By now you have all heard the rumours that Microsoft are going to drop the Xbox 360 Version 2 bomb sometime this week. The leaked pics show a clearly visible HDMI port below the the regular video out connection. Also rumoured are an increased hard drive (120gb) and all sorts of new TV based services such as VOD and IPTV.
This is good stuff especially if they are serious about expanding the box to have more TV features. HDMI is only important if you have 1080p and even then you can use a VGA cable. I see the inclusion of HDMI as more of a tick on the back of the box and a counter to Sony rather than a vital need for the system.
All this is also rumoured to coincide with the new CPU chip which should run cooler but no faster. While some people have reported over heating I have never had this problem. What I would like to see is a far quieter DVD drive and that’s a fairly basic component to change compared to a new chip.
However you look at this it’s only a very minor change and the games will still all play the same, it would seem MS are trying to expand the capabilities of the box while not breaking compatibility with v1 systems. If the IPTV is any good (ie available in the UK with UK content) then it will be a simple HDD upgrade to make the jump for existing users.
These are my Top 5 games on any platform this year. Being a transition year between console generations has been tougher than I expected on the release cycle. Early 2006 and summer 2006 were particularly sparse for releases, leading to a high number of titles launching in the Christmas season.
On a personal note 2006 was a year where I played very little between the months of January and May. Finishing up that degree seems so long ago but it involved going cold turkey for several months to get it done. With new releases on the level I mentioned this resulted in only needing to catch up on a small number of titles luckily enough.
This list is composed of games released in 2006 which I played, so anything which I didn’t spend time with is not included. I don’t see this as a problem as games which I don’t choose to play wouldn’t have made this by their very nature anyway. Argue all you like by the lack of Zelda Twilight Princess but it simply didn’t move the genre forward and ultimately was the reason for me not getting a Wii.
The two games perched far and away at the top of this list did move their respective genres forward. Both Gears of War and Oblivion are huge technical and creative achievements that have set the bar obscenely high for what games can do. If you play any two games this year it must be these.
I have been milking Gears of War all weekend. Got through the entire campaign in several long sittings and enjoyed every second of it (apart from the odd Berserker encounter ;-)). Strangely for me as soon as I was done I jumped right back into it, upped the difficulty and joined a co-op as Dom. The fact that I wanted to play this again straight away unlike anything else should speak for itself.
Oh and by the way if your going to play single player you may as well do so by just starting a new co-op game. This way as you are going through the game other players can jump in and help you out. You retain the saved progress and it might help you in some of the tougher fights.
Finally took the plunge and bought an Xbox 360 this week. I was toing and froing about it but it basically came down to the fact that Gears of War is out this week and now I can afford to run the console.
Had a good weekend of play on PGR3 which came bundled and as I’m sure all 360 owners will agree Xbox Live is by far the highlight of the system. It’s the simplicity of playing quick games, joining up with your friends and chatting to them through the headset that makes all the difference.
If you want to add me to your friends list my tag is j0hn00 or just send me yours in the comments or by email and we will hook up online. On Friday I will be able to chainsaw you in the face :-).
It’s awesome. Great graphics, cool gameplay and one hell of a kick ass chainsaw. Only had time to squeeze in 15 minutes on a 4 vs 4 team deathmatch but I got a really good idea of how it feels and plays. It’s very polished all round and is definitely looking like the kind of system seller Microsoft were after this Christmas.
Not sure if I will have time tonight but I am gonna try and get back down to the bullring later and put some more time in. I would have really liked to try out single player but the deathmatch will have to do for now - in all its fantastic bloody glory.
Anyone in Birmingham tomorrow or this weekend be sure to check out the Xbox 360 demos happening at the bullring. I’m definitely going to check it out tomorrow, can’t wait to play some Gears of War in my lunch break!
It doesn’t matter how powerful your PC is, Just Cause will never look as good as it does on the Xbox 360. Just take a look at the video I posted to YouTube below:
It’s almost as if all the shadows and HDR effects have been ripped out of the game. Why short change PC players like this? The option to enable the features should at least be available to those will powerful enough hardware. Added to this the lack of native widescreen support makes this look more and more like a direct port on the Xbox (not 360) version. Bad move Eidos, haven’t you ever heard of XNA?
Apart from TV’s absense over the last few weeks there have also been a distinct lack of games. The games industry is the worst offender for neglecting summer even when a large number of their customers are on their holidays looking for something to burn time on.
At the start of this summer it was a great oppertunity for me to catch up on some of things I missed over the last year. I nailed Oblivion, spent too much time with Civ4, finished Halo 2 at last and got back into Guitar Hero (expert mode baby!) after a long time away. All those weeks ago I didn’t think I would run out of things to play but I have and it’s very weird feeling after being so behind all year.
One look towards the Christmas schedule reveals a mass of games waiting to be played but all coming out within weeks of each other. Lets see what kind of ridiculous list I can come up with:
This is greatnews coming from Microsoft today. Indie developers are going to be given the chance to make their own games for the 360 in an official capacity. We all know the vibrant homebrew scene on the original Xbox led to some awesome apps but this will be the time Microsoft officially recognise it.
From the announcement it seems as though developers will use the SDK to develop and then submit the games online where they can be downloaded. What I don’t understand is how restricted will this be. If ported a SNES emulator over to the 360 for instance would it be blocked by MS? Is it even possible to do this in the first place?
There are a lot on unanswered questions but if Moore really wants this to be the ‘YouTube for games’ then they will have to lower some of the restrictions planned.
Well we just had a raftofannouncements on the future of Half-Life from Valve. It includes the return of Team Fortress 2 and the simultaneous release of Episode 2 on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It’s interesting for such a PC focused developer to suddenly bring their next gen console ports into the same release schedule as their main platform. Also, the episodic nature of the series means that it is best delivered on Steam or Xbox Live but as of yet the PS3 does not have a firm infrastructure to do this.
With this as the case I highly doubt we will be seeing a downloadable version of Episode 2 on the PS3 on launch day due to the untested and unproven nature of Sony’s online service. Instead we would only see a retail release at a budget price (ala Episode 1) making it the cheapest PS3 game around.
With the extension of support to these other platforms and the addition of TF2 and Portal (crazy Prey style game) to Valve’s development schedule I can definitely see Episode 2 slipping into 2007. I hope they prove me wrong but as it has been proven in the past Valve will keep working till it’s done and all this extra work can’t help. Wish I could start preloading now.
![Futurama - The Beast with a Billion Backs [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511PW90lDhL._SL75_.jpg "Futurama - The Beast with a Billion Backs [2008]")
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