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!
Read more about Xbox 360’s new controller free gaming from Telegraph.co.uk:
Microsoft says the enthusiasm of developers and publishers highlighted the “widespread enthusiasm” for Natal, a gaming system based on the Xbox 360 that enables players to do away with a conventional controller and instead make natural gestures to control on-screen action.
Several major publishers, including Activision, Blizzard, Capcom, Electronic Arts and Sega, will announce at this week’s Tokyo Games Show that they are working on games that will complement the Project Natal platform and work with its gesture-controlled interface.
It has raised speculation that the gaming system could be in shops by the end of next year, sparking a new console war with rival platforms Sony and Nintendo.
“Project Natal could fundamentally change the way players experience sports games,” said Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. “Some of our top development teams are experimenting with these tools with the goal of delivering a completely fresh take on genres like sports and racing.”
Project Natal was unveiled at the E3 games show in Los Angeles in June. It is designed to work with existing Xbox 360 games consoles, and uses a camera, depth-sensor and microphones to track the movement of a player and replicate it on-screen.
“We see enormous opportunities with Project Natal,” said Yves Guillemot, chief executive of Ubisoft. “With the 3D camera, your body becomes the interface. Any barrier related to the use of pad controllers that may have existed for potential gamers is now abolished.”
Console makers and game developers have already set their sights on the next generation of gaming and entertainment solutions. Nintendo’s Wii, which uses innovative motion-controlled ‘Wiimotes’, has attracted a new audience to gaming, and other companies are keen to tap in to the casual gaming trend.
Sony is also working on its own gesture-controlled gaming interface, and demonstrated a prototype of the system at E3. Sony emphasised the accuracy of its system, claiming that it could track and replicate the movements of a player in real time, and even understand from their gestures how hard they had hit a ball, and map its flight using the angle of the player’s body.
Although Microsoft has yet to officially announce a launch date for Project Natal, the company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, said that a new Xbox 360 with “a natural interface” would be launched in 2010.
Ballmer later back-tracked on his comments, and Microsoft maintains that it is “not even halfway through the current console generation lifestyle”.
“We believe the Xbox 360 will be the entertainment centre in the home for long in to the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.”
This game is being touted as one of the most important video games ever. Be sure to find out these 7 interesting facts about The Beatles: Rock Band:
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%.”
I would love to know the number of quarters I used as a kid playing this game at the arcade… Outrun will now be available on XBOX Live Arcade, check it out:
From Kotaku.com:
Although PC online gaming has dipped slightly, a recent survey by the NPD Group shows that online gaming as a whole has increased from 19 to 25 percent this year.
The console leader for online gaming is, not surprisingly, the Xbox 360 which dominates the survey with 50 percent. I was more than a little surprised to see that the survey shows that Nintendo’s Wii, and not the Playstation 3, is in second place with an amazing 29 percent. The PS3 rounds out the group in third place.
Looking at the demographics, online gamers ages 13 to 17 increased from 17 percent in 2008 to 22 percent in 2009, while the percent of 18 to 34 year olds, as well as those 35 to 54, decreased slightly.
“Online gaming is enjoyed by a diverse group of players,” said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. “The sheer variety of content and ease of access makes online gaming attractive to a much larger demographic than what we typically see in retail.”
Finally, the survey shows that Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 owners are downloading more content than owners of other systems. But, overall downloading has slowed compared to last year.
It is important to keep in mind NPD Group’s methodology when looking over these numbers. The report is based on online survey responses from more than 20,000 members of NPD’s online consumer panel ages 2 and older (respondents age 2-12 were captured via surrogate reporting).
The survey data was then weighted to represent the U.S. population of individuals ages 2 and older. Fieldwork was conducted from January 6–26, 2009.
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.
Check out this cool post on how certain game franchises, consoles, and gaming in general have changed from 1998 to 2008. From GamesRadar.com
How Gaming has Changed in 10 Years
#
PLAY
