Xbox 360 Ειδήσεις {News Topic}

[Stormwatch]

Συμφερει αυτους που εχουν ηδη 360 και θελουν και nextgen player.

Αυτους που τους συμφερει περισσοτερο, μεσα σε αυτους κι εγω, ειναι αυτοι που δεν ενδιαφερονται για κατι τετοιο, οποτε δεν το φορτωθηκαν με το ετσι θελω δινοντας παραπανω ευρωπουλα.....

[privateer]

NBA Live 07' (360) Pics

 

Apo camera

 

 

http://www.talkxbox.com/preview1077.html

[p3tran]

1. TDU

 

 

 

-

 

 

2.Xbox360 Roadmap Peeked At

Monday August 14, 2006

 

We here at HardOCP got a chance to take a gander at the tentative Xbox360 roadmap last week. Here are some of the goodies that are in store.

 

1. A holiday HD-DVD Xbox360 add-on that will be very inexpensive (around the $200 mark) and is rumored to only require component inputs. No HDMI in sight. This would of course point the finger to no HDCP being used on initial HD-DVD movie disks as expected.

 

2. For you folks that are buying the new 1080P panels that are now on the market, have no fear, as the Xbox360 looks to already support 1080P resolutions. All that will need to be changed is the connecting cable. Little more information is known on this or if there will be a gaming performance impact.

 

3. Xbox360 meets Media Center for next year? While the details on this product are certainly few, the concept is a project that is moving forward at Microsoft. The next Xbox360 facelift will be a product that really blurs the lines between HTPC and gaming console. While this is not a term that Microsoft used, the Xbox360 will be seeing an added on "media jukebox" for handling tons of movies, video, pictures, and music.

 

It will be interesting to see just how powerful these new PC features are but they will surely be welcomed in my living room. Using Windows Media Connect for streaming content from your computer is great, but keeping it native would be better many times. Until then, I suggest using Transcode 360 from Runtime360 for watching those non-WMV streaming files on your Xbox360

[privateer]

Xbox360 Roadmap Peeked At

 

We here at HardOCP got a chance to take a gander at the tentative Xbox360 roadmap last week. Here are some of the goodies that are in store.

 

 

1. A holiday HD-DVD Xbox360 add-on that will be very inexpensive (around the $200 mark) and is rumored to only require component inputs. No HDMI in sight. This would of course point the finger to no HDCP being used on initial HD-DVD movie disks as expected.

 

 

2. For you folks that are buying the new 1080P panels that are now on the market, have no fear, as the Xbox360 looks to already support 1080P resolutions. All that will need to be changed is the connecting cable. Little more information is known on this or if there will be a gaming performance impact.

 

 

3. Xbox360 meets Media Center for next year? While the details on this product are certainly few, the concept is a project that is moving forward at Microsoft. The next Xbox360 facelift will be a product that really blurs the lines between HTPC and gaming console. While this is not a term that Microsoft used, the Xbox360 will be seeing an added on "media jukebox" for handling tons of movies, video, pictures, and music.

 

 

It will be interesting to see just how powerful these new PC features are but they will surely be welcomed in my living room. Using Windows Media Connect for streaming content from your computer is great, but keeping it native would be better many times. Until then, I suggest using Transcode 360 from Runtime360 for watching those non-WMV streaming files on your Xbox360. A good write up here.

 

http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?news=MjA2ODgsLCxobmV3cywsLDE=

[xrest]

Too Human on track, keeping Unreal Engine

Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack denies that his studio's sci-fi action game is having problems.

 

Over the weekend, rumors spread that Too Human had hit a major development snag. Word was the makers of the Norse-mythology-inspired sci-fi Xbox 360 game were discontinuing use of the Unreal Engine 3 in favor of an all-new proprietary engine. The alleged reason for Too Human losing Unreal Engine was that it was not running well on the 360, even though it is the basis for Gears of War and Mass Effect, two of the most visually complex games in development for the platform.

