On Gear Live: Samsung S95C: The OLED TV You Can’t Afford (to Ignore!)

Latest Gear Live Videos

Xbox 360 S 250GB Hard Drive available for $129.99

Xbox 360 S 250GB hard drive

If you’re like me and were really looking forward to purchasing the cheaper, less hard drive-y S for $200, then you may want to think twice. While the price tag is very attractive, purchasing one with a hard drive from the get go will cost you $30 less than buying the low end model and then upgrading to hard drive space later. Having a lot of hard drive space is essential for those looking to purchase many of their games and movies through games on demand and the Zune marketplace. Things can get messy quickly when you have to think out of the box to fit all your favorite downloads onto your memory impaired console. But if your’re content with only having 4GB of internal memory, and constantly switching out flash drives, then by all means don’t pass up the $200 console. The 250GB hard drive is currently on the Gamestop website, and is popping up in Gamestop stores around the country.

Read More | Gamestop

Advertisement

Kinect for Xbox 360: $150 on Nov 4 with Kinect Adventures

Kinect Sensor Bundle Adventures

Even with companies like Amazon, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart all listing Kinect at $150, Microsoft decided they’d wait it out on naming the price officially, for whatever reason. Today, however, they’ve announced that for Xbox 360 will launch on November 4th at $149.99, and it’ll come bundled with Kinect Adventures. Adventures is gonna be like their Wii Sports, a collection of minigames that are fun and highlight what Kinect can do.

For buyers who want to get Kinect with an Xbox 360 console, there will be a $300 bundle that will include one of the new Xbox 360 consoles (with 4GB built-in storage,) the Kinect sensor, and Kinect Adventures.

Aside from Kinect hardware pricing, Microsoft has also said that Kinect games will sell for $50 each, which is $10 less than the normal $60 price. However, Microsoft sold all their first-party Xbox 360 titles for $50 before, and quickly stopped that practice. Also, it’s a shame to see that Joy Ride will now sell for $50, when originally it was supposed to be free.

You can pre-order Kinect on Amazon.


Unboxing Live 059: Xbox 360 S

Microsoft announced the new Xbox 360 S last week at , and we were able to get our hands on one soon after to give you a look at all the goodness. As a refresher, the newly redesigned Xbox 360 is 35% thinner than the original, and features a glossy black exterior. It ships with a 250GB hard drive that’s been redesigned to fit into the new shape of the console, and it drops the memory card slots. Even better, it comes with built-in 802.11g/n Wi-Fi, so there is no need for any sort of external dongle accessory anymore. Hit the video for all the rest, but just know that you can pick up the new Xbox 360 now for $299.


Xbox Live expands to nine new countries this fall

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Microsoft, Xbox Live,

Xbox Live

It’s hard to imagine that, with over 20 million members worldwide, that isn’t available in all Xbox 360 territories, but it’s true. However, we just got word that later this fall nine countries will be granted access to Microsoft’s online gaming community. Gamers in Brazil, Russia, Poland, Chile, Columbia, Greece, Hungary, South Africa, and Czech Republic will all be able to jump in. That potentially means there’ll be a lot of new people available to play against, and you just know that we’ll be seeing a marked increase in Zangief usage in Super Street Fighter IV. Better start prepping now.


New Xbox 360 250GB now available to order

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Video Games,

Kinect Xbox 360 redesignedThose of you who were salivating over that new redesigned Xbox 360 announced yesterday at can now place your order for the -ready unit. Amazon, Newegg, and GameStop all have pages set up that allow you to order the new system, which we are guessing will start shipping today or tomorrow. Here are the links:

Let us know if you take the plunge!


Xbox scores Call of Duty add-on exclusivity through 2012

Call of Duty Xbox Exclusive

At their Media Briefing, Microsoft announced that they’d signed a deal with Activision that would give them a window of exclusivity over all Call of Duty downloadable add-on content through 2012. In other words, if you are a big Call of Duty fan, and you want access to the game add-ons as quickly as they become publicly available, you’ll want to be playing on the . If you are on PS3, you’ll likely need to wait a month or two before you can download the add-ons. Interestingly enough, they said this was an Xbox exclusive, and not an Xbox 360 exclusive. Of course, there is a high probability that Microsoft will have announced and launched a new Xbox before the end of 2012, and if that is the case, the agreement will carry over.


