arne360

arne360 blog is moving

2006-08-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've moved arne360 blog over to a new web address.

It is now at: www.arne360.com

Please update your bookmarks and feeds accordingly -- there's a new RSS 2.0 feed on the new site.

This blog will redirect in about 10 seconds.

Greetings Professor Falken - Defcon, the game

2006-08-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting about Defcon, an upcoming game from Introversion. Introversion also made Darwinia, which won the top prize at the Independent Games Festival this March. Taken as an idea from the war simulation "game" shown in WarGames, this is like a dream come true. Admitting my geeky ways started very early, I loved that movie when I was younger and so much so that I once got in trouble for ordering it pay-per-view without permission. I'm not too well versed in RTS titles, having only liked Dune 2000 way back when and, more recently, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II. This looks great, mixing nostalgia, the gameplay hinted at in the movie with some simple yet clever graphics. Recent word is that Introversion as set for a September release. I can't wait.

Microsoft Gamefest and XNA Game Studio Express

2006-08-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight kicks off the reception for Microsoft Gamefest 2006, which is a two-day game developer conference held in downtown Seattle. Chris Satchell, general manager of the Game Developer Group at Microsoft, and a guy I first met back at the spring preview event at GDC this March, has a keynote as part of the conference. As part of his keynote, Chris will reveal a new product that is part of the XNA initiative that I have been excited about for a long while -- XNA Studio Express. This is the first step that's being taken to help out smaller indie developers and even homebrew coders to make games that will work on the Xbox 360 (and Windows, of course, in keeping with the idea of XNA). I think what's huge about it is how this opens up the Xbox 360 to homebrew games without anyone having to crack the console open or mod it. I think a lot of people have been waiting for this to happen, but never thought there would be some sort of official support behind it. I'm really glad to see this come to fruition. Even though I know next to nothing about programming these days, I'm looking forward to checking out the beta when it gets released on August 30.

Read the press release at Gamerscore blog.

Official PlayStation Magazine editor chooses Xbox 360 for her home console

2006-08-12T01:40:00.000-07:00

Over at Evil Avatar (via Digg), some intrepid readers have found a post on Offical Playstation Magazine (OPM) editor Dana Jongewaard's personal blog where she discusses which of the next generation consoles will grace her living room this year. Her choice is the Xbox 360 and the reason is very simple, it's all about the high cost of entry for the $600 version of the PLAYSTATION 3.

Dana Jongewaard writes:

Contrary to popular belief, editors of the Official PlayStation Magazine don't get free hardware for their own personal use. So I've been having an ongoing debate with myself about the PS3 since E3. After Kaz announced that the price would be $600, I found my enthusiasm sagging...

$600 might be worth it if there were several huge titles on the near horizon that were PS3-exclusive. But for the first year at least, there are very few big titles that are PS3 exclusive. GTA4 and Assassins will be available for the 360 at the same time. And most of the big guns--FFXIII, MGS4--won't be hitting for quite some time after the launch...

$600 is a lot of money, especially when I can get what--for me at least--will be a very similar experience for $400. I would like to own a PS3, and I hope that the price drops soon so I can consider it.

In the comments of her post, Jongewaard follows up by saying that she will have access to a PS3 at work and will be playing games on it -- it is only her financial situation and the high cost of the PS3 combined which prevent her from having the PS3 as own personal hardware this year. I'm sure that having a console at the office eases the pain a little bit, but it's still something Jongewaard admits "is a luxury that most gamers do not have."

Image courtesty of GamesRadar

Dead Rising

2006-08-07T16:30:00.000-07:00

The demo for Dead Rising came out early in the morning this past Friday but I didn't know until after I had gone into work. So as soon as I got home, I started downloading this 1GB behemoth of a demo. An hour or so later and I loaded it up and... wow. That's all I can say. Even though the demo is limited to only fifteen minutes of play, I keep going back to it to try more and more things that I'm sure only scratch the surface on how complex this game can be. Robert Summa over at Joystiq wrote a pretty decent walkthrough/FAQ for Dead Rising, "How to get the most out of your Dead Rising Demo." Just playing around with all the weapons, including the ones you find like the katana and the Uzi, will take a couple of playthroughs at least. Taking pictures will take another set of playthroughts too, especially if you get the "Weekly Photo Magazine" in Contemporary Reading so you can figure out when best to take photos in the game. It's bad enough you get extra points for random posters or signs or of the more brutal moments in the game, but the developer saw fit to allow you to take photos down a dress or up a skirt of a couple of the female zombies for a special erotica themed bonus. Very... interesting and oh so wrong, but oh so funny.

On top of all this, Robert mentions juices you can mix in the blender located in the Columbian Rostmasters cafe upstairs in the demo area. Shogmaster on NeoGAF did one better and actually not only created a
chart to mix these drinks, but went out of his way to see what happens if you mix two of the resulting drinks with each other, to create special, can we say "Stage 2" drinks. And this is all just in the demo. This definitely increases my anticipation level for the full game, due to be out tomorrow, August 8. I can't wait to get my zombie-killing and juice-mixing on.

One other thing I have found is that the more I play the demo and the more I try to do different things, the more prone I am to dying. First few times, where I was just running around mowing down zombies as well as I could, I was nearly untouchable. I have to work on that.

Objection!

2006-07-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Just when you think Capcom's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney can't get any more ingrained in Internet pop culture (or popular for that matter -- as of today it's #35 on Amazon.com's Computer and Video Games Sales rankings), something else pops up.

Thanks to the ever intrepid (or bored) sp0rsk on NeoGAF comes this find: a make-your-own-objection tool using animation straight from from the game. I really don't know what's a better way to pass the time (as many on the board have already)... by creating your own objections or by changing the resulting URL to see what other people have come up with. You'll have to crack the "code" to get the alternate versions of these animations, which include Edgeworth and versions of Phoenix and Edgeworth with music.

Forza Motorsport 2 box art revealed

2006-07-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

Over on ForzaMotorsport.net, among recent posts about Turn 10 boss Alan Hartman's new Audi RS4 (I'm extremely jealous) and the partnership -- in-game and in real life -- with AWE tuning, Che posted an image of the recently approved box art for Forza Motorsport 2. It just looks... really sharp. Doesn't help me get the game into my grimy hands any sooner though! Oh the torture.

Xbox friends list on Windows Live Messenger

2006-07-18T23:57:00.000-07:00

The Xbox tab feature on Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger), which I remember had existed a while back but never tried, has returned, based on Major Nelson's post yesterday. After a little difficulty getting it to work, and the resulting troubleshooting comment I posted, it was a fully functional tab. While this is still pretty basic -- Xbox news on top and scroll down to see a compact, yet fully clickable, version of the friends list you have on Xbox.com -- I hope this is just a taste of the type of cross-functionality that we'll see from Live Anywhere (Live Anywhere Q&A with Chris Early on Gamasutra) or whatever else. At least during the workday, I can just scroll to the tab to see who is online (especially across different time zones) during the day and what they are up to. It's nothing beyond mere curiosity, but I could see the potential in sending or receiving game invites over Messenger, especially if with one click it launches, say the Shadowrun session or whichever other Windows Live game.

Xbox Japan - Xbox Friends and a new blog

2006-07-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I've been in close contact with a few of my colleagues in the Tokyo office of my company and, through them, with Shigeo Tatsumi, Xbox.com Japan Webmaster and community manager of sorts. Part of our conversation have been about sharing information and thoughts about expanding the community relations that Shigeo has been doing for some time already in Japan. When we last talked in early June, Shigeo planned to take the already smart things he has been doing since the launch of the original Xbox to a new level in early July. That time is finally here.

