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Xbox News is a site that brings you the very latest Original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One news, the latest games and releases, Part of the
DCEmu Homebrew & Gaming Network.
THE LATEST NEWS BELOW
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January 3rd, 2008, 21:13 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Microsoft has told Eurogamer that an official response to Xbox Live's poor festive performance is expected as soon as today.
Accusations over problems when signing in, recovering Gamertags and setting up games with friends have been rife, prompting Live community bigwig Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb to publicly reassure customers during the Christmas holidays.
"You may have noticed that the Live service has been having a few issues over the past few days," began Larry Hryb on his blog. "This includes things like signing in, matchmaking and account recovery. Not everyone has had problems, but I know some of you have and I wanted to give you and update."
"While the service was never completely offline, problems like this are not acceptable. The entire Live team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great Live experience."
Understandably, however, lots still feel hard done by, resulting in increased speculation that Microsoft plans to compensate Live Gold subscribers for their woes. Expect knitted socks and shower gel.
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January 3rd, 2008, 19:31 Posted By: Shrygue
via IGN
Activision is to release a software-only version of 2007's Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360, allowing those who have recently snagged a copy of Guitar Hero III to go back and play classics such as The Stooges' Search & Destroy, Nirvana's Heart-Shaped Box and Guns N'Roses' Sweet Child O'Mine.
The standalone version goes on sale on 25th January and although we've yet to get confirmation of the retail price, if GHIII is anything to go by it'll be full price.
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January 3rd, 2008, 19:23 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Retailer Amazon has finally blown the whistle on what the first Gears of War novel will be called and when it will be out.
Dubbed The Pendulum Wars The Battle of Aspho Fields it will apparently be available in the UK in February, followed by North America in August.
As the title suggests, the story, written by former games journalist Steven Kent, will focus around The Battle of Aspho Fields that made protagonist Marcus Fenix a household name.
It should also fill some of the gaping plot holes left open by the game, and what is clearly important historical background.
The Gears of War novel was unearthed last summer and is rumoured to be part of a trilogy that will expand the popular shooter franchise.
Gears of War was released on Xbox 360 in November 2006 and shot to the top of both sales and most played charts, scooping buckets of awards in the process.
Pop over to our macho Gears of War review to see why a few steroids go a long way.
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January 3rd, 2008, 19:00 Posted By: wraggster
San Jose Mercury News reporter Dean Takahashi shared a small story over the holiday that will be music to the ears of RPG fans. BioWare is apparently already hard at work on a Jade Empire 2 .
"I talked with someone who saw code for Jade Empire 2. It's coming for the Xbox 360, and it's real. It's not much as far as scoops go, but I'm on vacation. What do you expect? Jade Empire was BioWare's second big game for the Xbox, following the exclusive Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic title in 2003. It will be interesting to see if Jade Empire 2 will remain an exclusive for the Xbox 360, now that Electronic Arts has agreed to acquire BioWare/Pandemic.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl.../01/02/1830241
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January 3rd, 2008, 18:59 Posted By: wraggster
an article at the Seattle Times offers an interesting theory on what might be an important part of Bill Gates' keynote at CES next week. According to Times writer Brier Dudley, upgrades and licensing for the Xbox 360 could be a big new feather in Microsoft's cap:
"I've speculated on my blog that Microsoft may be preparing to license the Xbox gaming platform to consumer-electronics companies. In particular, Microsoft could work with Toshiba to develop a digital video recorder with a hard-drive, high-definition HD-DVD drive and Xbox gaming capabilities. They're already allied against Sony and other backers of the Blu-ray DVD format, and Toshiba could help Xbox finally penetrate the Japanese market."
