Will now be released in fiscal 2008.
read more | digg story
This CLEARLY has something to do with the 360's lack of a standard HDD.
Seriously though, this is huge news and it just means your $60 you set aside this fall for GTA can be spent on HL2: Orange Box instead.
Showing posts with label Xbox 360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Xbox 360. Show all posts
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Xbox 360 failure rate estimated around 33%!
"EB Games held conference calls for its Canadian stores informing them of the extended warranty policy changes and revealing alarming failure rates of the Xbox 360. “The real numbers were between 30 to 33 percent,” said former EB Games employee Matthieu G., adding that failure rate was even greater for launch consoles."
read more | digg story
Been waiting a month for my 2nd dead system to come back, double the wait the first time it broke. It's just annoying as hell having a $400 piece of electronics equipment that can die randomly, not to mention the $480 version isn't even any safer, plus they still haven't fixed the d-pad.
MS cheaped out, (yet sells us pictures at pure profit) and we all have to suffer for their mistakes. The Core pack was an ominous sign more people should have paid attention to. Unfortunately for us, hardware quality didn't seem like a high priority compared to a 2005 launch and being able to turn a profit within 2 years.
Inconvenience = unhappy consumers who will not stay loyal forever. In addition to getting great games this fall, the PS3 is a more capable machine with a solid design, Blu-ray's larger disc space and a standard hard drive. The Wii is just unstoppable and MS is helping keep it that way.
read more | digg story
Been waiting a month for my 2nd dead system to come back, double the wait the first time it broke. It's just annoying as hell having a $400 piece of electronics equipment that can die randomly, not to mention the $480 version isn't even any safer, plus they still haven't fixed the d-pad.
MS cheaped out, (yet sells us pictures at pure profit) and we all have to suffer for their mistakes. The Core pack was an ominous sign more people should have paid attention to. Unfortunately for us, hardware quality didn't seem like a high priority compared to a 2005 launch and being able to turn a profit within 2 years.
Inconvenience = unhappy consumers who will not stay loyal forever. In addition to getting great games this fall, the PS3 is a more capable machine with a solid design, Blu-ray's larger disc space and a standard hard drive. The Wii is just unstoppable and MS is helping keep it that way.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Xbox 360 Design: The Back Story
"A look into how the design of the Xbox 360 came to be."
*Warning*
Long-winded rant below:
It's a stupid design, they attempted (this being the keyword) to go for aesthetics, instead of being technically proficient, so they ended up failing on both fronts.
The main complaint with the Xbox was size, what does the 360 do? Deceive you. MS likes deception (MS points pricing is another example off the top of my head, not to mention the Core and the barebones Vista, it's all marketing), they bank on deception. There's no room inside the original Xbox, yet the HDD and power supply are internal. There's "plenty of space" inside the 360 further emphasizing the poor design of it, just compare both systems with the covers removed.
The 360 gives you a giant fucking powerbrick and a non-standard HDD, which has been reduced to a glorified memory card, with the illusion of choice (removing a core feature of your previous system is asinine, imagine if the GCN came out with only 2 controller ports). Although the HDD being external has paid off, so you can keep it when you have to send your system out to be repaired. Yet the main issue is that it's basically the same size and weight as the Xbox, not to mention having worse build quality and louder than any console should ever be, they completely ignored the REAL issues.
There's nothing elegant about it, it's big, loud, clunky and it barely looks better than the Xbox did. Being vertical looks nicer and sleeker, but I certainly don't trust the 360 when it's vertical, so that's kind of useless. When it's horizontal, it's awkward to grab as there's no space for your fingers to go underneath it. Don't get me wrong, I have fun with it (it's all about the games after all) and my 12k+ gamerscore backs that up, but I'll be damned if it's not the one of worst designed consoles out there and ironically it's modeled after a dead person, how fitting.
read more | digg story
*Warning*
Long-winded rant below:
It's a stupid design, they attempted (this being the keyword) to go for aesthetics, instead of being technically proficient, so they ended up failing on both fronts.
The main complaint with the Xbox was size, what does the 360 do? Deceive you. MS likes deception (MS points pricing is another example off the top of my head, not to mention the Core and the barebones Vista, it's all marketing), they bank on deception. There's no room inside the original Xbox, yet the HDD and power supply are internal. There's "plenty of space" inside the 360 further emphasizing the poor design of it, just compare both systems with the covers removed.
