Tag: Microsoft

Scheduled for release tomorrow (October 31), the Xbox 360 Fall update is expected to add support for 1080p video output for the upcoming HD DVD add-on as well as the ability to stream WMV files from a connected Windows PC or USB storage device.

[UPDATE 10/20/2006: According to this post at Gizmodo, this was either a hoax or an erroneous report. Too bad.] While the photograph below might seem a little shady, there’s a rumor on the street that Microsoft announced a 100GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 during a presentation at their Korean X06 conference. The additional storage will be a welcome addition for those of us who’ve exhausted the anemic 20GB drives in our 360’s already.

Gaming blog Aeropause asked players who got to play a demo of the highly-anticipated Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War last night in Chicago to report on their individual experiences. With virtually no exception, the early reactions were extremely positive. Here are a few choice excerpts: After playing GEOW I now know that I will never play Halo again, at least until Halo 3.

Not since the old Atari classic “Kool Aid Man” has there been such an odd video game / food tie-in. The Home of the Whopper has announced an promotion for the holiday season in which they will be offering three surreal Burger King themed games for the Xbox and Xbox 360.

After much speculation on prices ranging from $229 to $299, the Microsoft Zune media player has been officially announced for a November 14th release date at a price of $249.99. This places it head to head with other 30GB media players such as Apple’s iPod.

In line with earlier predictions, it’s now been confirmed that the HD DVD add-on for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 will launch in the U.S. in mid-November for $199 USD. The drive will include a HD DVD copy of Peter Jackson’s King King remake for a limited time, and also comes with a universal remote control.

I was doing some investigating on Microsoft’s Japanese Xbox site today, and stumbled across this cool feature called the “UserMap.” Much like Digg Swarm, the Flash-based application produces a very slick real-time map of player activity on Xbox Live.

What’s wrong with this picture? Looks like someone at Amazon made a pretty big freudian slip. I’m not sure how long this will remain up on their site, but here’s the original page. [via Digg]

I guess good things come in threes from Microsoft. First, the Zune was revealed to be just $229.99, then the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive announced for under $200, and now they’re offering to repair any Xbox 360 manufactured prior to 1/1/2006 for free by extending the warranty on those machines by an additional year (over and above the orirginal 90 days.)

After early assumptions that the 30GB Zune media player would run $299, it’s been reported that Microsoft’s “iPod killer” will actually launch at the surprisingly low price of $229.99. This surprise announcement certainly shakes things up, what with both the iPod 30GB and Creative Zen:M 30GB both just reduced to $249.

Kotaku has revealed information from a reliable source that Microsoft will announce a November 22nd launch for the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive accessory in Japan. Pricing is expected to be a Blu-Ray killing 19800 yen (appx.

Hot on the heels of Apple’s recent announcement to drop the price of it’s latest (5.5 generation) iPod 30gb model to $249, Creative Labs has just dropped the price on their Zen Vision:M 30gb model to $249 as well. With so many rumors pointing to a $299 launch price for Microsoft’s Zune 30gb model, the question is: Are people willing to drop an extra $50 for Microsoft’s as yet unproven social networking and song sharing features?

Mobility Today posted some up close footage of the new Microsoft Zune media player in action today. Note the huge album art, and video playback is done in landscape mode to provide excellent widescreen movie viewing.

Hot on the heels of Apple’s iPod announcements, Microsoft has officially taken the wraps off of their Zune media player. As expected, the player can handle both audio and video playback on a 3″ LCD screen that can work in either portrait or landscape mode.

One of the great challenges of having an HTPC or Media Center PC as part of your home theater is finding a wireless keyboard that can actually be operated in a dimly-lit room. Microsoft seeks to change that with their Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 (not to be confused with Creative’s Keyboard with the same name), which is the first rechargeable wireless keyboard to feature backlighting.

Microsoft today released the Beta of their XNA Game Studio Express software development kit. The SDK will allow independent developers to create games for Windows Vista and the Xbox 360 (soon). Now you still have to know how to program in C# in order to use this software, so it’s not for the uninitiated.