Given the amount of programming work inherent in a game-engine switch, the aforementioned move would have all but assured a delay for the release of Too Human, which is currently slated to ship next spring. The game has been in development for nearly a decade, having first been announced for the original PlayStation and then the GameCube before its current--and drastically different--360 incarnation.

Yesterday, GameSpot attempted to contact Denis Dyack, president of Too Human developer Silicon Knights, for a status update on Too Human. In response, a Microsoft Games Studios rep declined to comment on the matter, given its speculative nature.

 

However, today, Microsoft reps sent GameSpot a statement from Dyack strongly denying that Too Human was ditching the Unreal Engine or that it was in development limbo.

 

"Although we do not usually comment on speculation, rumors of Silicon Knights completely scrapping the Unreal Engine 3 on Too Human and massive delays for the Too Human product release are false," said Dyack. "Too Human is progressing very well and we expect that gamers will be extremely excited with Too Human when we next show it.

 

LINK

[privateer]

Rainbox 6: Vegas

 

[privateer]

Mass Effect

 

 

Videos:

http://videogamerx.gamedonga.co.kr/bbs/view.php?id=usernews&no=9836

[fabiawrc]

το NBA Live 07 ειναι κορυφαιο απο οτι φαινεται για γραφικα μπασκετ.

 

οσο για το Rainbox 6 χαλια μαυρα το Ps3 αφου εχει blue ray εχει καλυτερα γραφικα και πιο δυνατο hardware.

 

εγω το κοβω το θεμα τα γραφικα να ειναι ιδια απλα να παιζει πιο εχει ποιοτικους τιτλους.δεν θα πεχτει στα γραφικα νομιζω.αντε 10% το πολυ διαφορες.

[Daredevil]

GameFest: Xbox 360 Camera To Ship With Free Game

 

Gamasutra has scooped exclusive information that the Official 360 camera peripheral will ship with a FREE gesture based game. The camera is expected to ship in September at a price of approximately $40.

As part of Microsoft's Gamefest this week in Seattle, Gamasutra has obtained exclusive new details on the launch of the Xbox Live Vision video camera accessory for the Xbox 360, including confirmation of a gesture-based game that is set to be included for free with the hardware.

 

Microsoft's Jeff Stone revealed the new information on the Xbox 360-exclusive game in question, TotemBall, which was first announced in May of this year. It is being developed by UK-based Strange Flavour and Freeverse, both of whom are mainly known for their Macintosh titles.

News SourcE: Gamasutra.com

[Daredevil]

Xbox 360 Sales Figures Update and Forecast

 

From teamxbox.com:

Microsoft released today an update to retail Xbox 360 sales figures and forecast for the current fiscal year. By holiday 2006, Microsoft expects to ship in excess of 10 million Xbox 360 consoles along with a library of 160 games. And by the end of their fiscal year in June, 2007, between 13-15 million consoles worldwide are forecasted to ship.

 

Xbox 360's accessory attach rate held steady for the fourth consecutive month at 2.9 accessory units sold per console. At nine months into the lifecycle, Xbox 360 is still setting a record with the highest accessory attach rate of a console launch in the US.

 

Xbox 360's software attach rose this month to 4.6 games per console. This surge continues to show the depth and breadth of Xbox 360's video game library.

[Daredevil]

1080p Meaningless this Generation?

 

From Ozymandias' Blog (alias Andre Vrignaud, Microsoft's Director of Technical Strategy for Xbox Live):

There's been a lot of interest in the PS3 due to its stated 1080p output for both games and movies (via Blu-ray). What's interesting is that a lot of folks don't realize how meaningless 1080p actually is in this generation.

 

Let's take games first. The PS3 has roughly the same pixel-pushing capabilities as the Xbox 360. Don't need to take my word for it, it'll be obvious soon enough over the next year. Even if this wasn't the case, consider we now live in a multi-platform development world, and that the current sweet spot developers are targeting is 720p due to the extremely similar system specifications. Simply put, a developer who is planning to release their game for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will aim for a common attainable ground. In fact, I'll stick my neck out and predict that that you won't see any 1080"x" games for the PS3 this year.