Taking a cue from the creation of the Gamerscore blog, Xbox Japan has launched an employee blog for all things community related in Japan. Right now, only Shigeo is writing on the blog, but that might change in the future. So far, he's posted a lot of things already -- from upcoming demos (Zegapain XOR) to videos about the quick charge kit (he's in the video) and what seems to be a Halo 2 comedy routine to just posting what is new on the Xbox Live Marketplace. I'm interested in seeing where this goes, but I think Shigeo is off to a great start, mixing his own vision with the usefulness of a more official version of MajorNelson.com and the aforementioned Gamerscoreblog.com. I've already got this as an (unfortunately) auto-translated bookmark on my daily list of sites to check out.

The other part to the community program in Japan is the launch of the Xbox Friends web site. Social networks and networking are fairly big in Japan and it seems a lot of people are connected with their friends in a lot of different ways (in Japan and in the rest of the world naturally). Of course, Xbox Live is supposed to add another way friends all over the world are connected. The challenge in Japan seems to be that just randomly running into someone on Live, who may not even speak Japanese, to play a game with -- never mind actually put on your Friends list -- is an awkward social situation more often than not. This is where Xbox Friends comes in. From what I understand Xbox Friends basically looks to supplement the existing friends list features on Xbox.com to help gamers in Japan find new friends that share things in common by including information not available on Xbox Live such as prefecture, age and profession among other things. This information was willingly given by the gamers in order to join Xbox Friends, since that's the whole purpose of the site. On Xbox Friends, gamers can create groups such as clans, guilds, student clubs, etc. and they can also search these groups. On home page for the Xbox Friends site itself, there are three main tabs for search: user search, group search (search for gamer groups according to game genre) and user map search.

This is what the most interesting part of Xbox Friends is -- the "user map" function. Basically, you start with selecting a game title and then on the next page you can choose to narrow down your user map search by a few categories. They include: Gamer Zone, Prefecture, gender, age (minors cannot be searched), favorite game genre, and profession. The search result is a Flash-based user map and the type of user map you get -- score view or match view -- depends on what criteria you did or did not select to search by. You can also narrow down the number of results returned by using the 10 - 100 slider bar on the right side, so that the user map you get isn't too busy and you can pick out a Gamertag to choose from to view. From these results, gamers in Japan can now find someone to request to be a friend on Xbox Live and not have it totally be random. It's definitely a great idea and something that is needed out there. I hope that Japanese gamers put it to full use.

Xbox Live Arcade Wednesdays

2006-07-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've consistently heard on NeoGAF has been the recent dearth of content on Xbox Live Arcade, considering announcements made at GDC back in March and at E³ in May about what was in the pipeline. They were setting the stage for Xbox Live Arcade, and by association, Marketplace, to have a significant amount of content by the end of the year. Then people started to wait for when the Marketplace floodgates would open and they would unfortunately wait longer than they thought.

The good news is that after a bit of hard work, folks at Microsoft, along with some of my co-workers, put together the "Summer of Xbox Live Arcade" event in San Francisco that happened tonight. This event kicks off five straight weeks of Xbox Live Arcade releases, updated every Wednesday at 1:00 am PDT (0800 GMT), through August 2. Tonight, the updates start off with Frogger. After that, the schedule goes:

July 19 – Cloning Clyde

July 26 – Galaga

August 2 – Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting

August 9 – Pac-Man

I'm really looking forward to Galaga, that has been one of my favorite arcade games for a long time. Except this time I won't have to put real quarters in it over and over again!

Forza Motorsport 2 - Update June 16, 2006

2006-06-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was able to meet Che Chou a couple of months ago while I was over Millennium Campus on Xbox business. He's a great guy with a storied career in video game journalism which ended, for the time being, at 1Up.com after he was hired to be the community manager for Forza Motorsport 2. Part of his work has been blogging regularly on ForzaMotorsport.net to chronicle the development of Forza Motorsport 2. He is definitely one lucky guy getting to sit in on things like recording engine sounds during dyno sessions of heavily modified cars. Being a driving enthusiast himself, with a nice Audi B5 twin-turbo S4 to boot, this must be an awesome job to have and I'm sure he can't wait for the team to do a repeat of their Track Day.

Forza 2 is one of my more anticipated games to come out later this year. I got into first Forza some time after it had been released, but I still absolutely love it. I'm a big follower of (some kinds) of motorsport, specifically Formula 1 and World Rally Championship, although I do like some of the endurance races (Le Mans, ALMS, etc.) and assorted GT races as well. I love it so much that I got my girlfriend Lizz to follow Formula 1 even. Because of the types of racing I like, Forza was a game that really spoke to me, covering a wide range of car types from all sorts of nations on road courses... it was just missing a great force feedback wireless wheel to complete the experience. That's what is going to make this release of Forza 2 so great, because there will be a force feedback wheel released and it will be wireless to boot.

This week's update on ForzaMotorsport.net followed Che down to watch and record audio of cars being crashed into all manner of barriers for the game. Must have been an incredible sight! Even though he couldn't join Turn 10's big guns who got to head over to France for Le Mans this weekend, Che is still going to witness some incredible stuff as part of the development this year. I'd keep an eye out on what he's up to every week.

Xbox 360 Dashboard - Spring 2006 Update

2006-06-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, the first major update of the Xbox 360 Dashboard will be released over Xbox Live. Less than two weeks ago, a few sites and blogs (like TeamXbox, Gaming Age, Joystiq and Kotaku to name a few) were able to get to chat briefly with the Group Marketing Manager for Xbox Live, Aaron Greenberg and/or Jerry Johnson, Xbox Live Group Product Manager. Major Nelson also had a chance to record a podcast with Aaron as his guest to go over a lot of the new features from the Spring Update, amongst other things. Major Nelson then took some time and went over to on10.net to give Tina an overview of some of the major features in under ten minutes. In addition, GameVideos.com has posted a video walk-through of the update as well -- it's well worth the watch even at the twenty minute runtime.

Most of these interviews covered some of the most important new features in the Dashboard Update. The biggest is easily the implementation of the "download manager," which allows you to queue up to six pieces of Marketplace content for download in the background while you continue to do other things. It even pauses the download anytime a bandwidth intensive task comes up, like launching a multi-player session. This feature is something I have seen everywhere on the message boards I work on. It's probably pretty safe to assume this was one of the most requested features that the Xbox team received. Another major, and also oft-requested feature, is having an option to boot straight to the Dashboard instead of automatically loading the game disc that is in the console when you power on. The option to change this setting can be found in the System > Console Settings menu. This is really welcome, I think I personally want it to boot to the Dashboard the overwhelming majority of the time, as I'll usually check, messages, friends and Marketplace before I decide what I want to do. I mean think about it, Xbox Live, Marketplace and the Dashboard are such compelling features that there is no small number of people out there who would prefer to start there than immediately jumping into a game. That's incredible. I think the only thing I see regarding this subject is to provide a way to choose where you boot on startup, similar to how the GameCube has that option available by holding down the 'A' button during the power-up sequence.

There are some other important additions, such as the FF/RW option when viewing videos or the Vision camera, that are well covered by the other sites and videos linked above. However, one thing that is interesting to note is that this Dashboard update is the very first such update from Microsoft to have the release info fully documented and posted publicly on Xbox.com. I think there are a few smaller updates in the larger list that may interest people.

The memory units are now labeled 'A' and 'B' whereas before they were just listed in order of the way they were inserted into the system. Now it just makes a little bit more sense.

The development team has worked on improving the visual quality of the built-in DVD player -- this is one of the great features of software DVD decoding, you can constantly make it better.

You can now play a video, demo or apply a theme directly after the download completes, instead of trying to play/apply it and then being taken to another screen that again gives you the option to play/apply.

