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

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

Live Your Life with PlayStation

This is certainly the day for announcements made by Sony. In addition to revealing a video rental service designed for the PlayStation 3, the company is also launching a few other initiatives that are designed to make its gaming console more attractive to other demographics than the “hardcore” gamer. The social aspect of the PlayStation Network is brought into focus in an effort to compete with the Xbox Live service from Microsoft.

While mentioning that the PlayStation 3 has so far shipped more than 12 million units all over the world, Kaz Hirai, President of Sony Computer Entertainment, revealed that this number is past the critical stage at which the company begins to focus on providing more content to its users rather than on extending the installed base at an accelerated rate. Additional content is intended to create loyalty amongst the player base. Read more

Play Ball on Xbox Live

New high definition content is heading to Xbox Live courtesy of Microsoft and ESPN. The Redmond company announced the inking of a new agreement with ESPN designed to provide Xbox 360 users with a variety of sporting events and programming via Xbox LIVE. In this manner the material from ESPN is added to those coming from over 30 studios and networks that have already partnered with Microsoft over Xbox Live. For the Redmond company the deal only means that it managed to enrich its portfolio of premium entertainment content already counting in excess of 3,200 hours.

“Establishing this relationship with Microsoft on Xbox 360 provides an innovative way to reach our target demographic through this dynamic next-generation entertainment console. Read more

Xbox Live Member Sells Himself on eBay as Halo 3 Co-op

It seems that people can sell anything on eBaby, including themselves, but not only as human beings, but also as “lifelong gamer friends” or a trustworthy Halo 3 co-ops. The auction was started by nismofrontier07 and the gamer promises that he’s all sugar and honey, being a “great friend to chat with and play with all the time”.

The bidding has now reached $20.50, but the user plans to reach $1500 sooner or later. This guy also mentions that he’s “a good team player and responds to help needed during gameplay”. Quite a bold statement, considering that most gamers forget about their co-op duties and start their personal killing spree. Will he at least reach a decent $100 limit or just quit the auction and start playing Halo 3 on his own? Read more