reporting 2 million copues of Gears of War have been sold. Yep, death match, single player, multi-player co-op - it's all good. the surprising thing, however is the network effect that occured by selling such a great game with great online play:
"Since the game went on sale November 7, the daily rate of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, which are required for online play, has increased more than 50 percent."
That's a pretty profound bump where the software has caused people to pay for service they wouldn't otherwise pay for. What I'd like to know, is how many purhcase decisions were made to buy a 360 based on GOW.
It certainly was no accident that this game was released the same week as the Wii and the PS3. I'm sure Microsoft was working on that timeline with Epic for months. I'm sure many people who were on the fence, or just couldn't wait to get their hands on a PS3 made the plunge.
Link to Gears of War hits 2 million mark - Xbox 360 News at GameSpot
Posted by Steve at 04:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 02, 2006
Cool Gears of War Pic
Gears of War might be the most immersive videogame of all time. it's definitely up there with the original Quake, Call of Duty 2 (&3), and Resident Evil as games that have actually made me jump out of my seat.
Just a cool action shot there.
Posted by Steve at 08:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 28, 2006
more BK Gamer
If you do make it to Burger King to pick up some of the promotional XBox 360 games, the one to get is defeinitely Pocketbike Racer. it's great family fun. definitely appropriate to play with kids, and generally just a great game.
photos from Major Nelson
Posted by Steve at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 23, 2006
A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3 - New York Times
wow, that doesn't sound good for the ps3. hopefully a few firmware updates will solve some of these problems.
Link to A Weekend Full of Quality Time With PlayStation 3 - New York Times
Posted by Steve at 12:32 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
November 22, 2006
BurgerKing Gamer
You can now get 3 Xbox 360 games for $3.99 with the purchase of a value meal. They even have a whole online community around it at their website bkgamer.com
Interesting co-marketing. Whopper me!
Posted by Steve at 01:04 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 08, 2006
» Gears of War Ad Spoofs » InsideMicrosoft
The new Gears of War trailer is pretty awesome. I saw it in the theater the other night as a trailer before "Borat" (btw, if you've seen the Borat spots on You Tube, you've seen all the funniest parts of Borat, save one scene that's way too scrotum filled for YouTube) and it's an amazing piece of CGI if not the best looking videogame ever created.
The trailer uses Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears "Mad World" - and it fits perfectly. But the spoofs are good too. check them all out here:
Link to » Gears of War Ad Spoofs » InsideMicrosoft - part of the Blog News Channel
Posted by Steve at 10:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 21, 2006
major nelson: the most commented blog
Major Nelson, an evangelist for Xbox Live, probably has the most commented blog around. He can write one sentence and get over a hundred comments!
Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/majornelson
Posted by Steve at 06:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 12, 2006
10 things i love about the Xbox 360
with all the hype of the late release of the Nintendo Wii and the PS3, i thought i'd recap all the stuff i love about the Xbox 360 platform. to be clear, i'm not a game platform bigot. i'm equal opportunity. i fully expect to own all 3 of these platforms before this is all said and done, and i expect them to all coexist peacefully in my home neighborhood.
1. the controller - let's see, let me go through all the gaming systems i've owned - pong, atari 2600, sega genesis, sega game gear, ps1, ps2, N-gage, PSP and the Xbox 360. the 360's controller blows them all away. it fits perfectly in your hand, and just becomes a part of you. how come no one else could do this before. and the wireless works great too. it's RF, so there's no need to have line of site[sic] open to the console.
2. xbox live - xbox live is done right on so many levels. yes, having to pay to play other people sucks big time, but for the $50 per year, i think it is well worth it. surely, xbox live has forced Sony to think very hard about how they would go to market with multiplayer gameplay, and i see this as Sony's hardest challenge in marking up feature for feature with Microsoft. this is because xbox live is so much a part of the gaming experience on the xbox that it doesn't even make sense for me to play without it. the fact that it is recording achievements (see #9) while i am playing is actually a big motivation to play in addition to the fun of playing. when playing my PSP i long for having achievements or something similar on this platform.