They have made the scrolling through of large lists of music much faster, which is a welcome tweak.

They moved the entire categorization of Marketplace off of the Xbox and it's now handled on the server side. Which means that the Xbox Live team can create new categories for Marketplace content on the fly and you won't have to download another update.

If you let your Xbox 360 sit idle long enough for the screensaver to activate, your online status will go to "Away" which is great because now when I step away from the console for a while, people don't think I'm ignoring their UNO game invites.

They have found a way to improve the download performance for the most requested pieces of Marketplace content too, so when something new and compelling gets released, hopefully they will download a bit faster.

Those are just some of the other things in the update I found interesting. I'm sure some of the more technically inclined people or people who have experienced something they are fixing, making more efficient or found the Dashboard was lacking a feature they were missing for will find a few other things in the whole list they will like.

I can't wait to see what the next major Dashboard update, hopefully in the Fall/Winter sometime, will have in it.

EDIT: Elle from the Xbox team has a nice post about the update as well.

Brain Age - Day 3

2006-05-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

Again I got chastized for spending nearly a week away from Dr. Kawashima's tutelage. I didn't do too well this time around, but better than my initial assessment, which good I guess. I feel really stupid that Word Memory was harder than it looked, I missed some really obvious words. Lizz probably does a better job at that one than I do, she's always had a super sharp memory.

Day 3 - May 27, 2006

Brain Age: 42
Stroop test
Speed Counting
Word Memory

Training
Calculations x20: 32sec (Missed 1 = 5sec)
Calculations x100: 3min 33sec (Missed 5 = 25sec penalty)
Low to High: 31points (6 correct)
Reading Aloud: 5.1 syllables (1min 29sec)
Syllable Count: 1min 12sec (Missed 0 = 0sec penalty)

E3 recap

2006-05-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

Last week was THE week. As in the week where all of the work I do more or less culminates in a one week-long event I wrote about last month which includes the actual show days of E3. Here is what happened. Finally.

Pre-show
The first two days of the week before E3 started revolved around press briefings/conferences, both Microsoft's and those of their direct competitors. Monday was Sony's press conference and, well, it was surprising. Otherwise, we were all just getting ready for our own press briefing over at Grauman's Chinese Theater followed by a reception at the nearby Roosevelt Hotel to take place the next day. I also picked up my E3 Exhibitor badge on Monday. On Tuesday we were all at our places in a dome just next to Grauman's Chinese Theater waiting for the onslaught of journalists to come check-in once the Nintendo briefing (video podcast) let out. Stephen (right) and Anthony (left) from Xbox Addict, Michael from Next Level Gaming (in white) and Cornelis from Xbox Users Group (in blue) were all already waiting in line. I was in charge of making sure the people I work with could get into the briefing, in the event that they weren't on the master list or didn't have their passes to get in. Although hundreds of people showed up, everybody did their best to get everyone inside as quickly as possible. And just like that, all of sudden nearly everybody had disappeared, because Microsoft's E3 press briefing (video: high) was starting. The highlights (video: high | low) of the press briefing are also on Xbox.com. While everyone was waiting for the briefing to be over, we went to get ready for the reception at the Roosevelt Hotel across the street.

At the Roosevelt, the pool and the front lobby or reception area was converted for the reception and there were Xbox 360 consoles and LCD flat panels everywhere running just about every game coming out there is. From a whole bank of consoles showing upcoming Xbox Live Arcade titles like Contra, Galaga, Pac-Man and Lumines Live, to a mini-theater to watch Gears of War being demoed to small rooms around the pool where journalists could demo Too Human, Mass Effect, Blue Dragon, Viva Pinata and more. I didn't quite expect what that was going to turn into once over a thousand people from the press briefing came in and filled the place -- it was so empty and peaceful for an hour. It was quiet enough that I saw Tomonobu Itagaki come up to the entrance to the event with some of his staff and milled around for a while at our extremely imposing sign that said the pool was closed for a private event. Then just about an hour and a half after the briefing started, the floodgates opened and the hotel was packed in an instant. Although I had to run back and forth to Grauman's Chinese Theater to help some of my contacts get into the Roosevelt, I managed to meet a couple more of the people I work with quite a bit but have never had the pleasure of meeting: Jonas from DailyGame.net and Howard from PopCultureShock. I also ran into Amademo from Amped IGO right at the tail end of the reception. After that, it was time to to some normal work, head out to dinner with our team and then get to bed early for the mayhem that the three days of E3 were supposed to be.

E3 show days
When you work the show, your days start early -- mine were 8 AM or 8:30 AM early. The show floor opens at 9 AM and therefore you can expect people to show up at the booth right around then. So you had to be there and be ready for the onslaught by then. At least on the first day, at 9 AM, the floor opened only to a select group of media that had early access instead of everyone with a badge, but that didn't stop it from starting the week in the most hectic fashion as those of us handling the appointments and escorting media to their appointments had rushes of people to help every hour and half-hour every day of the show. In between those times, we were helping anybody who was running late, answering questions from anyone who walked up and networking with colleagues and journalists whom you've worked with. Every single day rushed by faster than I could have thought and every single hour was spent on my feet although by the end of the day and the show, my feet were nowhere near as bad as I thought it would have been.

What really impressed me about the show, not having been to a "real" trade show in my life, is the sheer enormity and production behind each company's booth. Activision had a full half-pipe built in their booth space. The Microsoft booth (video: high | low) was huge and the meeting rooms were a full two floors. I can't imagine that they could build that whole thing, so solidly and look and work so well, in the relatively short timespan that they did.

On Wednesday night, we held our C3@E3 party (video: high | low) where we invited a reasonably large number of bloggers, community, Xbox MVPs and some journalists. Over 400 people showed up around 7 PM that night waiting to get let into the show floor after hours. We had arranged to get the people who came to our party to get onto the floor and over to our booth when the South Hall was pretty much devoid of people. We were finally all set at 7:30 PM, after everybody had calmly waited for the booth to be ready and in one huge group, the security guys and I led them in. Peter Moore kicked things off and then, for just about everybody, it was down to socializing and playing games. I had a good long conversation with BuddyC, Vark, some of Vark's programmer buddies at Bethesda and TekunoRobby for a good part of the party. Again I didn't even get to see much of the games being played, but the conversations we were having were worth it. I also met Chris, who works at Wideload with a bunch of ex-Bungie guys in Chicago and who worked on the Stubbs the Zombie game. Nicole Hamlett and her staff were pretty easy to pick out with their yellow TenTonHammer jerseys, so mark yet another person I work with that I finally met. The event was over far too quick and I still didn't get too see too many of the games in our booth in action but it was really great to hear everybody walk out and talk about how much they enjoyed our event. It was nice.

For the entire show, I never got the opportunity to visit the Community/Blogger Bus that was parked outside of the West Hall for all three days. Even the Washington Post wrote about the bus and bloggers at E³. Next time I'll have to make sure to drop by so I don't find myself writing about E³ over a week later still. I would have a had a better chance to really meet the writers from Joystiq and Kotaku rather than the minor contact I had when they showed up for their appointments.

During the week, I was also staffing a room where press were invited to see both Blue Dragon and Ninety-Nine Nights. This was the first I saw of Blue Dragon beyond the trailer that has been presented several times. I got to see the opening scene and sequence and a couple of in-game scenarios. I'm looking forward to see how this shapes up by the time it gets released, but it's definitely very ambitious which is always a good sign. In the afternoon was Ninety-Nine Nights and I was treated to the fact that Tetsuya Mizuguchi was helping with the presentation of his title, Ninety-Nine Nights for the three sessions I staffed. Although I had met Mizuguchi-san before, it was really interesting to hear him talk about his new title, he was really into the story. On top of that, the Phantagram developer that was there demonstrating the game even said he is not as good as Mizuguchi-san!

