At E3 we announced the new Xbox LIVE dashboard which will deliver intuitive navigation, increased responsiveness and improved engagement with Xbox experiences – all beginning this holiday. Now that our work on the dashboard is almost complete, we are announcing an open call for all Xbox LIVE members to register to participate in a preview program to help us test the system. This is an important program as we continually strive to ensure the reliability of a service that reaches tens of millions globally. We could not do so without the ongoing help of our great community.
Once this program is kicked off, an update will be pushed to your console that will contain select dashboard features, including:
New design with integrated Kinect voice and gesture controls
Beacons
Facebook Sharing
Cloud Storage for Game Saves and Xbox LIVE Profile
Other features and entertainment partner apps may come into view during the program period.
Note: A console in the program is expected to remain fully compatible with standard retail consoles not in the program. (e.g. party chat will function)
For those familiar with previous registrations for our program, we have a new model for registering your consoles this year. The new model is a more automated process that should make it easier for you. We will not ask you to type in your console information upon initial registration; once you are approved to participate in the program, look for details on our portal about how to register your console.
Click here for the initial register for the Public Preview.
During a visit to NanaOn-Sha’s Tokyo headquarters, I had the opportunity to try Haunt, the company’s new XBLA Kinect game. And despite the superficial, high-level similarity to Rise of Nightmares — both are “scary” Kinect games in which you can walk around freely — Haunt couldn’t be a more different experience. NanaOn-Sha founder Masaya Matsuura classified it as more of a “haunted house” experience. Think Casper. Think profoundly charming.
The Haunt demo begins on rails — like, literally on a cart guided down a railway, like a haunted house ride — but that’s just to ease you into the game. And, like any good haunted house, as you’re slowly clack-clacking your way through the halls, spooooooky ghosts and skellingtons jump out to scare you. You dodge by moving your body to one side, in order to avoid taking damage.
We get hands-on with a preview version of Madfinger’s third person actioner before it hits the AppStore later this September…
Most of us know Madfinger from their Samurai series of games for iPhone and iPad, which perfectly married the touchscreen with hack n slash action. But now they are setting their sights on bringing a console-like [...]
Shadowgun preview is a post from: TouchGen
For more of this article, visit http://www.touchgen.com or click on the story headline
Phantasy Star Online hit some kind of magical sweet spot back in 2000. Though its spinoffs and followups kept much of the formula from that release, there was always something that felt off about them, and prevented some fans (like me) from getting fully into them.
It turns out that maybe those games were hewing too closely to the first PSO, because the new Phantasy Star Online 2 feels significantly different from its predecessors in action, and seems to have paradoxically recaptured the PSO excitement by doing so. It definitely hits all the right notes, but the mechanics have actually been upgraded. Can you believe it? Of course, the bummer about this is that it’s a currently Japan-only, PC-only game.
Phantasy Star Online hit some kind of magical sweet spot back in 2000. Though its spinoffs and followups kept much of the formula from that release, there was always something that felt off about them, and prevented some fans (like me) from getting fully into them.
It turns out that maybe those games were hewing too closely to the first PSO, because the new Phantasy Star Online 2 feels significantly different from its predecessors in action, and seems to have paradoxically recaptured the PSO excitement by doing so. It definitely hits all the right notes, but the mechanics have actually been upgraded. Can you believe it? Of course, the bummer about this is that it’s a currently Japan-only, PC-only game.
There’s a good chance that Firefall is going to be your absolute, undeniable jam. It’s just one of those combinations of features and ideas that should apply to at least (but probably more than) one of your sensibilities: It has class-based shooting, customizable loadouts, loot, strategy, a persistent world, character creation and a focus on cooperative, Player vs. Environment gameplay.
Any of those tickle your fancy? They tickle mine. They tickle all of my fancies simultaneously.
Continue reading Firefall preview: Something for everyone
Firefall preview: Something for everyone originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Dogfighting has long been one of the most romanticized forms of combat. Thank Snoopy if you want, but there’s something about the mano-a-mano elegance of it — nothing is more exciting or evocative than two highly skilled warriors dueling to death. The designers of Air Conflicts: Secret Wars understand this principle, as you can tell from the screenshot above. The possibilities for epic backdrops and pictureseque sunsets are built right into the game engine.
Designed as a more casual alternative to hardcore flight sims like IL-2 Sturmovik, the game also acts as a fun, arcade-y antidote to big-budget duds like HAWX 2 and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. Set during World War II, the story follows a female covert ops pilot who flies a variety of cloak-and-dagger missions all around the European theater. Narrative is delivered via an array of stylish, graphic-novel-style cutscenes, which do a great job setting the mood — in contrast to the terrible voice acting. There are also flashbacks to her father’s career in World War I, which bodes well for fans of Sopwith Camel vs. Fokker Triplane action.
Playing the game is easy to get used to. You can pick your camera angle (hardcore fans can select a cockpit view) and dive right into the action. Arcade-friendly touches like a leading crosshair (the game helps you aim where your target is about to be) and an Adrenaline meter (stay alive and do damage, and you can trigger bullet time) make blasting enemies out the sky a cinch. There are also stealth missions, which require you to fly low and slow to avoid detection — these also help you out by showing the detection radius of enemy planes on your minimap. The better you do in missions, the more you can upgrade your pilot, boosting her ability to dish out critical hits, which kill enemy pilots immediately.
There are 16 unlockable planes to choose from, and the models all look great — WWI planes even sport holes in the wing canvas when they get shot up. The same can be said for the level draw distance — a key feature of any flight sim — and the optional 3D, which avoids many of its usual drawbacks, and is mostly unobtrusive. Except when a plane is flying right at the screen! Also in the bells and whistles department is the Playstation Move support — players will manipulate the controller like a flight stick.
Despite the polish of the singleplayer campaign (and forgiving nature — you get three “mission skips” to use if you get frustrated) its clear that Air Conflicts’ designers were mostly interested in the multiplayer dogfighting. There are 26 different territories to choose from, and the promise of 8v8 battles to look forward to in a variety of classic modes — think King of the Hill and Team Deathmatch. Dogfight fans more interested in a good time than in the fuel tank capacity of obscure German fighter prototypes would be wise to snag this game when it comes out September 27th.
NPD figures for the USA video game market, over the four weeks ending July 30, 2011 are coming this Thursday at 6:30 PM ET. Data from VGChartz is already available for that period. Based on the available data, July 2011 figures, estimated below in the first column, were very bad compared to July 2010. Total USA video game revenue from brick and mortar retail dropped 18% year over year on slowing software sales and rapidly weakening hardware sales.
Adjusting for the size of June (five weeks) compared to the size of July (four weeks), USA hardware sales fell by 23% on a weekly basis, and 29% from July 2010 levels. Without 3DS, the year over year drop is of course even larger for the pre-2011 systems.
Even against the larger July time frame, hardware sales dropped pretty sharply across the board when calculated on a weekly basis. 3DS for instance fell to almost 20,500 per week from about 28,500 per week. With Madden not arriving until what is effectively September, and the 3DS price cut not coming until mid-August, any additional price cuts that are coming will have a lot of work to do given how far the industry has shrank in July (and the shrinking could easily continue into August). [click to continue…]