The 360 gives you a giant fucking powerbrick and a non-standard HDD, which has been reduced to a glorified memory card, with the illusion of choice (removing a core feature of your previous system is asinine, imagine if the GCN came out with only 2 controller ports). Although the HDD being external has paid off, so you can keep it when you have to send your system out to be repaired. Yet the main issue is that it's basically the same size and weight as the Xbox, not to mention having worse build quality and louder than any console should ever be, they completely ignored the REAL issues.
There's nothing elegant about it, it's big, loud, clunky and it barely looks better than the Xbox did. Being vertical looks nicer and sleeker, but I certainly don't trust the 360 when it's vertical, so that's kind of useless. When it's horizontal, it's awkward to grab as there's no space for your fingers to go underneath it. Don't get me wrong, I have fun with it (it's all about the games after all) and my 12k+ gamerscore backs that up, but I'll be damned if it's not the one of worst designed consoles out there and ironically it's modeled after a dead person, how fitting.
read more | digg story
Why do my games cost so much?
"Many people have been complaining about the $60 price tag for next-gen console games. Forbes takes time to explain why."
Don't buy $60 games. I haven't paid more than $35 for a 360 game and all of my games are like new, complete with cases and manuals. The 360 has a high software attach rate and with so many games out there so fast, second hand copies drop in price even faster.
I got like new copies of Gears of War and Dead Rising for $35 shipped and just recently found Lost Planet at a steal of a price, $25 shipped, a game which came out not more than two months ago and obviously still retails at $60 new.
Amazon, eBay, Cheapassgamer, Tradegamesnow, GameTZ, etc. these sites are your friends! Most gaming forums also have trading boards/threads, use them and save. A little work on your part will save you quite a bit in the long run.
read more | digg story
Don't buy $60 games. I haven't paid more than $35 for a 360 game and all of my games are like new, complete with cases and manuals. The 360 has a high software attach rate and with so many games out there so fast, second hand copies drop in price even faster.
I got like new copies of Gears of War and Dead Rising for $35 shipped and just recently found Lost Planet at a steal of a price, $25 shipped, a game which came out not more than two months ago and obviously still retails at $60 new.
Amazon, eBay, Cheapassgamer, Tradegamesnow, GameTZ, etc. these sites are your friends! Most gaming forums also have trading boards/threads, use them and save. A little work on your part will save you quite a bit in the long run.
read more | digg story
Monday, March 19, 2007
Devil May Cry 4 Now Coming to Xbox 360, PC and PS3...
"Looks like PS3 just lost another exclusive. Now if Konami gets their way, MGS4 will be next, but Hideo Kojima is resisting."
Huge news and I guess Dead Rising and Lost Planet selling so well were part of the reason for this, not to mention the huge cost of next-gen games.
read more | digg story
Huge news and I guess Dead Rising and Lost Planet selling so well were part of the reason for this, not to mention the huge cost of next-gen games.
read more | digg story
Friday, March 9, 2007
Xbox 360 backwards compatibility "not important anymore" by 2008
Chris Satchell: "At some point we're going to focus less on it. When you get to the end of this year there will be a reduced focus on backwards compatibility. There are so many 360 games out there. I don't know if it's important anymore."
This is a company that makes a boatload selling friggin pictures online and they can't afford to get the few decent games on their dead system to play on their new one? Put up some Panzer Dragoon Orta picture packs to fund the BC support of it. MS continues to show their greedy, asshole nature.
read more | digg story
This is a company that makes a boatload selling friggin pictures online and they can't afford to get the few decent games on their dead system to play on their new one? Put up some Panzer Dragoon Orta picture packs to fund the BC support of it. MS continues to show their greedy, asshole nature.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Live for Windows pricing revealed Pt. 2
When I submitted this, there were no details on how Live for Windows allowed online play with Silver.
So apparently Live for Windows is aimed at Xbox 360 gamers who already have a Gold account, but they're not playing these games on Vista, they're playing them on 360, so I don't understand the logic to this. Paying for Gold as a PC gamer apparently only nets you achievements, which seems like a stupid thing to have to pay for, since it's just an irrelevant number (I say this as someone with a gamerscore of more than 10k).
I can't see Live for Windows going anywhere, there's no reason to get it as a PC gamer and one of the main draws of a 360 is the ability to play PC games on a console for a lower price, so why would 360 gamers go for this?
read more | digg story
So apparently Live for Windows is aimed at Xbox 360 gamers who already have a Gold account, but they're not playing these games on Vista, they're playing them on 360, so I don't understand the logic to this. Paying for Gold as a PC gamer apparently only nets you achievements, which seems like a stupid thing to have to pay for, since it's just an irrelevant number (I say this as someone with a gamerscore of more than 10k).