By the end of the show, I was tired, sweaty and my feet did hurt. I got a quick chance to walk around the South and West Halls and see some of the games out from the various developers and publishers. E³ turned out to be not as bad and deafening as everyone I had talked to made it out to be. It was still hard work, it was still hectic, but I didn't spend time wishing for it to end. By the time it did end, I was ready to crash.

Links to videos and photos courtesy of Nintendo, Microsoft, Xbox.com, TeamXbox, Gamespot, GamersReports, Derek Bauer Photography and the Gamerscore blog.

Brain Age - Day 2

2006-05-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

Recapping a week's worth of E3 isn't as easy as I thought, so that's still int he works. And Dr. Kawashima had the nerve to chastize me for spending two weeks away!

Day 2 - May 16, 2006

Brain Age: 30
Stroop test
Connect Maze
Speed Counting

Training
Calculations x20: 36sec (Missed 0 = no penalty)
Calculations x100: 2min 54sec (Missed 5 = 24sec penalty)
Low to High: 33 points (6 correct)
Reading Aloud: 4.2 syllables (1min 54sec)

Brain Age - Day 1

2006-05-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

In an effort to keep updating regularly, I will take the cheap way out and keeping a running status of my Brain Age successes, failures and progress.

I will cataloging everything I do and don't do -- although I'm not going to post on a day and say, I didn't turn it on, nothing happened. We'll see how long it is before I get bored of posting something nearly every day.

Day 1 - May 4, 2006

Brain Age: 46
Stroop test

Training
No training completed.

Easy HTML code: Add a friend to your Xbox friends list

2006-05-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Back at the end of March, Xbox.com was updated to allow for the management of your friends list online. This was an upgrade from relying solely on the Xbox Live interface on your Xbox 360 or Xbox to do the same. Right after the new feature launched, I remember seeing someone on a forum who managed to make a Gamercard picture that, when you clicked on it, would automatically add them to your friends list. Well, not quite automatically, you still had to log in to Xbox.com for the URL to pass through the request to your account. A month later, I couldn't find where I saw it, but I wanted to figure out how they did it so I could post it in a thread on NeoGAF. Taking a look at the URL created when you try to add someone to your friends list via Xbox.com, I figured out a shortened URL that works every time. You can use the following URL in HTML code if you want to make a one-click link to have people add you to their friends list.

Here is the syntax of the HTML:
http://live.xbox.com/en-US/profile/FriendsMgmt.aspx?gt=XXXX&act=Add

Just don't forget to replace the "XXXX" with your own gamertag.

For example, mine would look like this:
http://live.xbox.com/en-US/profile/FriendsMgmt.aspx?gt=arne360&act=Add

Microsoft Xbox 360 Community and Blogger Bus at E3 2006

2006-04-29T00:15:00.000-07:00

Something pretty cool happened as part of the work I do with Microsoft on Xbox 360 (and of course, Microsoft Games Studios). One of the pieces of what I do, but really run by someone else at my job, involves maintaining relationships with bloggers large and not so large. As my introduction on Xbox.com and in posts on some of the message boards I work on, I get to know a lot of regular gamers and, especially in the case of NeoGAF, a few developers and journalists. Obviously we invite them to things like the San Francisco event we had in March and we're doing a few things at E3 this year as well. One of the things we recognized at these events is that it has always been logistically difficult to provide Internet access to everyone that needs it to complete some sort of online communication, from journalists to bloggers to people on the message boards. This was especially true back in October 2005 when I attended an event in New York where all sorts of journalists came to preview the launch window game titles for the first time and, at night, we had PMS Clan members and message board members coming by to play and hang out. It would have been nice to give all of them some ability to go online.

Going into our planning for E3, we recognized the need for these very same contacts and friends of ours to have ready access to the Internet. As John Porcaro over on the Microsoft side of things explains on the Gamerscore Blog, determining and getting approval on where we could put aside some physical space to let people hook up to the Internet. We couldn't put it anywhere in or near the Microsoft booth, there just wasn't room left, nor did we want to take some place that was out of the way -- even if it was available. After much talking amongst ourselves and with the E3 staff, we got ourselves a nice big parking spot right out front of the Los Angeles Convention Center (Windows Live Local version and Google Maps version). Not only that, but the bus is this huge coach which will be conveniently wrapped in Xbox 360 branding. Of course, if you've been playing attention to the maps linked earlier, the bus just happens to be right in the route many people will take to head to the West Hall when going to check out Sony's and Nintendo's respective booths. Hopefully the bus will serve to distract them a just little.

My schedule has not been finalized yet, but I will be spending some time in and near the bus over the full three days of E3. Ask for me if you happen to drop by, I would be more than happy to meet you.

More details on who will be there, who is invited and how to find out if you can get invited to the bus at the aforementioned Gamerscore Blog.

GRAW X360 multiplayer with Staci from Killer Betties and GAF members

2006-04-27T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I posted that I had scheduled an online, multi-player game of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter with Staci of Killer Betties. To make sure it wasn't just a two-player or, if was lucky, three-player, session, I also posted a couple threads on NeoGAF asking if anybody wanted to join in. Thankfully the response was, well, pretty overwhelming. Enough so that I was very glad Vark offered up his FiOS connection to host what could be a session with the maximum number of players.

On Saturday we didn't quite get started on time as Vark was having some home networking difficulties and I was already hosting a few four to six player games, quite well thankfully (I think). Once Vark got back online, it was on in a big way. I can't even remember everyone who was on off the top of my head. I think we hit about twelve people as our maximum over the four hour session. I probably had one of the best times I've had on Xbox Live since a few Halo 2 games back in the Spring of 2005. We played nearly every imaginable game type, got all of the campaign co-op achievements for everyone (including the "Perfect Chapter 1" achievement) and played some super-long territory maps, where the kill count went over 400-500 enemy kills easy. Somehow I'm actually amazed someone didn't get the "Heavyweight" achievement by the end of the night. No matter how or when you look at it, it was memorable.

A couple of days later Staci posted an entry about her multi-player experience on Killer Betties and I'm glad she really liked it. I didn't realize it was her first time on Xbox Live over a headset even. It's really interesting that she picked marksman a lot, because I think in a lot of cases, the multiplayer games we played didn't necessarily lend itself to the slow strategic sniping that class is best at, at least in games where everyone is on the same side. I can see that being spectacular in versus games on most maps however. I wouldn't mind seeing more co-op campaigns that reward the type of gameplay that Ghost Recon became known for -- slow, stealthy, quick deliberate kills -- but that's not to say that GRAW plays any differently or worse, you can definitely adapt the game to the class you picked in most or all cases. GRAW comes nowhere close to a fast paced FPS. What I would really like to set up somehow is a slow, intense one versus one or two versus two sniper game on the right map. A good ten minutes of cat and mouse would be incredible. At least in my head it is.

I'm spoiled by the new Xbox Live

2006-04-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

The current iteration of Xbox Live has really spoiled me in a couple of ways. On the original Xbox and Xbox Live, it was nice and important to know who on your friends list was online and what game they are playing. So of course with the Xbox 360 release, Xbox Live tells you that information and then lets you know what they are doing in the game: what level or map they are on, often what particular activity they are doing, status about their character/persona, the score of the (sports) game they are playing, or, like with Oblivion, their level and current health.

