This picture of a dude's floor is cheekily used to head this post. Here is some of the stuff you used to 'network' your Xbox
Microsoft have announced that following seven years in active duty, Xbox Live’s support for the original Xbox and thus, games designed for the console, is to be ceased, starting on April 15th. Thinking back, I remember reading about it in a magazine all that time ago and because I was in the age of dial up internet and so were many others, we all thought that it was a waste of time and went back to split screen. Oops…
Sky on 360 hasn’t quite gone to plan…
The service will, eventually, show what channels your friends are watching amongst other features
Sky launched their streaming channel service on UK 360’s yesterday, promising access to 24 channels on demand. If you have an Xbox Live Gold account, with either a Sky TV or Sky Player subscription you can watch the ‘Base Entertainment Pack’, which includes GOLD, Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, MTV One, Sky Sports News, British Eurosport, ESPN Classic, Sky News, National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Nick Jr.Oh, and if you need your movie or sport fix you can add them as well, unless you have them already in your sky subscription. If you are not a Sky Subscriber, it’s £15 for the standard pack (per month) with an extra £19 for sports.
However, you now can’t on a 360. The service, which requirements were essentially a 2mb internet connection, appeared to be very unstable at launch, crashing quite a lot. So much for this digital TV revolution, and Sky have now taken the service down. A quote from CVG from Sky said:
“Sky Player engineers are hard at work to resolve the problem. We expect to have the full service available on Wednesday.”
Now it is Wednesday and apparently the service is still not yet up at the time of writing. Sky have also responded to calls for a similar service to appear on PS3 and the response has been the default ‘no comment’. So it’s just 360 users, who soon will have access to both Facebook and Twitter through the dashboard following the next update, will soon have their Sky TV back.
Guess what? Halo 3 is still popular
Somehow I think the odds are against blue
The on going duel between Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 for top spot on Xbox live has been going on for quite some time. Depending on which side of the fence you sit on, you may still be wondering which one is actually the most played. Major Nelson, when he releases the list of top ten most played, doesn’t actually provide us with any numbers, which whilst it may be surprising to see games from 2007 still topping the lists, doesn’t really add that much context to it.
LittleBigPlanet Music gets used by Microsoft
“Hey, remember me!”
There are certain pieces of music we all associate with certain things, even if they were not actually written for them. Many classical pieces are associated with films and probably one of the most dinstinctive games music wise is LittleBigPlanet, which you can see and hear here. With a mix of licensed, quirkey mostly European tracks, the game’s music brought your little Sack Person alive and instantly made the world more recognisible.
Probably the song that nearly everyone who has followed video games for a bit will associate with LittleBigPlanet is “Get It Together,”. Although you may not be aware of the name or artists (that being the ”The Go! Team” a British band), once you hear the tune, you’d expect instantly to see a sack person swinging on a ball of polystyrene…or whatever.
And it seems, that, perhaps unknowlingly, giving them the very large benefit of the doubt, Microsoft also thought that “Get It Together” was an tune that really “fit their brand” and used in in the lastest advertisment for Xbox Live. I’m not saying there is nothing wrong with this at all, it’s a licensed song and the band probably got a fair wad of cash for it, so good for them. It just seems, after trawling through some of the youtube comments, that whilst they are usually wrote by people about 13 years old with the grammatical skills of pre school kid, it’s incited a massive fanboy war.
So go there, point and LOL, OMG, LBP MOOSICK!!!!!!!
Anyway, here is the video for MS’s ad.
[video:ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwu0gExNVuw 420x360]
UK 360 owners, you want some 1 vs 100 don’t ya?
Yeah, Rocker Chick and Big Bill just shout pub trivia at me
And the march of free (ish), casual (ish) software continues. Microsoft have confirmed that you, and yourself in Avatar form will be able to take part in their virtual game show, 1 vs 100 on the 10th of July. But that’s not all folks! You’ll be able to win some cool prizes, including gadgets, MS points and even a automobile!
For those who haven’t the faintest clue what I’m writing about, 1 vs 100 is the first (in a supposedly long line) of community games that will be appear as an option on the service and will be free to Xbox Live Gold subscribers. It’s being going in the US and Canada for a bit longer, but they have been unable to win any prizes through the beta period, so UK members will be the first to test out the prize system.
The “show” (yes it does have it’s own host, although not sure if “Chris” will appear in the UK versiona at all), is based around you having a hundred players, the mob, against The one, a single player who is chosen at random, and answering random trivia questions about pretty much any topic. The US version’s questions have mostly being pretty good, with even some general gaming ones (Metroid popped up once!) going into the mix.
The big prizes, such as cameras, laptops, cars and holidays (those are the only ones confirmed) can be won only by the one, who can choose whether they gamble against “the mob” for better prizes (the more of the Mob get questions wrong, the more the One will get), or, as in “Who wants to be a millionaire”, take the money and run. I enjoyed just watching the game and seeing if I knew answers to the questions on a few videos’s and everyone get’s a chance to be part of the game. Check out a video from the beta here
So, are 360 owners really looking for a trivia game on their console, even if it’s sleek and you can win stuff?