3. the graphics - well, compared to pretty much anything else currently available, the 360 blows everything away, and that's on the first generation games. it always takes developers a couple generations to learn how to tune a platform. this will only get better.
4. the sound - i come out of a game of call of duty 2 with my heart racing and wide awake. adrenaline is clearly racing through my body. i think this has everything to do with the 5.1 sound coming out of the optical port on the xbox 360 cable.
5. the media player - i've had a number of solutions for my stereo that allow me to stream music from a server on my network and play music. the xbox360 does it better than all the others i've had. AND, i can also play a slideshow of pictures from any computer in the house to the TV while playing this through the stereo. i can play music off of one server, and pictures off of another, no problem. no media center PC required.
6. making my own soundrack for any game - i am the type that usually has the stereo on while playing video games. i love the fact that i can be playing a game, and also streaming my music collection from any computer in the house in the background to the game. given #4, i don't do this a lot, but it is nice to have the option.
6. the demos - it's awesome to be 10 minutes away from trying any game. over a cable modem, downloading a 1GIG game demo is pretty effortless, and you can now do it in the background while you play. this online marketplace feature is a winner.
7. the arcade - sometimes you just need a simple, mind-numbing game. sometimes you just don't have time to take on an entire level of oblivion or game of NCAA football. that's where the arcade comes in. a quick game of Zuma or Hexic can be a blast and boost your gamer scrore to boot. and the kids love Marble Blast Ultra.
8. platform compatibility - games on the pc are great, but i'm flat out tired of compatibility problems. half the games i get for my kids' pc do not work out of the box because of some system incompatibility, lack of disk space, what ever. what a pain. platform gaming is just so much easier for the average joe, and people who just don't have time to pimp their ride. the backward compatibility of the 360 leaves something to be desired, however, having to have the team at MSFT issue a patch for any original Xbox games.
9. achievements - every game on the 360, whether it be on disc or the arcade, has "acheivements" that add to your "gamer score" in Xbox Live. this is a remarkable concept, and is remarkably addictive. you don't feel like you've had an attractive gaming session unless you've upped your gamer score. achievements vary greatly based on the game, from scoring a rushing touchdown of more than 30 yards in NCAA 2006, to winning the war in Call of Duty 2.
10. the stats - i'm a stats junkie. whether you know it or not, every XBox 360 game is required to log some set of stats to the Xbox Live server as you are playing. there's numerous services that have partnered with Xbox Live to give you stats on what you've played, how long you've played it, as well as your "gamer score" and "achievements." i expect them to open this up a little more in the future to other third parties to develop additional services.
all in all, the Xbox 360 rocks. i could probably find 10 things i don't like about the Xbox 360, and maybe i will post those soon. but for now. i highly urge you to go out and buy one so i can play you.
Posted by Steve at 10:12 PM | Comments (1583) | TrackBack
September 14, 2006
Video Game Console User-Agents
A few days ago, i posted on the distinct user-agents we see from Mobile phones, and just to further this point that RSS is making it to more an more places, I decided to do another internal query to see how the takeup has been on video game consoles.
The results aren't too surprising - the leaders are also a mobile device, and particulary the podcast clients for the Sony PSP.
For those who haven't used the "Sony PSP Native RSS Reader" - it's really only a podcasting client. If you add a text feed, it just reports that there are no feed items. But it's great for video podcasts.