Which brings me to wish that Final Fantasy XI was able to pass along similar information. I'm guessing that, along with the fact that you couldn't really award retroactive achievements, there might be some technical reason that stands in the way of reporting that type of information back to the dashboard or Xbox.com friends lists. The thing is with PlayOnline was that I knew whomever was online on their friends list was playing FFXI. Now when I see them on "PlayOnline Viewer" I want to know details! FFXI or, unlikely, TetraMaster? Why isn't it the mysterious Final Fantasy XI entry/icon which only shows me as playing it the day I installed it. I also want to see what their character name is, what server they are on and what jobs and levels they have active at that moment. It just seems... to fit... and satiate my curiousity about people I didn't know were playing MMOs/FFXI.

Come play GRAW X360 on Sat 4/23 night

2006-04-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

Not like anybody reads this anyway, but I'm going to be playing GRAW on Xbox Live on Saturday, 4/22, at 6pm PT/8pm CT/9pm ET or GMT 4/23 1am. I'll have Staci from Killer Betties with me playing multi-player. Add my gamertag to your friends list (if you already aren't) and shoot me a note in game on Saturday. Hopefully there'll be a decent turnout!

E3 2006 - The Electronic Entertainment Expo

2006-04-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

I am now officially registered, booked and reserved for my first E³ ever, to start in just under a month. I will arrive in LA early on Monday morning, probably too early considering what the rest of the week is going to entail. I don't know yet what I'm doing on Monday, I'm sure it involves set-up, planning and rehearsal. As many people know, Sony's press briefing has been scheduled for Monday afternoon. I'm sure many of us will expectantly wait to see what announcements ~~should~~ must be made: price, further timing on the worldwide launch, HDD-inclusion, controller design, online features, etc. It is definitely going to be one heck of an evening afterwards.

Tuesday morning is Nintendo's briefing, to be held at the famed Kodak Theater, where we can expect a lot more news about the Virtual Console, their big franchises and whatever creatively disruptive things they have cooking up Iwata-san and Miyamoto-san's sleeves. As soon as the Nintendo briefing is over, most everyone will be headed over to Grauman's Chinese Theater, which is just a stone's throw away, for the Microsoft briefing. It took me a while to realize that this was THE Chinese Theater we see and hear about when some movies premiere in Los Angeles. Wow. I'm really not as free to speculate about what the Microsoft announcements will be (since I already pretty much know them) as I can about Sony and Nintendo, but I'm sure it will be all that everyone seems to expect and more.

Wednesday the show starts and so will the absolutely chaotic mayhem, judging from some show floor pictures of E³ 2005 and being told that the floor is pretty much constantly like that throughout the show. Commit me if you have to, but I think this is going to be a great time for a guy like me. I don't remember what my schedule and responsibilities are for each day, obviously I will be busier than I will probably ever be in my life. There will be a couple of "parties" that I will attend (or at least try to) from the looks of it. I say "parties" because they aren't really the type of party where you just go to have fun and let off steam. In one way or another they will be related to networking, getting to know other folks in various parts of the industry, getting to meet people I talk to often face to face and generally networking. I mean, it will be fun, but again, not entirely super party time.

I also hope that I can find enough time to walk the floor and adequately check everything out. Partly out of curiosity of course, but I'm really interested in being able to see what's coming down the pipe for publishers across all platforms, including PC. It will be like being a kid in a candy store. Depending on the level of announcements, it will be interesting to see how far Sony and Nintendo are coming along on their first party titles -- in the case of the latter company, there hasn't been much being said or shown. I can't even begin to think about what from multi-platform and 360 exclusive publishers I want to see. A lot of it is stuff Microsoft Game Studios is publishing anyway -- the Japanese titles. The one thing I do know for certain, is that whatever I see, I know I'll see enough that it's going to mortally injure my pocketbook this year. And I can't wait!

E³ 2005 show photos courtesy of the E3Expo.com Media Archive.

Barbie Horse Adventures - Collectible Xbox Game of the Year?

2006-04-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

Barbie's Horse Adventures: Wild Horse Rescue has been a running joke for many (male) gamers, the type who tend to pick up new gaming consoles right at launch and pay attention to the Xbox game backwards compatibility list for the Xbox 360. I haven't played it, but the game was probably well-suited for it's real target market -- generally female, pre-teens and teens. Joke all you want, but don't give up any copies you have, especially if they are still sealed. After a post on NeoGAF by colinp extolling the wild horse adventures to be had, a follow-up post by sonarrat uncovered the hot collectors market for Barbie's Horse Adventures. It appears that on Amazon.com, at the time of this writing, the game is fetching $74.99 to $129.99 on the used market.

You'll never look at the used Xbox games section of your local EB Games quite the same way again.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 demo

2006-04-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the demo of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 off of Xbox Live Marketplace last night just to try it out. I haven't played a "realistic" golf game since Links 386 in the mid 1990s. I've had a lot of fun playing Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee on the PSP, but the obvious appeal is the arcade feel and format.

I thought the game was pretty good, I mean, some ten years later, you would hope the golf games would improve! The water looks absolutely amazing and I should know, as on the TPC at Sawgrass hole, I exceeded my shot limit with every single ball going straight into the drink.

Next I tried the Pebble Beach Golf Links hole. It took a round to get used to how to aim, swing and most importantly, putt, as my double bogey would tell you. On the next round my drive took me to about 190 yards from the pin. I remember the guy saying the ball will roll towards the water on the green, so I aimed a little more right and took my swing... and I totally felt like I messed it up because I starting swinging forward before the backswing hit it's apex. Then I watched the ball soar, hit the ground before the green, roll onto the green, curve towards the hole... DOUBLE EAGLE. (!!!)

Here I am, not into golf games and I've got my arms raised in the air in excitement over this one round in a demo. I couldn't top that last night, so that was the last thing I did.

Birthday = Nintendo DS Lite

2006-04-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

As if I hadn't mentioned it a million times over, I got a Nintendo DS Lite for my birthday. In Enamel Navy. It's very nice, I do like the color even though I had originally wanted Ice Blue. I have no games except for Nintendogs, which hasn't been turned on in over six months. This was a pretty nice surprise, pretty unexpected really, especially since I already have a handheld (PSP) which I hardly use anyway because I don't do too many things that give me the opportunity to concentrate for any length of time on a game. I like it so far, the size, everything is far better than the "normal" Nintendo DS, which almost feels more like a children's toy than this in some respects. I guess that's part of the point of the redesign beyond the improvements. Regardless, it was a nice present and I look forward to getting the couple games on my "to purchase" list I made in February sometime in the next couple of months. I need a second job with all these quality games coming out right now. I also want to go by one of those download stations and see what Brain Age is all about.

April = birthday, FFXI

2006-04-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

April bodes to be a good month, even though not as packed with releases as March. I guess that will make it a bit easier on the pocketbook.

First off is my birthday, for which I am the grateful recipient of what came through the following path:

Live UPS shipping data
Apr 07, 2006   10:18:00   US  SEATTLE   DELIVERED
Signed by: XXXX  Location: OFFICE
Apr 07, 2006   06:34:00   US  SEATTLE   OUT FOR DELIVERY
Apr 07, 2006   06:00:00   US  SEATTLE   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   05:44:00   US  SEATTLE   DEPARTURE SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   04:54:00   US  SEATTLE   LOCATION SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   04:47:00   US  SEATTLE   OUT FOR DELIVERY
Apr 07, 2006   04:23:00   US  SEATTLE   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   02:11:00   US  ONTARIO   DEPARTURE SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   01:26:00   US  ONTARIO   LOCATION SCAN
Apr 07, 2006   01:01:00   US  ONTARIO   IMPORT SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   22:21:00   US  ONTARIO   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   17:28:00   HK  CHEK LAP KOK   EXPORT SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   17:27:00   HK  CHEK LAP KOK   ORIGIN SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   16:35:00   US  ANCHORAGE   DEPARTURE SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   15:39:00   HK  KWAI CHUNG   PICKUP SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   14:10:00   US  ONTARIO   REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY.
SHIPMENT RELEASE PENDING CLEARING AGENCY REVIEW;SHIPMENT SUBMITTED TO
CLEARING AGENCY, AWAITING FINAL RELEASE
Apr 06, 2006   14:10:00   US  ONTARIO   REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY.
SHIPMENT RELEASE PENDING CLEARING AGENCY REVIEW;RELEASED BY CLEARING
AGENCY. NOW IN-TRANSIT FOR DELIVERY
Apr 06, 2006   13:19:00   US  ANCHORAGE   ARRIVAL SCAN
Apr 06, 2006   01:57:29   HK     BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

Which was a Nintendo DS Lite in Enamel Navy.

