Centipede and Asteroids on Xbox via Xbox LIVE Game Room

Come spring 2010, Microsoft plans to dust off a plethora of arcade titles and to make them available to Xbox console owners via the upcoming Xbox LIVE Game Room. At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the past week, the Redmond company announced that Xbox LIVE Game Room would go live this spring and that it would bring to the table no less than 30 classics, including Centipede and Asteroids Deluxe.

“There’s a generation of people who grew up with a set of games like Centipede that are favorites,” says Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. “They look almost like casual, fun games today, (but) at the time they were high-end, edgy games. Game Room is the idea of bringing that back to the market and bringing that to a very broad audience.” Read more

XNA Game Studio 3.1 for Vista SP1 and XP SP3

Microsoft has released and made available for download the latest iteration of its gaming development solution designed to permit developers to build video games for Windows-based PCs, Xbox 360 consoles, but also Zune digital media player devices. XNA Game Studio 3.1 went live on the Microsoft Download Center on June 11, 2009, and is now up for grabs for free. According to the Redmond company, Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 are the supported operating systems for XNA Game Studio 3.1.

“This release is incremental to XNA Game Studio 3.0 and contains many new features, including avatars, Xbox LIVE Party support, and video as well as enhancements to existing features. For the full list of improvements in this release, see the “What’s New in XNA Game Studio 3.1” section of the documentation once you have installed the product,” revealed Rob Cameron, Microsoft industry evangelist. Read more

2009 new Need For Speed 3 is coming!

In the past year, Need For Speed: Underground’u managed to achieve the targeted revenue figure was not related to many speculations. Estimates because of the failure of the racing game Need For EA’nin popular Speed’i a while “will rest” it was. But was not expected and EA decided to go over questions. And the more insistent.

Company official in 2009 as it plans to issue three new NFS’yi announced. The first NFS: Shift the name will be removed and will target the more serious racers. PSP, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 will be ready for the Shift except NFS: Nitro, EA’in Montreal studio will be prepared and only the Wii and DS will be released for. Read more

Top 10 Xbox 360 Hacks

Geeks love getting the most out of their gaming consoles. I hope you would agree that the Xbox 360 is the best gaming console on the market. I recently purchased an Xbox 360 so I have been looking into what I can do (I know, kinda late). With that being said, I would like to share my top 10 hack finds so far.

1. Turn your Xbox 360 into a Laptop – Like soldering? Engadget takes us through the steps of turning your Xbox 360 into a portable laptop. How. Cool. Is. That. Read more

Xbox 360 Takes on the Nintendo Wii

September 5 is the date when Microsoft will officially cut the price of the Xbox 360 line of consoles in North America, following the cut in Japan earlier in the week.

The interesting thing in the press release that details the price cut is that it puts the emphasis on the Xbox 360 Arcade and on the way it offers the promise of social interaction. It reads “Imagine if friends and families had the ability to instantly watch movies from Netflix, live out their musical fantasies through “Rock Band 2″ (Harmonix/MTV Games) and “Lips” (iNiS Corp./Microsoft Game Studios), star in their own Hollywood classics with “You’re in the Movies,” or have the power to never miss the latest episode of “Heroes”  all from one device, starting at $199.” Note that they’re not promoting one hardcore game and they mention video streaming twice, which is kinda weird for what is mainly still a gaming console. Read more

How to Start building games for Xbox 360

XNA Game Studio
Platform games, shoot-em-ups, racing games, and adventure games. Peek this and poke that and the next generation of software developers were born. But why don’t people write games for fun anymore? Perhaps games and their programming languages went in different directions, we all grew up and wrote database applications. Writing simple games became hard and the immediacy and fun just got drowned out in the API calls and lines of C++. Read more

Free Games at Windows Live

To compete with Apple’s successful iPhone and iPod App Store, Microsoft announced today that Windows Live will have free games for its PC users. What used to be only available to Xbox users is now available across the entire Windows platform.

Microsoft’s press release states “the launch of Games for Windows  LIVE marks a major expansion of the Xbox LIVE service across multiple platforms, uniting gamers with a single identity, a single gamertag, a single friends list and a single list of achievements attainable on the Xbox 360 and a Windows-based PC.” Read more

Mass Effect Is 10 Dollars Cheaper

Electronic Arts has released a statement announcing a 10 dollar reduction in price for all those who pre-order the PC version of Mass Effect. The offer comes into play today and will last until the official launch date of the game, which is May 27 in North America and June 6 in Europe. The offer is not limited to games retailers such as GameStop, Amazon and GoGamer. Details on how the offer will work in Europe have not been released by Electronic Arts.

It seems that the 10 dollars off offer is limited to pre-orders made through retailers and does not apply to purchases made through the electronic store that EA maintains. On the other hand, the people who make the pre-order online will also benefit from some goodies, in the form of the first issue of the Dead Space comic book and of a wall sized Dead Space poster. The items are limited in number so hurry if you want these pieces of memorabilia. Read more

Burnout Paradise Complete Achievements List on Xbox 360

Burnout Paradise (formerly known as Burnout 5) is the newest video game in the Burnout series, which was released on January 22, 2008 in North America and on January 25, 2008 in Europe. It is available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It has a seamless open-world set in the fictional ‘Paradise City’, with no loading times and no traditional online lobbies or game menus.

A “Mugshots” camera feature is available in the Burnout Paradise versions for the PlayStation 3 (using the PlayStation Eye, the PlayStation 2 EyeToy, and other compatible webcams) and Xbox 360 (using the Xbox Live Vision). When a player is taken down, both players will have their photos taken and exchanged. These photos can then be saved to your hard drive. Both versions will allow camera-less persons, or those who do not wish to use their real face, to use their gamertag/PSN avatar, as demonstrated in the downloadable game demos. (Wikipedia) Read more

Buku Sudoku to Launch on Xbox Live Arcade

Buku Sudoku, the first sudoku game to be released for the Xbox 360 consoles, will hit the market this spring, ready to delight all the sudoku fans in the world. The game will be published by unknown publisher Merscom.

Buku Sudoku will use three of the most appreciated Xbox Live Arcade features in order to create the “best Sudoku console experience”. And it will probably be very easy to achieve this, having in mind that this game is the only sudoku game. Still, the developers promise to bring some high resolution graphics that will make the grid reading really easy. Also, they say that the controller’s triggers and thumbsticks will allow a very fast numerical entry method, thus reducing the frustration of “video-sudoku”. Read more

Next Page »