If you have a PSP, try watching Ask A Ninja: http://feeds.feedburner.com/askaninja
| user_agent | Circulation |
| Sony PSP Native RSS Reader | 458933 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00) | 158234 |
| PSP" Media Manager | 29283 |
| Media Manager for PSP" | 2779 |
| Media Manager for PSP® | 110 |
| Mozilla/5.0 (PSP WiFi Cluster running Blue Gene emulator) | 62 |
| LinksBoks/0.99 (Xbox; d3dx) | 53 |
| BX14RSSR/1.0 (PSP/2.6.0) | 43 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00),gzip(gfe) (via translate.google.com) | 41 |
| Sony Playstation2 (Utility Disc Ver.2.00b/for PS-modem)[jp] | 36 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0102pspNavigator | 14 |
| Missing Sync/Sony PSP (Macintosh; U; Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/418 (KHTML, like Gecko) | 13 |
| Mozilla/4.0(PSP (PlayStationPortable); 2.00) | 7 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0110 UCJS10010 | 7 |
| Mozilla/4.0+(PSP+(PlayStation+Portable);+2.00) | 6 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2) | 5 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00 | 4 |
| PSP_ Media Manager | 4 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0101 Content-Downloader/1.9.9 (Neboo) | 4 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0105 UCJS10007 | 4 |
| Mozilla/4.41 (SuperNintendo; FamilyBasic 3.0 ;IE) | 3 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0102pspNavigator (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) | 3 |
| Famicom/Nintendo (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Mac_PowerPC) | 2 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.80) | 2 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP(PlayStation Portable); 2.00) | 2 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; {211B3A9E-64F0-0FA3-C31F-48EB36C0FA8A}; pspadvance; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) | 2 |
| Mozilla/5.0 (PLAYSTATION 3; 1.00) | 2 |
| 480x272x32 Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.60) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PS2; PlayStation BB Navigator 1.0) NetFront/3.0 | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 1.50) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP PlayStation portable); 2.00) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; {24A8B876-C847-D4EE-8E37-740377A13B73}) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.00; {DC877C4A-79AD-872D-DD67-59CF0208FCD8}; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1) | 1 |
| Mozilla/4.0 (PSP; (PlayStation Portable);; 2.60; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) | 1 |
| Nintendo63/1.0 (CP/M; 6.5-bit) | 1 |
| Nintendo64/1.7 (SuperMarioOS with Sun 15K Y-MP Emulation) | 1 |
| PlayStation Portable | 1 |
| SCEJ PSP BROWSER 0215UCJS00040 | 1 |
| XBMCjÿÿÿ @ (http://www.xboxmediacenter.com) | 1 |
Posted by Steve at 10:03 AM | Comments (33) | TrackBack
August 31, 2006
Xbox.com | LEGO® Star Wars® II: The Original Trilogy - Game Detail Page
The first installment might be the only adventure game i have ever finished (co-op with my kids of course). Can't wait for this one September 12.
Link to Xbox.com | LEGO® Star Wars® II: The Original Trilogy - Game Detail Page
Posted by Steve at 11:15 PM | Comments (384) | TrackBack
August 14, 2006
YouTube - Fifa 07 Skills
the hippety hop is back! a cool preview of the power moves in Fifa 07.
Link to YouTube - Fifa 07 Skills
Posted by Steve at 01:22 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Gamasutra - BREAKING: Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games
Cool idea - Microsoft is opening up a lite version of their toolkit to amatuer developers. be worth a look at the APIs when it is released
Link to Gamasutra - BREAKING: Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games
Posted by Steve at 08:46 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 08, 2006
HD-DVD on the Xbox 360
Major Nelson and company posts some images of how the HD-DVD player will work on the Xbox 360. Seems pretty straightforward.
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360's HD-DVD interface |
Posted by Steve at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 25, 2006
gamerscorechart.com
i love services like this that can take a data stream and make it graphical for you. this graphic, for instance, can show you how much i've been progressing on my XBox360 games. apparently, i played a lot on the 21st and 22nd.
www.gamerscorechart.com
Posted by Steve at 07:51 PM | Comments (169) | TrackBack
June 20, 2006
my xbox "gamer tag"
for some reason, the iframe doesn't work in my sidebar - i guess i got too much blog bling here.
feel free to challenge me to a game of fifa if you have the means...
Get your own Gamercard Sig.
Posted by Steve at 08:31 PM | Comments (846) | TrackBack