 

Let's move on to HD movies. Home Theater Magazine (recommended!) has a sister website, and I wanted to point you to a great blog post by Geoffrey Morrison discussing the topic.

Most modern HD displays (Plasmas, LCD, DLP, etc.) display content progressively, even if they first received an interlaced signal. Let me restate that: when you're watching a 1080"x" signal on a modern HD display, you're almost always watching a 1080p signal. The only difference is where the de-interlacing happens - but the displayed output is always 1080p. (Minor caveat is that there are rare TVs that don't de-interlace correctly, as described in the link above. But this is very rare today.)

[Daredevil]

Ninety-Nine Nights Hacks and Slashes Into Stores

Large-scale fantasy-themed warfare is on its way to your local games vendor.

 

Microsoft today announced that the Xbox 360-exclusive massive-scale combat extravaganza Ninety-Nine Nights is on its way to retailers as we speak.

 

Released earlier this spring in Japan and Korea and developed Meteos creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Ninety-Nine Nights puts players in the battle-hardened boots of seven playable characters. Players must dive right into the midst of intense battles as they lead their armies to victory and bring peace to a land ravaged by war. The story unfolds from the seven different perspectives of the game's protagonists. Apparently there's some emotion and drama thrown in there for good measure.

 

Ninety-nine Nights is rated M for massive amounts of violence.

[Daredevil]

In-Depth With Enchanted Arms

We dive into the English version of the first turn-based RPG for Xbox 360.

 

Enchanted Arms has had the hopes of Xbox 360 fans everywhere placed on its shoulders for ages. Microsoft's consoles haven't exactly been the place to get traditional RPGs. Thanks to From Software and UbiSoft, the Xbox 360 is getting an epic, turn-based experience within the first year. We've been playing the American localized version as often as we can for the past week. So far, the game is holding up quite well and is a definite welcome to fill the present RPG void on 360.

 

The Story So Far

We'll try to refrain from including any extreme spoilers, but if you're interested in having a completely fresh experience when you boot up the game, then you might want to skip this section. Enchanted Arms is set in a world that underwent a civilization crushing war many years ago. This war was waged by golems, magical dolls controlled by humans to do their fighting. When people created Devil Golems, the war took a nasty turn. These extremely powerful warriors carried on their master's will even after their controllers were killed, escalating the war to unheard of destruction. Civilization has been reconstructed and the Devil Golems are nowhere to be seen in present day, when we join up with our hero, Atsuma. Humans only have a fraction of the magical powers they had in the past which is used in the form of enchanting. The story picks up with Atsuma in a class learning some history and how to use his powers. As it turns out, Atsuma's right arm is special (which you may have guessed from the game's title). It has the power to nullify enchantments, making him a bit of an outcast amongst his classmates.

 

As the students are busy cutting class for a festival, and you're getting a tutorial about the game mechanics, an earthquake hits. When Atsuma and his two friends, Toya and Makoto, check to see the extent of the destruction they find that all of the golems in the city have gone insane and begun attacking everyone. Their search through the rubble leads them into the Sealed Ward where they run into a mythical Devil Golem. From there, all hell breaks loose and you're off on your quest.

 

 

IGN Insiders can see Enchanted Arms in glorious HD.

The Look

The graphics in Enchanted Arms are a joy to look at, especially in high definition. While sitting around playing this game in the office, we've had numerous other Editors walk by, pause when they see the screen, and then ask what game is being played. The consensus around here is that the game is quite the looker. The environments are pretty and you can really see the difference next-gen hardware can make in a traditional RPG. The city environments look great and everything comes together to give you a good feeling that you're in a world recovering from an apocalyptic event.