I'm also looking forward to the April 18 release of Final Fantasy XI on the Xbox 360. I've kind of fallen off the FFXI wagon since about January when I had worked up a backlog of Xbox 360 games to plow through. Of course having experienced FFXI in HD through the Xbox 360 beta also spoiled me a bit and made it difficult to settle for the lower resolution from the PS2 version I play on. I played the beta a little bit, but I got pretty tired of having to start over when I knew I didn't have to. It was nicer to just run around and go exploring with the better quality graphics. It's just a little over a week away at this point however. I can't wait to jump back in. I will, however, lament the loss of being able to use my Logitech Netplay controller to control and type with ease. I'm going to look into seeing if I can get a wireless keyboard going though, so I can play with comfort.

Xbox Live Free Weekend and Ambassadors

2006-03-31T12:52:00.000-08:00

This weekend (March 31 - April 2) is going to be the first Free Xbox Live Gold Weekend that will take place since the Xbox 360 has launched. I hope, and I'm sure, a lot of people will try this out on the current crop of Xbox 360 games. I really didn't maximize my use of Live when I had an Xbox. It really was for Halo 2 and nothing else. Most of the time it was because I didn't play the game far enough to say I wanted to go online, like with Top Spin. I wasn't going to go online unless I had completed the character I created. Now I'm definitely playing it a lot more, and you can bet that when I pick up Top Spin 2, I'll be hitting the online courts as quickly as I can.

The Xbox Live team is also launching a new little program with this first Free Xbox Live Gold Weekend, the Xbox Ambassadors. This is a (rather sizable) group of people hand selected to be nice, helpful people on Xbox Live for those folks who might be enjoying their first foray into Live and online multiplayer gaming. I was glad to make that group of gamertags selected to be Ambassadors for this weekend, so I could maybe get new people onto my friends list to play games with in the future. So, keep a lookout for me (and the rest of the Ambassadors) this weekend and invite us to your friends list for a game or two.

A Tale of Two Cities

2006-03-23T11:42:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days I have split between San Francisco and San Jose. In San Francisco, I went to an event on Tuesday night we put together with the Xbox team that was held at the Supper Club. The entire club past the bar at the entrance was turned into one big gaming and mingling room. There was a white and green DJ booth in the center of the room and what seemed like queen mattresses next to each other were completely lined again three of the four walls in the room to make lounging areas on both the ground floor and on the upper floor. They all had Xbox 360s and screens breaking up the lounging areas, and a few more on the floor itself. As best as I can remember, the following games were set up there:

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Burnout Revenge
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Tomb Raider: Legend
Top Spin 2
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
Saint's Row
Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
Texas Hold 'Em Poker
Dead Rising
Ninety-Nine Nights
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2
Sonic Riders
Over the Hedge

This is a bit different than the initial list of games I had seen, but still far from a disappointing turnout. The titles on display was sweetened even more so when a couple people from Capcom came by just minutes before the event started to deliver the most recent build of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

Anyway, the event was great and I was really glad to meet some people I had only corresponded with on e-mail, or occasionally on the phone. Of course, as I had mentioned before, I was also looking forward to meeting Splincir and ludcrouspeed again. I spent a while, probably far too long, talking to TekunoRobby and Vark from GAF there too. They will not have heard the last from me, that's for sure!

The next morning (at 6:30 AM no less) I hopped into a car with some coworkers and Peter Moore to bring him to a breakfast we were hosting in San Jose with guys from Joystiq, GamingSteve, Kotaku, Gizmodo and GamerAndy. This was the first time I met most of these guys, as working with bloggers is someone else's area at work. I think the breakfast went well and lots of interesting things were discussed, but I'll let the bloggers at the table post or podcast about it. One of the guys I work with, John Porcaro, posted pictures of the breakfast at Gamerscore Blog, the Xbox marketing team blog.

Mere hours after the breakfast was over, I was on a plane headed back to Seattle ending my whirlwind two city tour.
Update:
Here are some links to posts or podcasts from the guys who went to the breakfast.
Joystiq
GamingSteve
Kotaku
GamerAndy and his impressions from the showcase are here
Gamerscore

Me & My Katamari are sad

2006-03-21T15:20:00.000-08:00

Before leaving for the airport to San Francisco this morning I dropped by the EB Games near the office like I said I would. They weren't expecting to get Oblivion in until after 3:00 PM today, so that was a downer. Then I found out that I should have paid more attention to release dates because I was jumping the gun on Me & My Katamari as well. I gets released today, meaning it ships today and the stores won't see it until tomorrow at least. So instead of having something to do on the flight that I was looking forward to, I just napped and read some things I needed to read for the event I am here for. There is a little bit of extra time tomorrow before I get back on a plane to Seattle, so I hope I can find a game store convenient enough to pick up at least Me & My Katamari for the flight back.

Off to get some food and then that showcase event tonight. I'll try to update later tonight.

I left my heart in San Francisco

2006-03-21T08:28:00.000-08:00

Later today I'll be flying heading down to San Francisco for a work event that's part of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) that runs this week in San Jose. The event that we're hosting together with Microsoft will be in San Francisco tonight and it's titled as a "Showcase" event.

Back in early October 2005 we had a similar set of events, one in New York and one in San Francisco, which allowed us to put a bunch of people in one room, give them the rundown on the new Xbox Live and the Dashboard and set them loose to play a good number of games on preview. This event is something pretty similar, in fact the New York component of the event happened late last week already.

I'm looking forward to it as I'll get to meet a few editors and writers of websites I haven't met in person yet, a couple people from GAF (TekunoRobby and Chittagong) and a couple people I've met before from the TeamXbox and GameSpot forums (ludcrouspeed and Splincr). Frankly, it's nice to put a face to someone I've talked to online for a while now.

Either way, the event will probably be pretty fun, meeting people and getting to play some preview games -- especially if the list of anticipated preview builds I saw late last month turns out to be accurate. As always, I'll be taking pictures both for work and personal purposes, so I'll put some up on here when I get a chance.

Also, I should be able to drop by the EB Games by my work to pick up Me & My Katamari and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion this morning before I head to the airport. Oblivion will have to wait, but I'll have some Katamari fun (R.I.P. Katamari Damacy website) if I manage to stay awake on the plane.

that ... kid sure plays a mean pinball

2006-03-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

Thanks again to another GAF thread, I have the bug to go play pinball. I can't remember the first time I played pinball, but it was well after I'd already started playing video games. I probably didn't get around to it until I was well into middle school at the earliest. It's funny how I can remember the very first video game I played, but not my first pinball machine. It is entirely possible my first pinball game was the "3D Pinball" that came with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. Yet I still have fond feelings for pinball, just as much as for video games. While I was trying to think back to my early pinball machines, I remember playing a Terminator 2: Judgment Day machine at a pizza joint back in my hometown. I know I also played the Indiana Jones game at a hot dog stand in the Chicago suburbs and I couldn't get enough of the "See you later, Indiana Jones!" sample when you lost a ball. Then it was a Jurassic Park machine at GenCon back when it used to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After that I started playing way too many of them wherever I could find them.

