Latest Gear Live Videos
Major Nelson: How To Mute Anyone In Xbox Live
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Xbox 360, Xbox Live
This week Bungie offered up some details on dealing with bad trash-talkers when playing Halo 3 multiplayer: an in-game a-hole mute feature. Bungie’s feature is implemented cleanly in the UI: hit a button, highlight the player, mute for the rest of the session. Major Nelson, though, explains that this functionality is also available in the Xbox 360 dashboard, and he explains how gamers can mute (or avoid) bad actors on Xbox Live for any game. The process is a little more complicated, requiring a few more clicks, but it worth learning so that it becomes easier to avoid bad trash talkers in the future.
Read More 
| Major Nelson
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Microsoft Standardizes Gamerscore
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade
Microsoft’s Gamerscore and Achievements program has been remarkably successful, with people going so far as to pay for additional Achievements. Still, there seems to be uneven support for the program from game developers. Now, Microsoft is moving to standardize the program so that gamers can expect a more uniform experience. A post on the Gamerscore blog lists some of the changes to the program.
First, base points will be standardized for game titles. A retail disc-based game is required to have 1,000 Gamerscore available; Live Arcade games are required to have 200 Gamerscore. Microsoft says that this base score can come in a combination of regular and add-on content as long as the add-on content is free. Game publishers will also have the option of adding another 250 Gamerscore to disc games from paid or free content as well. By standardizing the program, it seems Microsoft is strongly encouraging developers to think about Achievements when developing the program and further differentiate Xbox 360 titles from their counterparts on competing systems. Hopefully, any Achievements added in the new program won’t be superficial tack-ons to meet a points goal.
Read More | Gamerscoreblog
FASA Talks Shadowrun On Vista, Xbox 360
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, PC, Xbox 360
With Vista launching today, Microsoft is taking the opportunity to highlight some of the projects they have in the works for their “Games For Windows” initiative. Mitch Gitelman, manager of the FASA Studio at Microsoft talked with Dean Takahashi about the upcoming release of the cross-platform Shadowrun. Shadowrun, along with Halo 2 for Vista promise to be the first titles to feature multi-platform Live support, allowing PC users to intermingle with their console counterparts. Gamers have had limited access to this functionality in the past; the Dreamcast version of Quake III Arena allowed console users and PC users to fight online. Still, this will be the first time that there has been broad architectural support for this combination. Unfortunately, Mr. Takahashi’s feedback is not that positive about the game itself. Graphically, he felt that the game was a throwback to Halo 2 and that the control was awkward. For a high-profile release, it would appear that there is fairly large amount of polish left to do in the game. Coupled with the negative feedback the title has been getting from the hardcore followers of the Shadowrun universe might mean less than success for this entry in the franchise.
Read More | Mercury News
Oblivion Expansion Shivering Isles Coming This Spring
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, PC, Role Playing Games, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
Bethesda Softworks announced that Elder Scrolls: Shivering Isles, an expansion for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion will be coming to the Xbox 360 and the PC this Spring. The expansion should add more than 30 hours of gameplay to the already expansive title, and will be available through retail channels for the PC, and via Xbox Live for the Xbox 360. Given that the expansion will add a completely new realm to the Elder Scrolls universe, one expects that this expansion will be one of the largest Xbox Live add-ons to date, and possibly one of the most expensive. No mention of the add-on was made for the upcoming Playstation 3 version of the game; this could possibly be included on disc, but this doesn’t seem to be a likely option at this time.
The full press release continues below.
Read More | Shivering Isles Screenshots
Microsoft Wants Your Help to Improve Xbox Live
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Strategy, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
It’s fairly safe to say that Microsoft is currently in the enviable position of currently having the most versatile and robust online service of all the next-gen consoles. With everything they’ve learned from the original Xbox, and their year head start on the other two next-gen consoles, the Xbox 360 was able to gain this upper hand in the online department. But does this mean the big M$ is going to rest on their laurels? Heck no. In fact, Microsoft wants suggestions from you, Mr. Xbox 360 owner, on how exactly Xbox Live can become even better.
Head on over to MajorNelson’s blog to check out his call for suggestions. Interestingly, MajorNelson seems to be focused on the question of how Xbox Live can be made better for Xbox users, while the original call from Ozymandias is more interested in the question of the “Live” service pertaining to multiple devices (i.e., Zune, PC, Xbox, etc.), so it’s not clear what the focus of their new developments will be. Given that the big Bill has recently admitted that the Xbox 360 is M$‘s way of getting its tentacles into your home entertainment center, though, it’s a pretty sure bet that they’re eventually working on dominating your entire living room.
