Posts filed under 'news'
Chris Lewis — Microsot’s regional vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Xbox 360 gaming console business in Europe — gave a very revealing interview to SPIEGEL ONLINE.
In the interview he spoke very openly about the forthcoming plans for an HD-DVD drive:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the HD-DVD-drive for the Xbox 360 still in the pipeline?
Lewis: Absolutely, yes. We’ll say a little bit more about it at E3. It will give people access to HD DVD.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the 360 doesn’t have an HDMI-Interface — so you won’t actually be able to watch any HD DVD Movies on it because the obligatory copy protection mechanisms are missing.
Lewis: All I can say to you is — there are interesting developments in the pipeline. We will make sure that the HD-DVD-peripheral device will meet all the requirements for consumers to enjoy high-definition DVD playback.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Meaning, you will be able to watch Hollywood movies in HD through your Xbox?
Lewis: Yes.
Lewis kept referring to E3, which will be in May, as the time and the place where microsoft will make their announcements.
The HDMI issue is very real, so I’m sure everyone is curious as to what microsoft will come up with. But overall this is great news for those who plan on jumping on the HD-DVD format.
HD-DVD, E3
April 18th, 2006
no this blog isn’t dead !
some RealLife issues forced a short break — but we are back. Look for new updates this week on how to get the best HD experience from your Xbox 360.
April 17th, 2006
Still trying to figure this one out. The rumor appeared in the official March Xbox360 magazine — so you would think it was not so much a rumor but a way to announce a new PS3 like feature, no ?
According to this scan from the March 2006 issue:
“a DirecTV blade might be added to your Xbox 360 Dashboard to accompany the Xbox Live, Games, Media, and System blades. In that blade, you could download TV episodes in high definition, HD movies on demand, and standard-definition streaming DVR (i.e., TiVo) functions.”
Sounds interesting — and definitely a feature that the PS3 was rumored to have. Also makes sense as Microsoft begins to position the Xbox Live marketplace as a true competitor to iTunes, and downloadable TV episodes is a great space for msft to compete in.
Technorati Tags: direct tv
February 20th, 2006
Hot on the heels of the xbox360 game news, Edios today unveiled the real life model for their upcoming series, a 20 year old Londoner whose current employment is that of a sales clerk. Karima Adebibe, pictured below, was selected from thousands of hopefuls.
more photos here and here
Technorati Tags: lara croft
February 15th, 2006
“Within the next four to six weeks, anybody will be able to walk into a store and buy an Xbox 360.”
- Peter Moore @ DICE convention
RE: the global launch he adds:
“Was it controversial? Yes. But it’s what we needed to do to bring next-gen gaming to a global audience. There have been short-term shortages, but we’re driving a clear advantage as we go forward. It was the right decision. There were component shortages, but they’ve been fixed. Now we’re starting to cook. We’re building a vibrant, rich and profitable business model for the future.”
RE: Xbox Live usage among Xbox360 owners — Moore announced that 54% of Xbox 360 owners use Live. This is a huge increase compared to the original xbox Live usage rate of 10%.
Overall, Moore, who is the Xbox chief at Microsoft, told the audience that there have been 4 million pieces of content downloaded from Xbox Live since launch.
RE: the try-before-you-buy model (first used by shareware developer Apogee back in the day). Geometry Wars was given as an example, where 36 percent of all people who downloaded the demo went on to download and purchase the full version of the game. According to Moore, the average Xbox Live Arcade conversion is 20 percent — with the worst performing game coming in around 10 percent.
He bosted that “Nothing normally converts from sample to purchase at a rate of 35 percent. It’s proof positive that we are dragging gaming into the online era.”
As I’ve mentioned earlier on this blog, the future is an on-demand, all digital distribution system, and Xbox Live is definitely pushing the envelope in the right direction.
February 12th, 2006
not HD related, but our friends in Mexico and Colombia can finally join the fun. Read all about it on gamerscore blog
February 7th, 2006
Got a few emails about this, so I figured I would post. People are buzzing about the latest Tomb Raider game, and it’s ‘next gen’ engine that will debut this spring.
