Launching this October exclusively for Xbox 360, “Forza Motorsport 3″ unites the racing game genre making it possible for everyone to experience the thrill of the world’s most exotic and exquisite cars. This game is perfect whether you’re a Forza pro or just beginning. All can race, drift and customize some of the world’s most exotic and exquisite cars. Watch as Jeff Rivait of Xbox Games & Accessories shows WatchMojo.com how to drive. Find out more Here.
Those hoping for full web browsing capabilities on their Xbox 360 Media system will be left wanting. So while PS3 and Wii owners continue to log into Facebook and Twitter, in addition to every other web page, the Xbox 360 continues to tease only portions of true online. Is anyone else bummed? In a way I’m happy as this keeps my Wii in constant use with its excellent Internet Channel.
Is anyone else out there baffled as to why Microsoft of all companies continues to sit out on a basic media application? Go nuts!
From PCWorld
“A new study on game console reliability confirms the popular attitude that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is the least reliable of the current crop of set top systems. According to SquareTrade, Nintendo’s Wii is nine times more reliable than Microsoft’s Xbox, and four times more than Sony’s PlayStation 3. The study scrutinized failure rates for over 16,000 new game consoles covered by its standalone supplementary insurance plans.
In the first two years of ownership, SquareTrade found that 2.7 percent of Wii owners reported a system failure, compared with 23.7 percent of Xbox 360 owners and 10 percent of PS3 owners. Slightly more than half of all Xbox 360 failures were “red ring of death” related, while the remaining 11.7% were “other” failures. The good news for Xbox 360 owners? RROD failures appear to (finally) be in decline in 2009.
There’s a caveat: SquareTrade says it believes Microsoft’s warranty policy (an excellent, commendably responsible policy, in my opinion) “may result in an underreporting of failures by Xbox 360 owners to SquareTrade, relative to the other consoles.”
Because the RROD problem is so widely known to be covered by Microsoft’s warranty, we believe that more customers bypass SquareTrade and reported failures directly to the Microsoft. In a survey of SquareTrade customers with Xbox 360s conducted by email, SquareTrade found that over half of our customers who experienced a RROD error reported their problem directly to Microsoft without contacting SquareTrade. Email survey respondents tend to be a self-selecting group, so the data should be used directionally rather than definitively, particularly because we did not survey PS3 and Wii owners with the same question. With that caveat in mind, applying the survey data to the analysis shows that the Xbox 360 failure rate could be as high as 35%.”
Microsoft seems to thinks so, so they set up a new institute to study it. From ItProPortal.com:
Microsoft Corp. has come up with a new learning institute in a bid to help researchers to comprehend the constructive influence of video games on gamers.
In order to learn the impact of video games on gamers, the software giant has invested a whopping $1.5 million into the new institute, dubbed as “The Game for Learning Institute (GfLI)”, a collaborative endeavour from the New York University and other colleges.
The company, which publishes a variety of games ranging from Halo to Gears of War, is analyzing the response of gaming enthusiasts to spot whether video gaming can enhance the learning capabilities in classrooms.
Quoting the objective behind the new learning institute, Microsoft’s head of gaming research John Nordlinger, said in a statement “We want to figure out what’s compelling about the games. If we can find out how to make the games fun and not make them so violent, that would be ideal”.
Researchers already have kicked off their research study on a few middle school students to see if video gaming is beneficial in enhancing their learning practices.
However, Microsoft isn’t the first to do this kind of research, as researchers from the University of Wisconsin have purported that playing “World of Warcraft” can boost scientific thinking.
From our sister site WatchMojo.com:
From our sister-site WatchMojo.com:
Give up any hopes you might have had about adding a Blu-Ray player to your Xbox 360.Shane Kim, vice president of strategy and business development for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment business, tells me that the company has “no interest” in adding Blu-Ray functionality to its console, opting instead to focus on digital distribution. “I can categorically say that we’re not working on a Blu-Ray player for Xbox 360,” says Kim. “To my knowledge, we don’t have any intent to do that.”
Microsoft made a losing bet in the high-definition DVD wars, publicly endorsing HD-DVD and marketing a pricey peripheral that would play the format on the 360. The gaming world has been rife with speculation that Microsoft would eventually create a similar device that would allow owners to watch Blu-Ray films on their Xbox 360s. Read more…
According to Chris Morris
Here are some links to more links of highlights from E3 as seen by the good people at Joystiq.com:
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Microsoft is locked in a three-way competition with Nintendo Co Ltd’s Wii and the PlayStation 3. The Wii is currently leading the race, while Sony’s PS2 was the winner of the last generation of consoles.
“Xbox 360 will sell more consoles worldwide this generation than PlayStation 3,” Don Mattrick, a senior vice president at Microsoft’s Xbox division, said at a Microsoft news conference before the start of the E3 video game industry trade show.”
Click here to read more about what the Xbox 360 and the competition have to offer!
I think it’s safe to say that the era of next-gen gaming as a driving force is over. Why? As of the week ending June 7th (the most recent tally available), just over 9 million copies of the highly touted Grand Theft Auto IV had been sold worldwide for the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 combined, according to VGChartz.That may seem impressive, until you start looking closer — which Microsoft, Sony, and the many publishers who develop for their respective consoles are surely doing now. For one thing, its predecessor, 2004’s GTA: San Andreas, sold 21.5 million copies. With GTA IV sales already plummeting, the franchise’s latest installment from Take-Two Interactive will be lucky to move 12-14 million copies total. What’s more, it cost a record $100 million to develop.
But it gets worse. Read more…
According to Wagner James Au
PLAY
