Xbox 360 development is going full tilt in 2008, with dozens upon dozens of promising titles seeing release. Next-Gen takes a look at a few of the most anticipated games of the coming year, complete with three-month sales estimates.
The online survey, which sampled an unnamed number of respondents ages 18-49, found that 43 percent of Americans are watching more DVDs. Another 26 percent say they are spending more time playing video games.
The Orange Box makes most games seem shallow. Could it have something to do with it containing five frickin’ games? Hmm — maybe that’s it. So with a ton of things to talk about, we contacted Seattle-based developer Valve for a nice long chat. Seeing as how this Box has so many games, it’d be pretty hard to interview just one person at Valve. So we made this a team effort and talked to Marketing Director Doug Lombardi, Episode Two Lead David Speyrer, Portal Level Designer Kim Swift, and Programmer/Designer Robin Walker. Whew! (more…)
A violent new video game which is set in a school and encourages players to act out assaults on pupils and teachers has been condemned by anti-bullying campaigners and teaching unions.
The game, called Bully, features a shaven-headed pupil who torments fellow students and teachers at his school. (more…)
Since it’s launch in Fall of 2005 Xbox 360 systems all over the world have had major hardware failure problems resulting in millions of costumers having to mail their Xbox back to Microsoft. No one really knows what has been causing these problems since the official lines never divulged the specific problems or rates of failure. All a person has to do is to press the power button on their Xbox 360 and there is a chance that it will just up and fail to boot up and shine the “Red Rings of Death”. Microsoft decided to extent the warrantee for the Xbox 360 but the cloud of fear and uncertainly still hang around the game system.
HD is coming in a lot of forms these days, but ZDNet’s George Ou thinks some of them — like Apple TV, Xbox live Marketplace, ABC.com streaming and cable VOD — don’t count. Sure all of these sources are HD resolution, but George’s argument is that due to overcompression and low bitrates, they don’t compare with 1080p upconverted SD DVDs, much less Blu-ray or HD DVD. (more…)
Activision announced today that Xbox Live will host the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - Rock Your Party Weekend, a special event happening the weekend of the big game. Below is the press release with the announcement: (more…)
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that all Xbox Live members (Gold and Silver) around the world would have access to a full Xbox Live Arcade game to download free of charge as a compensation for the issues the service experienced during the holiday break.
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Analysts on average expect Microsoft to report earnings of 46 cents a share, on $15.9 billion in revenue for the period ended in December. When Microsoft reported its first-quarter results in October, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell announced that the company was “slightly ahead of where we want to be.” At that time, Microsoft raised its full year guidance for profit and sales. Highlights of next week’s earnings report should include an update on Vista, the latest version of the company’s Windows software, and on newer businesses such as online services and sales of the Xbox video game console during the holiday season.Bear Stearns analyst John DiFucci wrote in a note to clients that Microsoft had shipped 17.7 million Xbox consoles as of December 31.
Late Thursday, the NPD Group reported that 1.26 million Xbox consoles were sold during December, coming in ahead of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 but behind Nintendo’s Wii.
Today’s NPD sales numbers reveal that Bungie’s Halo 3 was the best selling game in the United States in 2007, with a whopping 4.82 million copies sold. Nipping at Master Chief’s heels was Nintendo’s own Wii Play. It sold through a staggering 4.12 million units to the masses.