Toshiba has repeatedly denied the possibility of a 360 unit with a built-in HD-DVD drive, it should be noted.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl.../01/02/1842259
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January 3rd, 2008, 18:52 Posted By: wraggster
We enter 2008 with the current lifetime Xbox 360 failure rate at Joystiq standing at almost 100% -- we currently have one last man's console standing. Yup, that's right, and for those of you paying attention we hit 90% last month. A few of us experienced issues back in 2006, but almost every person on staff (including those who've left for other opportunities) -- with the exception of The One -- have experienced a Red Ring of Death, disc drive failure, or other non-user-error console bricking incident. There's no denying at this point that as much as we love the games, the Xbox 360 is the most defective console ever manufactured.
Check the full article for the staff's experiences with their bricked consoles. Like former Microsoft executive Peter Moore explained earlier this year, when failure is practically guaranteed at some point, all we can do is focus on the repair service.
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/01/a-...-2007-edition/
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January 3rd, 2008, 18:49 Posted By: wraggster
The 24c3 is over now, and we really had a lot of fun. We brought 6 of our Xboxes, which allowed us to grab attention from quite a lot of people in the hackcenter  .
Axel, who already wrote the free60 X11 driver using a revolutionary (ok, let's say: "interesting") remote development method, started, together with Tom, hacking on a Xbox360 linux sound driver. The bad thing was that they had nothing more than a really short braindump of what I so far found out on the sound hardware (and that was really not much more than a list of registers associated with the sound). But some hours later, they had a first result: No sound, as we didn't brought speakers with us, but we just hooked up a multimeter to the sound port, and whenever they would "trigger" the sound driver, the multimeter showed some activity!
Luckily it was (almost) daytime, so we just bought speakers (and more DVDs for Ben), and voilĂ*: sound! It was something uncontrollable, but some time later we had some code which we estimated to output a plain sine wave. But somehow we screwed it up, and the output was an interesting piece of music, just not a simple sine wave. Ilinuxp. On the other hand, it's a mystery for me how they could bring the hardware to output anything at all! Thanks a lot, you two! I will soon provide Axel a skype link so you can continue developing remotely 
http://x226.org/?p=51
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January 3rd, 2008, 18:48 Posted By: wraggster
This PS3-killer [Xbox360 Ultimate - autumn 2008] will benefit from almost three years of Xbox development, featuring 1080p HDMI output, built-in Wi-Fi, hi-def audio output, cooler 65nm hardware architecture and a near-silent fan.
It'll also have the ability to make the most of the by-then established Xbox IPTV service, which will mean recording TV shows to its vast 320GB hard disk and watching live TV shows via your broadband provider.
But the piece de resistance? It'll have a built-in HD DVD drive.
http://stuff.tv/News/BIG-IN-2008-Xbox-Ultimate/
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January 3rd, 2008, 18:39 Posted By: wraggster
How many times over the past few months have you heard that "the worst is over" and the chances of the high-def format war finally coming to a close were increasing by the day? If you haven't heard it at least once, you're probably not reading the right stories.
But with all that going on, the war is officially a quagmire for both sides and the chances of getting out of this quickly are diminishing at an astounding rate. Consider this: as it stands, the Blu-ray camp commands roughly 49 percent DVD market share, while HD DVD is trailing slightly behind. To make matters worse, some reports suggest HD DVD may be gaining strength, although most buyers are sitting out.
So what's really going on with this war? Is there an end in sight? Even better, is there a solution in sight that can finally put this to rest? If you ask me, I think this could be over in a month if the Blu-ray camp follows three steps.
Step 1: Warner
Step 2: Slash prices on all players
Step 3: Get in contact with HD DVD's supporters and inform them of the bad news
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13506_1-9838619-17.html
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:46 Posted By: Shrygue
via Computer and Video Games
Handy internet trademark searchers have discovered that publisher Eidos has filed the name Battlestations Pacific in relation to 'computer and video game software'. It looks like a sequel to last year's Midway is on the way then.
The last game, Battlestations Midway was set in the Pacific during World War II. It mixed real-time tactics and boat-blasting action which had players commanding fleets and their assets at the same time. It was also in development for a bloody long time.
You can read the review of Battlestations Midway on PC via this here link.
Rumors of a sequel emerged earlier last year following an announcement by Eidos' parent company SCi that another game was on the way.