The real beauty comes during the battles. Each attack is rife with great looking particle effects. Since you can change between four different camera angles, you'll be able to have a good view of the fight. This especially became important when we got a few golems on our team that were rather oversized. Speaking of the golems, they come in all shapes and sizes. You fight with and against a menagerie of golems with everything from traditional characters, such as knights, to some severely wacky ones like a pizza faced creature. They have a nice style to them and collecting these magical dolls has already given us a small bit of that "gotta catch 'em all" feel.

 

 

Then there are the CG cutscenes. It wouldn't be a traditional RPG without them and Enchanted Arms has some great ones. The first major cutscene after the introductory sequences was enough to wake us up and get our hearts going at 3:30 in the morning during an all night gaming session.

 

The Gameplay

Enchanted Arms is a traditional turn-based RPG. The battlefield is separated into two 4x3 grids, one for your team and one for the opposition. For each turn, you're allowed to move your character and then perform a skill or special EX attack. Each skill you have has a specific range and area that it covers, so to effectively battle your enemies, you'll need to position your party members for maximum attack power. You can't occupy the same square as a party member, nor can you cross over into the enemy's grid. Characters can only move a certain number of blocks at the start of each turn, which means that you'll spend some time simply jockeying for position. This is especially the case early in the game when you don't have a wide variety of skills that can cover a large area.

 

Skills are the standard attack you'll use on each turn. To do so requires Ether Points. This EP gauge is similar to magic points in traditional RPGs. It slowly drains as you perform skills and more powerful moves require more points. To replenish your EP, you can rest a turn to get a little back or use an item to get more back instantly. Certain skills will also regenerate EP for you or a party member.

 

 

The more complex attacks can be performed when either the EX or Co-Op gauges are full. The EX gauge will slowly build during the battle. When it is full, your character will be able to perform an EX special attack, similar to a summon spell in other games. These attacks are devastating and are great for boss battles or getting you out of a pinch. The Co-Op attacks occur when the gauge is full and more than one teammate attacks the same enemy. Both of these gauges will pool relative to your Friendly Points, which you receive from placing your party members in battle. To complicate things just a tad further, each character and skill is aligned with a specific element. As is tradition, oppositely aligned elements will do the most damage to each other. For example, skills aligned with the fire element will do more damage to enemies aligned with the water element. It's fairly standard, but it will make you think about which teammates to take into battle and which skills to use.

 

 

 

Like Wild Arms and other similar RPGs, you get your hit points back at the beginning of each battle. Although you won't have to worry about using health regenerating items in between fights, you will have to worry about another gauge, the VP. These Vitality Points are a separate gauge that will determine how well you can perform in a battle. Each time you are damaged or escape from a battle, your VP will be lowered. If your VP reaches zero, your HP will be lowered drastically at the start of a battle, reducing the battle readiness of that player significantly. You can restore your VP through Refresh Points that can be found around the world or by using items. You also won't have to worry too much about running out of regenerative items as stores are plentiful throughout the dungeons and towns.

 

The vast majority of battle encounters are random and will pop up as you progress through dungeons. For our tastes, these random encounters happen a little too often. It's not the worst encounter rate we've seen in a video game, but it hinders exploration a little bit. All is saved though, by the nice features for quickly chewing up and spitting out these random battles. At any point while you are laying out your attacks, you can press the Y button and bring up a list of battle options. One of them is to have the Xbox 360 automate the attack. From there you can sit down and watch the fight unfold. Or, if the attack commands have already been entered, either by you or automatically, you can hold down the Y button and watch the entire attack animations scroll through in fast forward.

 

 

 

The dungeons you'll be exploring are fairly straightforward. There are a few side paths in each of the ones we've gone into with chests to reward you for taking the extra time. If you're lost at any time, you can push the start button and bring up a map detailing all places you can go, your current location, as well as the entrance and exit to the area. Aside from simple walking, you'll be climbing ladders, swimming, using a sort of grappling hook called the enchant wire, and riding around on cubes that work with the enchant magic. There are also the ever present switches that can be pressed to reveal new areas and ether that you can absorb to activate magic machinery. It's nothing you haven't seen before in some form and the first few hours of the game will be interrupted periodically with brief explanations of how to press the A button to activate various actions. While exploring you can bring up the options menu. Here you can configure your party, upgrade character abilities and skills, or save your game. That's right, you can save your game whenever you want. There are only 8 available slots to save your progress either on the hard drive or on a memory card. This is an odd choice since the save files aren't particularly big, but we're willing to overlook it when we don't have to go crazy looking for a save point.

