Two new treats for any sports-gamers out there. A little something old not so old -- a demo for EA's FIFA World Cup 06 soccer game, which launched alongside the system in November -- and a little something new -- a demo for 2K Sports' tennis-sim Top Spin 2, which came out late last month. A nice little pre-E3 treat.
Top Spin 2 developer, Indie Built, was recently closed down by Take-Two, publishers of the 2K Sports series and owners of the Salt Lake City developer.
[Thanks, Arsamore & Carl-Tang]
(Update: corrected the timeliness of the FIFA demo. Thanks HoTHiTTeR360 and BraveQuail. Can you tell I don't play sports games much? Seriously though... they just came out with a soccer game less than six months ago! What could they have changed?!)
360 Fanboy (and, ostensibly, NY Yankees fanboy) murph sent in this image of his first custom faceplate using Nyko's $20 GameFace 360 kit. Any Sox fans make a similar shrine to their team of choice?
If you've made a faceplate (of something you wouldn't mind showing your grandmother), snap a pic, put it up somewhere on the net, and send us a link. We'll gather em up into a post, give you some fresh ideas on what to make next.
Confession: I don't know anything about baseball, but I gather there is some sort of rivalry between NY and Boston's baseballers. Please excuse any error on my part, and refrain from punching me in the stomach and taking my lunch money.
Following their interview with two members of the Too Human development team, Bytesector returns with some camcorder footage of actual Too Human gameplay! We'll be seeing plenty more of this next week at E3, but if you've been waiting to see how Silicon Knights' much-anticipated action game plays, then you'll be pleased to know: it looks action-packed!
As was written in EGM this month, there appears to be a plethora of maneuvers to keep the action exciting and the repetition to a minimum. Most interesting is probably the camera. Much of the demo appears to be a user-controller camera, but there are scenes where the camera automatically selects a dramatic angle for the action. This technique was used to great effect in last year's God of War, and looks to be similarly effective in this short bit.
Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog has also put up some screens of Too Human on their Flickr page.
[Thanks, Asim]
(Before this post was even done, the video has been removed. It's only a matter of time before someone gets this up at YoutTube, or the like, and we'll update the post then. Sorry!)
(Update: Big ups to bv for tracking it down at the shiny new GameVideos site.)
The "Dean" (har har) of Xbox education, Dean Takahashi, wrote a typically thorough and thoughtful piece for this month's Electronic Business magazine. What? You're not a subscriber? Tsk tsk. Lucky for you, the good folks at EBM have put the article online.
Takahashi profiles Nick Baker, one of the 360 system architects who decided to switch chip camps, going from Intel to rival IBM and switching from NVIDIA to (bitter) rival ATI. Takahashi covers the fascinating project of building a next-gen game console in -- what we assume is -- just a taste of his upcoming book on the 360.
One of the most interesting parts in the piece is Takahashi's details surrounding the shortage of the GDDR3 RAM. He writes, "Both Samsung and Infineon Technologies had committed to making the GDDR3 memory for Microsoft. But some of Infineon's chips fell short of the 700 megahertz specified by Microsoft. Using such chips could have slowed games down noticeably. Microsoft's engineers consulted and decided to start sorting the chips, not using the subpar ones. Because GDDR3 700-MHz chips were just ramping up, there was no way to get more chips. Each system used eight chips. The shortage constrained the supply of Xbox 360s."
Microsoft has argued that it was a generalized component shortage, but we've known better.
[em] -eNCHANT arM-, the bizarrely named JRPG that snuck up on us in January, is coming to North America this summer with a shiny English translation (we assume) and a new, easier typable name, Enchanted Arms. IGN says, "As Atsuma, an Enchanter-in-training, you'll caper through 50 hours of gameplay adventuring with more than 75 unlockable creatures in turn-based strategy warfare."
Combined with the upcoming Japanese titles announced at last month's press conference, Hironobu Sakaguchi's Mistwalker games, and the recently announced Phantasy Star Universe, Microsoft's plan for Japan is looking increasingly strong.