The game room in my dorm building in college rotated White Water and The Addams Family every quarter or so and I was frequently down there taking a break or taking out frustrations from studying when I wasn't doing the same on the Virtua Fighter cabinet. This was the start of how I'd be sure to play most pinball games I came across if I could wherever I was, although I can't say that I've specifically went out thinking, "I need to find a pinball machine and play it." There used to be an arcade at Chicago's North Pier building (near the super-touristy Navy Pier) that had an arcade that I went to because it was across hall from the Virtual World BattleTech Center there. Which, if I can digress for a second, I was totally obsessed with at that time too. I was an early member (first battle: 08/06/91) and still have my card to prove it. I only remember playing The Shadow table there, although they had at least five tables set up on one of the space the arcade had. Those times have been the only times I've played pinball in an arcade to date. Kind of sad almost.

Once I was of age and had the motivation to go to bars, I would always take a couple plays at whatever machine they had, if they had one, and most of the bars I ended up going to had them. It was from going to bars that I got to play Twilight Zone at a bar in Saint Louis and Dr. Who at Club Foot, a bar by my apartment in Chicago. Both are among my favorites, although I haven't had a chance to play Twilight Zone recently. Now when I think about it, I really haven't played any other pinball machines since I started frequenting Club Foot, which I have now stopped frequenting since I moved away to Seattle and no longer live 3 blocks from there. Which is kind of sad but not really. But it doesn't solve the fact I still really want to go play pinball and I am in an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar places. Of course I could start walking into bars to find one, but that's obviously not the way to go about it.

A Google search makes it appear that the best place for me to do this is at Shorty's here in Seattle. According to their site they have the following machines:
The Addams Family
Flash Gordon
Freedom
Getaway
Hurricane
Lord of the Rings
Medieval Madness
On Beam
Revenge from Mars
Scared Stiff
Simpsons
White Water

Their retro arcade cabinets aren't too shabby either although I could just as easily play Joust or Robotron at home on XBLA, so I'd stick with Galaga or Donkey Kong. Once I get to go and grab one of their Vegi Dogs and hit a few pinball games, I'll be sure to report back on how it felt to be go nudging the tables again. I can't wait for the Lord of the Rings or some of the super retro tables. I'm also looking forward to Medieval Madness, a lot of people on GAF spoke highly of it and it's even due to be re-released.

All images courtesy of contributors Allen Shope, Jeff Ball and Ari Sovijärvi from the Internet Pinball Database

Xbox 360 theme for Windows

2006-03-17T01:17:00.000-08:00

Major Nelson was the one to push me to install his Xbox 360 theme for Windows-based Smartphones, way back before I was working on their behalf. So it piqued my interest to read MajorNelson.com today and see a post about a Xbox 360 theme for Windows. "Theme" is putting it nicely, this thing reskins all your window bars, buttons, start bar, icons and everything to have a wholly Xbox 360 look and feel. I've never even looked into this as the limit of my OS customization has rarely been beyond changing out the desktop background. This looks pretty cool, not sure if I'm going to go with it myself since I don't feel like installing the WindowBlinds or WindowBlinds Object Desktop from Stardock right now just to give it a spin. Maybe I will once I'm more committed to the theme. Somebody should do one that's a bit more reminiscent of the blades in the Xbox Dashboard, I would like that. That might push me over into the, I'll-buy-this-software-and-try-out-the-theme line. So how 'bout it?

"I've retired more men than Social Security!"

2006-03-06T00:10:00.000-08:00

While I can't make the same boast as Apollo Creed, I've downed my share of boxers since I've picked up "Fight Night Round 3" a couple of weeks ago. My lifetime record isn't helped by the fact that I haven't played a boxing game since I got a demo version of "4-D Boxing" on PC, which was my upgrade from "Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!" on the NES. Yes, it's been that long.

I downloaded the demo of FNR3 from Marketplace purely based on videos and images posted on the Internet. I won my first fight against Roy Jones Jr. and I was starting to like getting back into the boxing genre. That was to be the only fight I won in the demo and I had to shelve it out of total frustration since I kept losing. That didn't stop me from picking up the game though, I figured I would learn how to fight and get better with the full version of the game. A couple of test fights in, I figured out the controls so I could start winning. I think got it now -- my career sits at 18-2-0 (18 KO) with only my impatience working against me on those 2 losses.

And, yes, I got sucked into a boxing game even though I'm not a fan of the sport at all. Enough that I found myself the other night looking up old fights and famous boxers. Although I knew he was one of the greatest, I never realized what a total machine George Foreman was! If only my thumbs were machines, I must be doing something wrong, but I can hardly last a round without having to take a break because my thumbs hurt from the dodging, blocking and punching. I'm definitely not stopping now though, FNR3 has my attention. I have to go back to improving my record now.

Xbox Live privacy settings

2006-02-19T22:02:00.000-08:00

I've recently been reading Elle's blog, "Circlets," since she was linked to by Major Nelson. She is a writer for the Xbox documentation team. A few days ago she wrote an entry about the privacy settings for Xbox Live that you can find on the Dashboard. It isn't the first thing I would think to read about in a manual or search out for, but now that she posted it, I was interested in the details.

Besides the usual opt-in/opt-out marketing options, there were two things that caught my eye. The first was the "Played Games" option, which lets you show or hide your Played Games list from whoever is looking at your Gamercard. The other option is for "Member Content." Elle comments that this option "doesn't have a lot of use right now, but it will as people create content to share with other people. You can choose whether you want to see the content." It will be interesting to see how that comes into play in the future.

I'm a VGA output convert

2006-02-18T22:14:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I was reading through a thread on GAF where someone replaced gaming with their Xbox 360 from the normal TV with gaming on their PC monitor via the VGA cables. The thought the picture looked a lot better even though they had to go to a smaller screen.

Then a few posts down, some other people started talking about how they hooked up their Xbox 360 to the PC input on their TV. And a decent number of people thought the picture was significantly better, even the ones that had some complaints (e.g. too dark, washed out, bad contrast, etc.) thought that in general the picture looked much sharper and more detailed.

Now that got me thinking something I hadn't even thought about before... I've already hooked up my laptop to my TV so I could watch TV shows I downloaded from iTunes, but I had never, ever considered to do the same with my Xbox 360. I always thought that component is the way to go for that. So the next day I went out to get myself a VGA cable to try this out.

After making sure I got the right resolution through the Dashboard menu, I was really impressed with the results. I guess I lucked out because my TV has its VGA settings calibrated fairly well, so the image looked visibly different to me -- some of the text in the menus looked sharper, some of the textures looked more detailed, things like that. I suggest that if you can try the VGA cables with your display, definitely try it out because I was totally missing something good because I didn't think about it.

Katamari Damacy flash

2006-02-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

Since the Katamari Damacy website went down on March 17, this no longer exists. Very, very sad.

Thanks to GAF, yet again, is my enjoyment of the Katamari Damacy mini-game (Flash based).

Slightly more addicting than is safe for a day at work I'm sure. I'm sure I would have done better if I stopped accidentally clicking the mouse every 30 seconds and shaking off all my collected objects to have to start from scratch.

Screenshot courtesy of Xrenity.

Achievements

2006-02-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

You like them or you dislike them or you certainly have way too much time on your hands.

When I first heard about them as part of my job here, I thought it was a pretty cool idea but I still didn't have a clue what it would be like. I even thought that people would be looking each other up and comparing each others achievements and getting a handle at how good (or bad) other folks on Xbox Live were.