I can't see Live for Windows going anywhere, there's no reason to get it as a PC gamer and one of the main draws of a 360 is the ability to play PC games on a console for a lower price, so why would 360 gamers go for this?
read more | digg story
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Xbox 360 and PS3 Games in NEED Publishers!
"Littered throughout the games industry there are a myriad of promising titles yet to secure a publishing partner. You often don't hear as much about these titles, but they are some of the most interesting and creative games yet. If we don't get these studios publishers soon, these titles could die!"
The City of Metronome NEEDS to be picked up, it's easily more interesting than 99% of the generic, boring shooters out there. Get bent, Tom Clancy.
read more | digg story
The City of Metronome NEEDS to be picked up, it's easily more interesting than 99% of the generic, boring shooters out there. Get bent, Tom Clancy.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
5 Quick Fixes for the Xbox 360
1. Auto-off needs to be manual or done in 30min/60min increments. 6 hours is illogical and was too long for Xbox, now with the 360, I fear the system kicking the bucket or worse.
2. Back should bring you back to the main dash, whilst hitting B remains unchanged and just brings you back one level. It seems very easy to implement and can be especially useful to if you navigate deep into folders for music on a portable device, instead of hitting B a bunch of times to go back, just hit Back once.
3. More video codec support would be nice, WMV alone sucks. How about some DivX support? I'm aware of TVersity, but that's Windows-only and for streaming, I play all my media from an external HDD.
4. The BC list needs to be viewable from the dashboard. There’s absolutely no reason you should have to go to a computer just to view text. Don't even get me started on the insanity that it the lack of a backwards compatible Panzer Dragoon Orta (not to mention a slew of other great, exclusive games; Otogi 1 & 2, JSRF, Riddick, Breakdown, OutRun 2 and RalliSport 2 say hi).
5. The d-pad is awful, fix it. It hampers an otherwise perfect controller and literally does not work properly, because when I hit left, it should go left and only left, not up or down. Playing XBLA games with it is bad enough and I shudder at the thought of trying to play Virtua Fighter 5 with it (it's also the reason why I didn't care when Soul Calibur II was made BC). Hell, just throw the old controller S d-pad on there, it's not the greatest, but it's immensely superior. I shouldn't have to sand down my controller to make it functional, and no, don't make us pay extra for something that should have been done from the start.
(Dis)honorable mention: Allow people to resubscribe to Xbox Live, RIP my Gold account 2002 (beta tester) - 2006. I'm not even asking for the ability to cancel XBL via the dashboard, since it's obvious MS doesn't want it to be too easy to cancel. I didn't know this until it was too late, but if you cancel XBL, you will revert to Silver, which makes sense. However, you can't get Gold again, unless you make a new account, which is just plain stupid, since it's essentially flipping a digital switch.
Four of the five can be done via a patch, here's hoping the annual spring update will deliver the goods. Maybe the Zephyr that's not coming out *wink* will have a decent d-pad, only time will tell...
2. Back should bring you back to the main dash, whilst hitting B remains unchanged and just brings you back one level. It seems very easy to implement and can be especially useful to if you navigate deep into folders for music on a portable device, instead of hitting B a bunch of times to go back, just hit Back once.
3. More video codec support would be nice, WMV alone sucks. How about some DivX support? I'm aware of TVersity, but that's Windows-only and for streaming, I play all my media from an external HDD.
4. The BC list needs to be viewable from the dashboard. There’s absolutely no reason you should have to go to a computer just to view text. Don't even get me started on the insanity that it the lack of a backwards compatible Panzer Dragoon Orta (not to mention a slew of other great, exclusive games; Otogi 1 & 2, JSRF, Riddick, Breakdown, OutRun 2 and RalliSport 2 say hi).
5. The d-pad is awful, fix it. It hampers an otherwise perfect controller and literally does not work properly, because when I hit left, it should go left and only left, not up or down. Playing XBLA games with it is bad enough and I shudder at the thought of trying to play Virtua Fighter 5 with it (it's also the reason why I didn't care when Soul Calibur II was made BC). Hell, just throw the old controller S d-pad on there, it's not the greatest, but it's immensely superior. I shouldn't have to sand down my controller to make it functional, and no, don't make us pay extra for something that should have been done from the start.