 

 

 

Build Them Up

The hallmark of any good RPG is the ability to customize your character to do the most damage in a fight. Enchanted Arms does just that by allowing myriad ways to approach each battle. The most obvious way for you to customize your party is through the golems. These magical dolls are created to serve humans and can be used to fight alongside you in battle. Getting new golems is a fairly involved process that forces you to plan ahead to decide exactly how you want your party to look.

 

 

 

The first step towards creating a golem is obtaining a core. These are like the blueprints for building the golem and can be purchased at stores found in the game or obtained through defeating wild golems. Once you have a core, it will tell you which Materials you need to create the golem. These Materials can be purchased at stores or obtained through battle. When you have the correct number of Material gems, you're not quite done. Next, you'll have to go to a store and synthesize the golem, which costs some money. That may seem like a huge amount of work to obtain a golem, but you'll have a small army of them within the first five hours of the game. Once you have enough golems, you'll have to decide which ones to take into battle and which ones to leave by the sidelines. You can take eight golems with you while the rest of them wait at the shop for you to swap in and out. Since some golems are more suited to fighting and others are better at support skills, you'll want to pick and choose which ones to bring in to battle with you accordingly. Any golems that you have with you, even if they aren't currently in the battle party, will gain experience and level up. We're a fan of that system so far because it allows us to experiment with several different party configurations without worrying about leaving some golems in the dust.

 

 

Weapons follow the same system as golems. You won't be able to just find a new weapon lying on the ground. Rather, you'll have to obtain a core, the proper Materials, and then synthesize the weapon at a shop. There aren't any slots for armor or accessories for you to equip.

 

 

In order to learn new skills, you'll first have to obtain them through battle, purchase, or find them in your travels. Once you do, you'll be able to teach it to one of your human party members (golems can't learn new skills), but only if that human has the ability to learn that specific skill. To learn it, you'll have to go into the menu, select your character, and then spend some SP, which is gained through fighting battles. Since your SP can also be used to improve the character's individual parameters such as HP, EP, or Agility, you'll have to make the decision as to whether you want to improve the character's overall ability or learn new and powerful attacks.

 

Killing Time

When you reach London City, you'll have access to the casino. This hub of mini games allows you to purchase chips for gambling purposes and, hopefully, trade back in your winnings for some cool items. The games you can play are a Golem Battle, Bingo, Slots, and Roulette. Thees traditional casino games aren't anything new, but being able to post your scores onto online leaderboards is a great addition.

 

The Golem Battles allow you to pit Atsuma and a team of your strongest golems to fight against a series of CPU controlled squads. Each entry costs you some chips, but gives you the potential to earn many times the entry fee. We were able to beat the first nine of these challenges with the squad we first walked in with, but then the difficulty quickly ramped up and we realized it would take some time improving our team before we could return for more. Our luck on the machines wasn't as good and we lost a good chunk of change before moving on. The interface for these casino games is nice looking and easy to use, as evidenced by our ability to lose it all in a matter of minutes.

 

Prove Your Worth

In addition to being able to post your casino scores online, you can also take your team of golems on to Xbox Live and pit them against other people. If you don't have a good team, you can take a standard preset team of golems or load up your squad that you've been building in the main game. Although there wasn't anybody online to play against, we did scope out the features.