Read More 
| Ozymandias’ Blog
Read More | Major Nelson's Blog
New Gears Of War Maps, Patch Coming
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Third Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace
Epic will be offering two new free multiplayer maps along with a software patch for Gears of War in the upcoming days. First, on January 9, a software update for the game will be made available. According to a posting from Mark Rein on the Gears forums, the following changes will be made:
- Fixed aspect ratio distortion when using VGA cable with 4:3 displays at resolutions higher than 640x480
- Fixed voice issue with new players joining Player Match games in progress
- Players can now get the Achievement for “Dish Best Served Cold” when using Troika turret to kill RAAM
- Fixed rare situation where host could loop countdown and never start match
- Fixed rare situation where players could get stuck after chainsawing in multiplayer
- Reduced Grenade Tag melee distance
- Enabled “Strict” NAT check on host to prevent possible connection issues
- Optimized server browser queries to return results more quickly and prevent scroll bars from hiding quality of service icons
- Reduced number of possible revives in Execution to match Warzone
- Removed host name from Ranked match server browser
- Disabled security cameras in Ranked matches
- Ranked matches now require balanced teams (3v3 or 4v4)
- Increased penalty for quitting a Ranked match to -50 points
- Added additional cheat detection code
- Additional housekeeping updates
In addition, January 10th will bring two new multiplayer maps, Raven Down and Old Bones. According to John Porcaro at Microsoft’s Gamerscoreblog, the map downloads will be free, thanks to a sponsorship from the Discovery Channel. Gamerscoreblog has descriptions of the maps as well as four screenshots of the new content.
Read More | Gamerscoreblog
IPTV Confirmed For Xbox 360
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Hardware, Internet, Xbox 360
Microsoft confirmed via press release that an IPTV client will be coming to the Xbox 360 during the holiday 2007 season. IPTV will integrate with the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live to allow services like video on demand and digital video recording to work with Xbox Live features like voice chat and instant messaging. Microsoft’s partners for the launch include AT&T in the US, BT in the UK, and Deutsche Telekom in Germany.
The full press release continues after the jump.
Two New Ways To Get Halo 3 Beta
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
When Microsoft opened their initial sign-up for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, the form was swamped with gamers hoping to get access online. Now, the company has announced two new ways of getting into the upcoming beta release. First, the company has confirmed that those people buying Crackdown will be able to download the multiplayer beta upon release. Those gamers not willing to pony up the cash to get the game and access will have an alternate method; Microsoft’s “Rule of Three” program. Starting in February, gamers that qualify on Xbox Live and are among the first 13,333 Halo 2 players that register on the official Halo 3 website will also have access to the beta. One would also expect that there will be other promotions in the future to get into the test program as well.
The full press release continues after the jump.
Xbox Live Suffers Outage
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
Microsoft’s Xbox Live matchmaking service went down for about six hours today; the first reports starting appearing at around 5:30 PM Pacific Time, and Major Nelson reported that the service was fixed at around 11:30 PM Pacific. During the outage, gamers would have a hard time connecting to the Live service and could not get into online games. Supposedly, voice chat and achievements were still working during the outage, but gamers looking at playing the single player campaign in Gears of War needed to disconnect their Ethernet connections to play. While outages like this are frustrating, Microsoft’s Major Nelson was able to keep gamers abreast of the situation through his blog; hopefully he will be able to share some post-mortem insight into the outage.
Read More | Major Nelson
Microsoft’s Video Marketplace Top Downloads
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace
Major Nelson, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, has updated his blog with the top Video Marketplace downloads for the week of December 10th through the 17th. The list doesn’t include absolute numbers, so one can’t really judge how popular the service is overall, but the selections making up the top ten are interesting to say the least.
The top movie downloads are Mission Impossible III, followed by Nacho Libre; both are only available in SD format. This may somewhat act as a gauge of the adoption rate of HD displays with Xbox 360 owners, or people may just not want to spend the extra time downloading the HD content. Other oddities are some of the movies on the list; Poseidon makes the top ten, which received generally unfavorable reviews and had a particularly weak opening weekend in May. Also on the list is The Lake House, a remake of a romantic Korean film that also got relatively poor reviews. The film choices may somewhat reflect the limited movie availability yet on Xbox Live.
The television choices seem to skew more towards the stereotypical Xbox core user, with titles like South Park, Enterprise, and Chappelle’s Show on the list. Again, since no total download numbers are released, the service’s popularity can’t really be determined, but the mix of titles gives some interesting insights into the users of the service.
Read More | Major Nelson
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