New screenshots were released today, and the trailer that has been out since October is probably worth checking out — especially if you are waiting on some xbox360 porn :)
If anyone knows when the demo will be out on Live please let us know. I’m sure many of you played the first game on your PC a few years back, but has anyone actually kept up with this series ? Maybe this new version will breath some life into the Tomb Raider franchise. Stay tuned !
Technorati Tags: xbox360, tomb raider
February 4th, 2006
Mega publisher EA Games has cut the prices for games by $10 to $20, according to a report issued Thursday by Banc of America analyst Gary Cooper. Games that have been cut from $49.99 to $39.99 include Burnout Revenge, NBA Live 06, NASCAR 06, Tiger Woods 06, The Sims 2: Nightlife, and the PSP’s Need for Speed Underground Rivals.
“At EA, we make pricing decisions on a title-by-title, market-by-market basis,” said spokesman Jeff Brown to Reuters. “As we’ve said in our quarterly reports, this point in the console transition is historically marked by softness in pricing.”
On thestreet.com, they did some quick research and noted:
The cuts apparently don’t affect games made for the latest-generation Xbox 360. Indeed, while GameStop’s Web site and Amazon.com, for example, are charging just $29.99 and $26.95, respectively, for Madden for the PlayStation 2, they’re both still asking $59.99 for the Xbox 360 version of the game.
So no discounts yet for us Xbox360 owners. Might want to try renting a game or download a demo before dropping $60 for a single title.
January 23rd, 2006
According to the the theinquirer.net, HD porn is on it’s way to the Xbox360.
A production company, High Def Home Entertainment (HDHE), in conjunction with Arrow Productions, is set to release “Deep Throat” in 720p HD. They will ship 2 DVDs, one standard low-rez and the other encoded with Windows Media (WMV) 720p files.
As we all know, the Xbox360 is the only mainstream home electronics device capable of playing windows WMV files.
The inquirer story recounts that:
Arrow was in the middle of cleaning it up when they found the original masters, so they threw out what they had done and used the clean copy. They ended up with the first new copy of the movie in decades, all in glorious HD. For the XBox360. Only for the XBox360.
There is also another story here discussing plans by another company, Lurid, to also provide porn in HD. They were showing off their latest setup at the AVN show this year:
Lurid was giving away an XBox360 on their stand because it is one of the only consumer devices out there that can do HD movies at the consumer level. In the above picture, they are streaming smut from a MCE05 PC to an 360, and as you can clearly see from the pictures, the quality is great. You can see every little [not a chance that this will make it in, so I will censor it myself], and the donkey too. Without Microsoft and the XBox360 team, we would not have true high quality filth, thanks guys.
Porn has been the killer app for film, vhs, dvds, and broadband internet access. Will it be the same for the Xbox 360 ?
Technorati Tags: xbox360, hd-dvd, hd porn, Deep Throat, Lurid, High Def Home Entertainment warning: some technorati links may not be work-safe
January 13th, 2006
As we discussed the HD-DVD add-on the other day, we had no idea that Blu-Ray was even a posibility.
But Peter Moore, Microsoft’s dean of all things Xbox, made some shocking statements to a Japaneese site called ITmedia. Moore was quoted as saying that Microsoft would offer their external DVD player in Blu-Ray format if somehow the standard war settled on Blu-Ray.
Microsoft reps were quick to go in to damage control saying:
“Microsoft firmly stands behind the HD-DVD format as the best choice for our consumers, the question of whether the Xbox 360 has the flexibility to adapt to consumers’ needs is a different issue entirely.”
The statment also mentioned that the Xbox 360 is:
“a future-proofed system–one that allows us to add features as consumers demand them.”
This next gen DVD format war will be interesting to watch - that’s for sure !
Technorati Tags: xbox360, hd-dvd, blu-ray, hdtv
January 12th, 2006
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