I must have been really short-sighted to not realize that people would be ~~competing for~~ comparing Gamerscores and of course, a leaderboard has popped up too.

I'm not quite that competitive with Gamerscores at least, but I really like checking out what people have accomplished in their games. This is especially true since, at the moment, I'm really not good at getting secret achievements that aren't specifically part of the game or story (like Kameo) or some downer achievement like the losses in DOA4. I also avoid reading the walk-throughs for games just to get achievements. Although I'm now eternally frustrated that I think I missed a mining point in Gun and I'm one away from getting the "Professional Prospector" achievement.

Anyway, what's my point? Oh, even though I do my best to avoid spoilers, I like the fact that there are sites, like Xbox360Achievements and Achieve360Points out there to catalog them. That's a pretty nice thing to have as reference.

Tons of shoes and half-yearly sales

2006-02-13T16:28:00.000-08:00

Over on GAF, Incognito posed a question for the ages: "Are the MS consoles the "Nordstroms" [sic] of gaming?"

Many people far more qualified at making these opinions offered up their thoughts. Sadly, I had only one thought, which of course I posted on the thread:

Would it be really ironic that I'm currently typing this out of the old Nordstrom's corporate headquarters building?

And so all goes full circle.

Valentione's Day

2006-02-10T15:17:00.000-08:00

AI keep forgetting about those special themed holiday events in games. I forgot about the Christmas/Winter event in FFXI even. But it didn't seem to be that much of a big deal, it's usually fun to participate and sometimes (like for Halloween) there are some rewards that are totally worth it.

This time in FFXI, Valentione's Day, creeped up on me. lthough I frankly have little motivation to do anything that requires a time investment, I will do it. I won't hate it, I just don't think I can easily find that kind of time in my life before the event runs out. I definitely want one of the items though.

What color are you?

2006-02-09T22:23:00.000-08:00

Nintendo announced the colorways which will be available for the Nintendo DS Lite at launch (in Japan at least). Except for white I think these are pretty bold color choices for a handheld at launch.

Based on this, I updated my planned purchases list as Ice Blue is going to be my first choice, especially since it almost matches the color of my car. How sad... ha ha.

ps. No pink? For shame.

Multi-user chat over Xbox Live

2006-02-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

One of the most requested things I've seen on the boards, apart from Backwards Compatibility updates, has been adding a multi-user chat "room" to the exiting one-to-one chat on Xbox Live.

When rumors of the update to the Dashboard started circulating a few weeks ago, every few posts was either specifically expressing hope for or requesting the addition of a voice chat feature that would let you have multiple people join in.

Looks like the folks on the Xbox Development Team have noticed the same thing and have addressed why one-to-one chat is the only option available on their Xbox Team blog.

Finding out that the minimum broadband requirements are 64kbps upstream and downstream for all Xbox Live functions and games was a pretty interesting piece of info to come out of it... I know nothing about games networking, but that seems like a pretty small bandwidth requirement and it's a testament to how the networking has been optimized for online considering all the games work pretty well online.

Planned purchases for the next 3 months

2006-02-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

(Yes, I'm listing the backlog too...)

Xbox 360

~~Fight Night Round 3~~	~~Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter~~	~~Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII~~
~~The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion~~	Final Fantasy XI	~~Top Spin 2~~

... and XBLA games, depending on if anything comes out.

PS2

We <3 Katamari

Guitar Hero

PSP

~~Me and My Katamari~~

Splinter Cell Essentials

DS

DS Lite

and

Animal Crossing:
Wild World

~~Tetris DS~~

PGR3 Time Trials

2006-01-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

For the past week I have joined some fellow people on GAF in a series of time trial challenges in PGR3 from a post by kindbudmaster.

I've never done time trials online in any game, even though I've raced online. This was a first as far as something organized and friendly would go. I can't tell you how much fun and frustration I had joining in. Easily topped just about every other online experience I've had so far, and that includes joining the guys for some friendly racing if we happened to be on at the same time.

We've done four rounds so far and it looks they will be more to come. Kindbudmaster has been MIA for 4 days already, so I hope he comes back soon!

Check out WHOAguitarninja's time in Round 1. Last I checked that time is still in the top 10 for Class C on the overall Leaderboards. Check the replay out, I was impressed by the consistently smooth driving around that track, especially that first nightmare-inducing chicane.

Round 1
Nishiguchi Short (Tokyo) with a RUF CTR "Yellow Bird" (Class C)
Best: 53.01 (WHOAguitarninja)
Mine: 56.41

Round 2
Flamingo Straits (Las Vegas) with a Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT (Class A)
Best: 59.36 (Brodequin)
Mine: 1:00.84

Round 3
Park to Tillary (New York) with a Callaway Sledgehammer Twin Turbo (Class B)
Best: 59.36 (Brodequin)
Mine: 2:07.56

Round 4
The Birdcage (London) with a Ferrari Testarossa (Class E)
Best: 1:39.12 (Tie: WHOAguitarninja and Brodequin)
Mine: 1:42.72

We <3 Katamari Damacy checks

2006-01-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

Jumping on this bandwagon, I read via Kotaku, who got it from Boing Boing, that someone made checks with a Katamari Damacy theme.

Fantastic!

I'm definitely going to make my own nerd checks now. The only question is... what to make them of?

PT (Do you need it?)

2006-01-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

After a long, Xbox 360-inspired hiatus I logged back into my normal FFXI character, Arne, just to see what was going on and what was new on the server and on my linkshell, Chocobolicious.

I was shocked to find that in the two months I've been gone some prices have skyrocketed. I didn't check too many things, but once I noticed one thing was off, I started checking things I buy and sell often. It was crazy, things doubled or nearly doubled in price. The positive side is something I make and sell for profit on my server at a very high profit margin just went up 78% in the Jeuno AH.

I didn't know what to do so I hopped on an airship to Windurst to level my Dark Knight past 11. I'm working to get it to at least 25 as a specialized sub for my main class, Red Mage, which is currently at 50. After much muling and buying ingredients for making Pamama au Lait I headed out to Tahrongi Canyon to slowly level up.

I was out there for a while and then saw a Summoner and a Red Mage from the same linkshell battling together against an Akbaba. I just watched them finish their battle and then started to run off to find something else (and easier) to level up on. A few seconds later I got a string of Japanese which included the phrase "PT" and a question mark. Using the sometimes inaccurate auto-translate function I let them know I wanted to be in the party, but that I didn't speak any Japanese. As many FFXI players know, that is usually followed by silence or a misunderstanding that you don't want to be in their party. This time around Hiroge and Ericia invited me. Even though I wanted to go to bed soon, I was happy to be able to go through kills quicker even with some minor EXP loss.

Things went pretty well and we were fighting nearly non-stop. We all tried to work past the language barrier, I even got a flattering comment ("arn, good hunting^^") in English once. After about an hour, they both levelled up and we called it a night not long thereafter, which was good, I needed to go to bed. When we stopped I was about 800 EXP short until the next level. The next night I logged in and zoomed past those 800 to hit level 12. It might be a while before I go back to work on getting to 13.

Xbox.com Community Spotlight

2006-01-24T16:06:00.000-08:00

Something pretty nice happened yesterday. It was in the works for a while and I got notice it was posted onto the site. That is to say, my colleagues and I now have our own special Community Spotlight interview up on Xbox.com.

It talks about what I do for a good part of my job these days. Which is, in a nutshell, to be a gamer and representative for Xbox, Xbox 360 and Windows games in online communities (boards, etc.). It says that in the first line in the Spotlight, so I just repeated myself.

Either way, this is a pretty cool thing to have happen, even if it came as part of my job. I do come across as this overly verbose, utter nerd though. Too late now!