(Dis)honorable mention: Allow people to resubscribe to Xbox Live, RIP my Gold account 2002 (beta tester) - 2006. I'm not even asking for the ability to cancel XBL via the dashboard, since it's obvious MS doesn't want it to be too easy to cancel. I didn't know this until it was too late, but if you cancel XBL, you will revert to Silver, which makes sense. However, you can't get Gold again, unless you make a new account, which is just plain stupid, since it's essentially flipping a digital switch.
Four of the five can be done via a patch, here's hoping the annual spring update will deliver the goods. Maybe the Zephyr that's not coming out *wink* will have a decent d-pad, only time will tell...
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Gaming for the first time again
I just played the Nintendo Wii and I felt something that I haven't felt for a long time (no, not an urge to blog, but that fits in this equation too). Fun. It was like playing games for the first time again. The Wii brought my inner child to light and made me look like a fool swinging that Wiimote around, but I didn't care, I was too busy enjoying myself. Before the Wii, I had been in a slump, I had Xbox, recently purchased a PS2 and most recently, Xbox 360, but those just felt like there was something missing.
I had purchased a PS2 late into its life cycle, allowing me to catch up on a few games that I had been dying to play. I enjoyed them, but I was never really that into them, they felt like diversions and failed to hold my interest. The 360 was the first next-gen system to market and I had gotten one a couple months after launch, but never really enjoyed myself. I eventually sold it and came into another one just a month or so ago, but I still felt that void. The 360 offered nothing new, just the same damn generic games I've been playing all my life, except they were prettier, that's it. After completing Gears of War, which was enjoyable, albeit overrated, short and anticlimactic, I was burnt out. Shooting people had gotten old and I was in a rut that would need more than pretty graphics to fix. Enter the Wii.
A friend of mine got a Wii and invited me over to play it. Before this, I had only briefly tried Zelda at GameStop and wasn't blown away. Once I got there, we played Wii Play, a game reminiscent of air hockey, I got my ass kicked, but I was still learning the ropes. After this came something surprisingly fun, Wii Sports bowling. 4 people gathered around the TV, tossing virtual bowling balls down a lane and it was amazing. Golf, baseball, boxing and tennis followed. We all probably looked foolish, but it didn't matter, it was a blast to play and the simple gameplay with the new control scheme was indeed revolutionary. Learning the Wiimote barely took any time and I even bowled the first strike of the night. I had an incredible time and I couldn't believe that something so simple could offer so much fun. It's no wonder why the Wii won't stop selling, Nintendo hit gold here, offering something to draw in new gamers and to make sure the old, cynical gamers like myself have some fun. Laughs and smiles were plentiful and the exuberant amount of fun I had made me feel like I was playing games for the first time again.
I had purchased a PS2 late into its life cycle, allowing me to catch up on a few games that I had been dying to play. I enjoyed them, but I was never really that into them, they felt like diversions and failed to hold my interest. The 360 was the first next-gen system to market and I had gotten one a couple months after launch, but never really enjoyed myself. I eventually sold it and came into another one just a month or so ago, but I still felt that void. The 360 offered nothing new, just the same damn generic games I've been playing all my life, except they were prettier, that's it. After completing Gears of War, which was enjoyable, albeit overrated, short and anticlimactic, I was burnt out. Shooting people had gotten old and I was in a rut that would need more than pretty graphics to fix. Enter the Wii.
A friend of mine got a Wii and invited me over to play it. Before this, I had only briefly tried Zelda at GameStop and wasn't blown away. Once I got there, we played Wii Play, a game reminiscent of air hockey, I got my ass kicked, but I was still learning the ropes. After this came something surprisingly fun, Wii Sports bowling. 4 people gathered around the TV, tossing virtual bowling balls down a lane and it was amazing. Golf, baseball, boxing and tennis followed. We all probably looked foolish, but it didn't matter, it was a blast to play and the simple gameplay with the new control scheme was indeed revolutionary. Learning the Wiimote barely took any time and I even bowled the first strike of the night. I had an incredible time and I couldn't believe that something so simple could offer so much fun. It's no wonder why the Wii won't stop selling, Nintendo hit gold here, offering something to draw in new gamers and to make sure the old, cynical gamers like myself have some fun. Laughs and smiles were plentiful and the exuberant amount of fun I had made me feel like I was playing games for the first time again.
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