 

Like most Live games, you can set up a Player Match or a Ranked Match. Player matches are just for fun, but a Ranked Match will determine your place on the online leaderboards. Finally, you have a way to show the world that you are the greatest at building a squad in RPGs. You can choose to start a Quick Match in either mode, search for a Custom Game, or create your own match with your criteria. When you are setting up a match, you can choose the level limit which will determine the highest level of golem that can enter the fight. This will prevent you from going head on into a battle with someone who has been playing the game for months the day you pick up the game. Now, we thought our golems were strong, but according to the level limits you can have golems with levels over 990. Time to get training. You can also choose the turn limit. Normally, the match ends when all of the golems are defeated. Setting a turn limit will make the match end after a set number of turns and the player that has done most damage will be declared the winner.

 

 

With a purported 50 hours of gameplay, we've still got a long way to go before we'll have this game beat. So far, we're pleased with what we've seen and done and are looking forward to the rest of the experience. With the release date only a few weeks away, we'll be back with our final judgment shortly. In the interim, check out the screens and movies for more RPG goodness.

 

Enchanted Arms Video

[xrest]

Rumor Control:360 getting $200 HD-DVD, 1080p, jukebox, and FPS controller?

 

Source: Popular hardware destination HardOCP.com, Taiwan-based Digitimes, and game-info site Digitalbattle.

 

What we heard: Ever since the Xbox 360 was first shown to the public in May 2005, rumors have surrounded it. Once the specs for the console were revealed, the speculation shifted from what the console could do at present, but what it will be able do in the future

Microsoft answered part of that question at E3 this year, unveiling several new peripherals, announcing Live Anywhere, and taking the wraps off the 360's external HD-DVD drive. Soon, many speculated that a premium, hard drive-equipped 360s fitted with the unpriced HD-DVD drive would cost around $600--i.e. $399 plus a rumored $199. That's as much as the high-end model of the Blu-ray drive-equipped PlayStation 3, which has taken considerable flak for its premium price point.

 

This week, two sources reported that the 360 HD-DVD drive will indeed ring up at around $200. First was Digitimes, which stated flatly on Monday that "Microsoft will launch external HD-DVD drives for its Xbox 360 at a retail price of US$200 by Christmas of this year."

 

Seconding that opinion was HardOCP, which yesterday included the HD-DVD price point report as part of a piece titled "Xbox360 Roadmap Peeked At." The site elaborated on the add-on, saying it would "only require component inputs. ... No HDMI in sight." It also said that Microsoft would be releasing a cable to support 1080p video output. However, "Little more information is known on [1080 output] or if there will be a gaming performance impact."

 

Last but not least, HardOCP revealed that the Xbox 360 would soon get functionality borrowed from a Windows Media Center PC. "While this is not a term that Microsoft used, the Xbox360 will be seeing an added on 'media jukebox' for handling tons of movies, video, pictures, and music," said the site. No mention was made as to whether Microsoft was going to release larger capacity "outrigger" hard drive to store said media, since many 360 owners' 20-gigabyte HDDs are getting nearly full of game demos, trailers, and saves.

 

In other 360-rumor news, Digitalbattle reported that Microsoft is mulling a second controller specifically for first-person shooters. "The new controller would have an improved and more precise right analog stick for games requiring higher precision," read the report, which sourced Microsoftʼs product unit manager Robert Walker's presentation at the Microsoft Gamefest developers' conference. Strangely, though, first-hand accounts of Walker's Monday speech, like the exhaustive recap of the session on FiringSquad.com, make no mention of a FPS-centric controller.

 

The official story: So what does Microsoft have to say about all this? Not much, unsurprisingly. Regarding the HD-DVD, "We haven't announced any pricing or availability at this point so we'll keep you posted," a rep for the game giant said regarding the HD-DVD. The same rep wouldn't comment on 1080p support and media jukebox functionality, and also would only say that "We have not made any announcements about a new Xbox 360 controller."

 

Bogus or not bogus?: $200 360 HD-DVDD? If bogus, it's a close estimate. Support for 1080p? Almost certainly. Media jukebox? Sounds probable, given the fact Windows Media Center PCs already have similar functionality. New FPS-specific controller? The jury's out on that one, but it would make sense.

 

LINK