Tag: Xbox 360

You can now pre-order the MadCatz ArcadeStick joystick for the Xbox 360 from Gamestop. While not cheap at $59.99 USD, the controller looks like just what the doctor ordered for playing all the classic arcade games that are available for download on Xbox Live Arcade.

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.

Microsoft has posted a demo for the new EA racer, Need For Speed Carbon for the Xbox 360. The demo lets you try out three cars, the Mitsubishi Lancer EVOLUTION IX, Lamborghini Gallardo or the Camaro Concept.

Remedy, the folks that brought us Max Payne have been working for some time now on the action/adventure game Alan Wake for the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista. This video shows the amazing 3d engine in action on a seriously fast multi-core computer. The video was shot at the Intel Developer Forum, running on an Intel quad core Intel processor overcloked to 3.73GHz

In a surprise announcement from this year’s X06 show in Barcelona, Microsoft revealed a new Halo real time strategy game for the Xbox 360. Halo Wars is expected to provide us with a unique take on the familiar Halo universe.

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.

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.)

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.

The folks over at NewLaunches are reporting on a rumor out of Taiwan that the Xbox 360 may get a built in HD-DVD drive in 2007. Optical disc drive industry insiders say that Microsoft is working on a revision to the 360 that would embed the high-definition video player into a new version of the game console as early as the first half of 2007. I’d imagine that this will be offered as an alternative version of the console, priced somewhere around $500 to go head-to-head with the Blu-Ray capability built into Sony’s Playstation 3 system.

Console modder extraordinaire, Ben Heck has completed his latest masterpiece, and Xbox 360 laptop. Ben’s “portable” has a beautiful aluminum case with a 17-inch widescreen LCD, built-in keyboard, Wi-Fi and USB ports on board. Dimensions are a “svelte” 16.75″

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.

A couple of months back, I posted about my concerns that my Xbox 360 had overheated and died as a result of the next-gen game Prey. Now Kotaku is reporting about an Xbox 360 developer who reported an esimated 30-50% failure rate on Xbox 360s used in the testing games, with even higher failure rates on the zombie-killer Dead Rising.

Xbox insider Major Nelson is reporting that Microsoft has released a new backwards compatibility update which provides support for the following games: Aggressive Inline Aquaman: Battle of Atlantis All Star Baseball 2003 All Star Baseball 2005 Burnout 3: Takedown Catwoman Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart UPDATED Counter Strike Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth Dead to Rights Digimon Rumble Arena 2 UPDATED ESPN Major League Baseball Fatal Frame 2 Ford vs.

Scheduled for a September 19th release, the Xbox Live Vision camera add-on was accidentally put out on the shelves of a Toys R Us store on August 18th, and this lucky buyer managed to get his hands on one over a month early.

Dana Jongewaard, Managing Editor of the Official Playstation Magazine has posted a fascinating story on her blog which sums up the public (negative) sentiment surrounding the forthcoming Sony Playstation 3. She even went so far as titling the article “Why I am buying a 360 this November.”

Gamesradar has done a side-by-side comparison of the Sony Playstation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360, using an accurately sized display prop provided by Sony. I’m not sure what the Japanese market will think about this beast, given the past failure of larger consoles in that market.