First HD Video Converting Software for Multi-track HD Released, Free for Limited Time

Posted by Finnian Durkan Categories: HDTV, Software,

WinX HDDigiarty Software has announced the release of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe, the first converter to support multi-track HD videos.  WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe builds in 160 video and 50 audio codecs. This means that, no matter the codec (a piece of software that allows for digital compression/decompression) that you prefer based on your own personal needs/choices regarding video quality vs. file size. Without any third-party codecs, WinX can also easily support Multi-track HD video, such as BDAV, M2TS, MKV, AVCHD, HDTV and MPEG-TS video movies. It also supports converting all the HD and HD-Camcorder videos, to both portable and console players, such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, PSP, Xbox, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, and many others.  On top of all of this, WinX is also able to convert your HD videos at 5x-15x speed, making converting your videos not only easy but much, much faster.

So while you yourself may not be HD ready, what with your unsightly blemishes, pores big enough to serve guacamole out of, and makeup that looks like it was applied using a snow-blower, your videos are; that’s on you for buying a product that so greatly highlights all of your many shortcomings.  I’ll be over here with my beta-max shoulder-camcorder and boom-mike, making videos that blur to the point of resembling impressionistic art, thank you very much. But, if you’ve already taken the leap to HD, the WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe is available for a free download at the link below.

Read More | WinX HD

New York band Audio Fiction authors own Rock Band song

Posted by Finnian Durkan Categories: Music, Video Games,

Audio Fiction Rock BandAlt-rockers Audio Fiction have become one of the first bands to use the Harmonix games and MTV’s newly-launched Rock Band Network Music Store for the to author their own Rock Band song.  The band used Harmonix tools to author their track ‘Race the Hourglass’ as their first addition to the Rock Band Network catalogue.  Audio Fiction’s bassist, Darren Korb, then put it into a game-compatible file format, had it peer tested and approved in the debut launch of Rock Band Network that opened Thursday.  What does this mean for you and me?  Brace yourselves, Rock Band players, for an onslaught of titles from my newly-minted Finnish black-metal/industrial punk/ska/battle-rap band, ‘Obsequious Death Turtle, Version 2.0 the 3rd’.  We’re huge in McMurdo Station, Antarctica.


Original Xbox games lose Xbox Live access on April 15

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,

Xbox Live v1

Check it out, Microsoft just announced that all games made for the original Xbox will no longer be able to access the Xbox Live service as of April 15, 2010, and we couldn’t be happier with the news. No, we don’t hate classics like Halo 2, but the thing is, those titles are many years old, and they’ve been holding back the full potential of Xbox Live for far too long. As an example, it’s no secret that we hate the Xbox Live friend limit, and the major reason it exists is because of Halo 2. With Halo 2, and all the rest of the original Xbox games, being denied access to Live, Microsoft will be able to stop worrying about those original Xbox restrictions - and that means, among other things, that we should finally see that friend limit jacked up, if not removed entirely.

It should be noted that, even if you downloaded original Xbox games on your Xbox 360 using Games on Demand, even those won’t work when you try to connect to Xbox Live. It’s just the nature of the beast, and it’s all in the name of progress.

Read More | Gamerscore Blog

Editorial: It’s time to raise the Xbox Live friend limit

Xbox 360 Friend Limit

Okay, I’ve had enough of the friend limit that Microsoft has imposed on us for far too long. I think this has gone on long enough, and I’m really not seeing a good reason for it. As many Xbox Live gamers know, the current limit on friends you can have is set to 100. The thing is, in the age of social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and all the others, we are now used to connecting with many people in our social graph across many different services.

Now, all that said, there is still one more very annoying piece to this puzzle. Did you know that the Zune Social and Xbox Live share one common friends list? In other words, if you currently have 100 Xbox Live friends, and you go out and buy a Zune, and want to connect with people who also have Zune’s (but don’t necessarily play games,) you are out of luck. You’ll have to remove someone from your Xbox Live friend list to add someone else. This is, in two words, absolutely ridiculous. I get wanting to share the and Xbox ecosystem, but to shoot yourself in the foot like this is just puzzling. I personally have at least 15 people that I would like to add as friends on the Zune Social, but I can’t, because my Xbox Live list is maxed out.

Click to continue reading Editorial: It’s time to raise the Xbox Live friend limit


Advertisement