We've left a message with Eidos' UK outfit, who despite suffering both a hangover and flu managed to get us a "no comment". Thanks for that.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:37 Posted By: Shrygue
via Computer and Video Games
Big hats of cynicism on, please; internet sites have gone wild with speculation that Blizzard's massive RTS StarCraft II will be making its way to Xbox 360 (and why shouldn't it? Every other strategy game seems to be going console-bound these days).
The source of the rumour is a Microsoft Retail Zone quiz, which is apparently used to educate employees of electronic retail stores, the clever bunch.
One question asks retailers which feature defines the company's upcoming RTS Universe of War, and lists "tactical dynamics create the best RTS until Starcraft II," as one of the answers.
This has naturally sent internet conspiracy theorists to their rooftops, shouting confirmation of Blizzard's RTS will be coming to Xbox 360, though we're not quite convinced.
When contacted Activision Blizzard (we suppose we'll have to get used to calling it that) expectedly offered a "no comment," on the rumour, but considering the recent flood of PC strategy games coming to consoles we guess StarCraft II on consoles is at least plausible.
Command & Conquer 3 and Supreme Commander have both taken the trip to Xbox 360 and the original StarCraft too of course made its way to N64 and PSOne back in the day.
Considering it's also one of Blizzard's less patch-heavy titles we suppose it's also its most likely to come to consoles, but it's probably far too early for this report to be any indication.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:37 Posted By: Shrygue
via Computer and Video Games
If, like us, you've spent the last week sat in your (new) pants, polishing off the Ferrero Roche, Fosters and playing Call of Duty 4, you'll probably have noticed the downtime plaguing Xbox Live.
The "intermittent issues" (which included things like signing in, matchmaking and account recovery) started around Christmas Day and Xbox Live was still encountering the odd bugger up a week later.
Xbox Live's director of programming Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb posted several messages on his official blog, stating that "problems like this are not acceptable," and that "things are getting better each hour and that no one on the team is going anywhere until the job is done."
Now that most of the hiccups have been sorted, The Bitbag reports that Microsoft will be compensating their paying Xbox Live Gold subscribers for the problems. An unnamed Microsoft contact told the site: "we will definitely be doing something for our Gold members that weren't able to get online over the last week."
Because Xbox Live wasn't technically down (only parts of it were encountering problems), it looks unlikely that Gold subscribers will end up with a full refund.
It's a shame some people couldn't get online during the lazy Christmas period, but it did give us a nice window to fire up the PS3 and finish Uncharted (sorry, MS).
We've contacted Microsoft UK for comment and it'll hopefully get back to us shortly.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:35 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Mexican film director Guillermo Del Toro has been getting himself all worked up about a Halo film.
The mastermind behind Pan's Labyrinth was chatting to Aint It Cool News about various upcoming projects before declaring his fondness for the adventures of Master Chief.
"It would have been beautiful and I must tell that's a... of anything in my life that I look back and wish it could have happened is that project, because it is such a powerful experience," chirped Del Toro.
"People talk about it and say 'it's Aliens or it's a retread of this or that,' I don't think so. I think the angles to that game are far more epic and far more complex as a cosmology than that. It's not just about grunts in space. It's much more than that. It's a whole epic."
Unfortunately Del Toro has rather a lot on his plate at the moment with Hellboy 2 due sometime this year. But eventually the Mexican director believes Halo makes far too much money and is much too successful to be ignored, which makes him happy for the future.
"I love it so much that I would like to see it in any incarnation. If Neill [Blomkamp] and Peter [Jackson] get to do it, I'll be almost as happy as if I was doing it," he added.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:33 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Those of you still lost in the whirlwind of Christmas will be glad to know Codemasters Online Gaming has fixed issues with Sensible World of Soccer on Xbox Live.
It actually remedied problems before Santa squeezed his way down our chimneys, but Tom had already toddled off to wrap his presents in mince pies and sing his way to the bottom of a bottle of wine by then.