Bad news for fans of the Xbox 360 launch title, Amped 3, and the recently released Top Spin 2: game publisher Take-Two has closed down their Salt Lake City-based development studio, Indie Built.
Indie Built, previously known as Access Software, was responsible for the popular Links series of golf games, as well as the CD-ROM Tex Murphy adventures (like Under a Killing Moon), before being acquired by Microsoft in 1999. Microsoft sold the studio to Take-Two in 2004 becoming part of their 2K Sports brand. The Gamasutra news piece hints that the closure might be due to the lackluster sales of Amped 3; sounds to us like another victim of the historically tumultuous generational transition.
Well, Xbox.com and Xbox Live were both down all day for scheduled maintenance. So... what are we looking at? Background downloading? Revised Dashboard? Maybe, just maybe, some pre-E3 goodies laying dormant on our consoles, awaiting the signal from Redmond HQ to activate their super-advanced features?
Nope, it's a message center, adding onto Xbox.com's friends management update last month. The new message center will allow gamers to read messages sent from a console to Xbox.com if you have an Xbox.com only or a Silver account, both ways with a Gold account, but only up to 200 messages per day...that's 200 if they're on your friends list but 25 if they're not.
Yeah, we know, it's a little confusing. Lucky for us, someone at Microsoft anticipated our dilemma and created a lovely chart to keep it all in order for us. Lucky for you, we're willing to decipher it for you: pony up for a Gold Xbox Live account or this feature won't do you much good.
Major Nelson has added some shots of the new services to his Flickr stream. Check em out, if you're into checking out steamy shots of software interfaces, like we are.
PSPFanboy is looking for a few good bloggers! Does Sony's sleek, svelte, sexy system make you want to write and tell the whole world about it? Does the mere thought of camera peripherals, GPS attachments, and homebrew minutiae make you weak in the knees? If so, you might have what it takes to join the PSPFanboy crew.
In a hard-hitting, take no prisoners interview with the interrogators at Xbox.com, Peter Moore couldn't help but let a couple of juicy E3 news nuggets slip past his iron grip of forbearance. What are we talking about? The Halo 3 release date of course!
You guys didn't really believe that, did you? Good. Here's what the man with the plan had to say about their E3 plans: "It is our goal to bring E3 home to Xbox Live members as best we can, all the videos and the news as quickly as possible...We will give you the flavor of what's going on, on the show floor and some of the stuff that we are showing and debuting here."
So Xbox 360ers can check out all the goings on in HD right on their 360s from home? Sounds like a good deal. What worries me is how that interface is going to hold up to plenty of new content coming out of E3...I have a hard enough time navigating around to get demos. Of course for some more text-oriented E3 coverage, you can always check out Joystiq and Xbox 360 Fanboy, who'll be geeking out in LA come May.
Valve announced today development of future game releases for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, with the first (unnamed) title "coming soon." Valve's Gabe Newell said, "The combination of Source and the 360 provides game designers the chance to create powerful entertainment experiences...Whether developing a traditional FPS, RTS, RPG or delving into new genres, the Xbox 360 is a great platform for expanding Source and our game experiences.”
Of course there is no mention of what this mystery title is, as they're undoubtedly saving the big reveal for E3. But what could it be? We know Microsoft is interested in episodic distribution (Peter Moore told me so himself) and that Ritual is interested in bringing their Source-based SiN Episodes to the 360 (they've said so), so it seems a reasonable assumption that Valve could be bringing the episodic efforts of SiN and Half-Life 2 to the 360 platform, with Microsoft making the big announcement at E3. What say you Joystiqers?
Sega's making a return to the tennis court with Virtua Tennis 3, hitting the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 spring 2007. This is Sega's first tennis game since the Dreamcast's Tennis 2K2 four years ago. Apparently, the guys at Sega think it's pretty good. One of them says, "Virtua Tennis 3 provides a must have in-depth experience - though I'd say the graphics alone are reason to buy and the quality is so sharp and clear you can even see the veins on the players necks!”