If you have the old version that helpfully disconnected you from Live after installation, you should delete it from your hard drive and download the new game - this won't incur any extra charges.
Oh, and happy new year from everyone at Eurogamer. Which is to say "Tom and I", because everyone else will stumble in at about 9.30.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:25 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Microsoft has said a demo for Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom will be out in Europe in mid-January.
However, those of you in exotic reaches like Asia, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and the US can get your mitts on the 1.2GB package already, as in now, today, right now, immediately.
Included in the sampler is a chance to battle your way through a pair of early stages from the beginning of the game as Kendal or Leinhart, using some beefed up abilities against a swathe of unique nasties.
The full action role-playing game will be out this winter, according to Microsoft Live bigwig Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, although we heard back in October that it would be in Europe on 1st February.
Unlike previous Kingdom Under Fire instalments, the idea this time is less on strategical troop choices but more on action and combinations; levelling up your heroes to do silly damage to all who oppose before doing it all again with friends on randomly generated multiplayer maps.
Better than Intimately Beckham and Intimately Beckham Night, perhaps.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:24 Posted By: Shrygue
via Computer and Video Games
The first details have been spotted on the official Gears of War prequel, which is unfortunately (for Gears fans, who are surely not big readers) in book form.
Gears of War: The Pendulum Wars - The Battle of Aspho Fields (we were hoping for a longer title) is being penned by former games journo Steven Kent of Next-Gen.biz and USA Today fame.
According to the official blurb, The Battle Aspho Fields "builds upon the characters backstories and gives eager fans their first in-depth look at some of the past events that shaped the games world." We'll finally know what the hell Aspho Fields was all about, then.
The book's not out until August this year, so before everyone goes mental and starts demanding more game Gears, take solitude in the fact that Gears of War 2 might already be announced by the time this book reaches the shelves. Maybe.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:20 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Welcome yourself back to work today by downloading Metal Slug 3 from Xbox Live Arcade - as said in a Somerfield-advert-like way.
It will set you back 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.30) and lets you enjoy the old run and gun title in fancy new high definition resolutions and with a friend in co-operative online multiplayer.
Other than that and the usual spattering of 12 Achievements, the blend of platform action remains the same; filled with vehicles called Slugs to parade around in as quartet of heroes Marco, Tarma, Eri and Fio battle to stop evil General Morden from doing dastardly things.
Those of you in the US and Canada will also be able to enjoy SpongeBob SquarePants Underpants Slam! today, you lucky devils, and we will let you know as soon as we do when us Europeans can experience it.
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January 2nd, 2008, 19:08 Posted By: Elven6
A new rumor has appeard, that the infamous PC game Crysis, will be coming to the Xbox 360! This rumor comes from the fact that a Austrian Video Game retailer has listed Crysis, in 2 variants as a upcoming game for the 360. Wheater this is true, or just a typo, no one really knows at the moment. This could also be supported by the fact that a few months ago Cryteck, the makers of Crysis, became a offically licensed Xbox 360 developer.
http://segafanclub.blogspot.com/2008...ng-to-360.html
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January 2nd, 2008, 01:45 Posted By: wraggster
Your friend and ours, Xbox Live, has been going through some tough times lately. In the past week, the service that many of us pay roughly $50 a year for has been up and down more frequently than a bipolar groundhog. If you want to tap right into a live feed of the Xbox Live operation, Apollo 13 style, sign up for Major Nelson's Twitter feed, which has devolved into a play by play of the network's status (last update: "Things were a bit wonky, but they appear to be getting better.").
But, since many of us are paying for the privilege, there's a growing sense that we deserve some sort of compensation. While we at Joystiq won't be satisfied until Bill Gates himself writes us each a check for $1, TheBitbag.com claims that an Xbox insider told them: "we will definitely be doing something for our Gold members that weren't able to get online over the last week." Though we can't be certain precisely what that is, our inside sources are telling us "footrubs."
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/01/ru...ed-xbl-member/
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