It'll have to beat Top Spin 2 and Rockstar's Table Tennis if it wants the next-gen tennis game crown. That is, unless Mario Tennis Revolution blows our collective minds away.
The internet had a collective tantrum following Bethesda's decision to release the horse armor pack and have the audacity to charge 200 Billybucks for it (about $2.50). Pricing the Orrery Map pack at only 150 MS Points seemed like not only a fair price, but a mea culpa on Bethesda's behalf for the horse armor snafu.
The Wizard's Tower download similarly commands 150 MS points (under 2 of your Earth dollars). You get access to the titular wizard's toward, Frostcrag Spire, from where you can teleport to every Mages Guild in Cyrodiil and hone your Alchemy skills in the shiny laboratory. Now we'd like to see the glorified horse blanket take a pricing nose-dive so that the value is more in line with subsequent add-ons.
[Thanks, Paranoised, Tah, and Sjohn]
Update: fixed totally lame error on my part. Thanks, puh_fifer!
If someone doesn't stop them, and their practice of releasing myriad Xbox 360 add-ons continues unabated, it's only a matter of time before Datel releases a knock-off Xbox 360 console (presumably titled the Xmaxx 720) that looks and works just like the 360.
You can now add this $15 (that's $5 below Microsoft's) Play and Charge kit that promises 30 hours of wireless gaming (that's five more than Microsoft's...cause you know battery runtimes is an exact science) to the list. What was that list again?
Constantly moving your 360 from screen to screen? VGA connection in the office, component downstairs, S-video at Grandma's place, regular old composite in the laundry room?
No, you don't? Neither do we...but apparently somebody does, 'cause Team Xtender's new XCM360 5 Output Cable provides five separate output methods for your 360 all in one cable! There's no price or release date info yet, but considering how overpriced mind-numbingly marked-up first-party console cables are, it wouldn't surprise us if this ended up being competitively priced.
Team Xtender is also offering the XCM Multi-Console Component Cable, a cable with component connections on one end and PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 connections on the other. This I can wrap my brain around.
For some reason Team Xtender's site doesn't support permalinks to entries, so you'll have to scroll down to the post to read it.
Kaos Studios, comprised of some of the guys that brought you Battlefield 1942's Desert Combat mod and Battlefield 2, have announced their first project: Frontlines: Fuel of War, described as an "open world, infantry- and vehicle-based FPS (First Person Shooter) featuring advanced next-gen weaponry [ed: that means future-guns, not the Xbox 360] in a desperate, near future setting where controlling the planet's depleting fossil resources determines the ultimate fate of civilization." Sounds GR:AW-y.
This ripped-from-the-headlines FPS is moving out on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC platforms fall 2007, published by THQ.
[Xboxygen has another screen; thanks, tomchoucrew]
The "Dean" (har har) of Xbox education, Dean Takahashi, wrote a typically thorough and thoughtful piece for this month's Electronic Business magazine. What? You're not a subscriber? Tsk tsk. Lucky for you, the good folks at EBM have put the article online.
Bad news for fans of the Xbox 360 launch title, Amped 3, and the recently released Top Spin 2: game publisher Take-Two has closed down their Salt Lake City-based development studio, Indie Built.
In a hard-hitting, take no prisoners interview with the interrogators at Xbox.com, Peter Moore couldn't help but let a couple of juicy E3 news nuggets slip past his iron grip of forbearance. What are we talking about? The Halo 3 release date of course!
Valve announced today development of future game releases for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, with the first (unnamed) title "coming soon." Valve's Gabe Newell said, "The combination of Source and the 360 provides game designers the chance to create powerful entertainment experiences...Whether developing a traditional FPS, RTS, RPG or delving into new genres, the Xbox 360 is a great platform for expanding Source and our game experiences.”
