Tag Archives: microsoft

5 MIA Games We Hope to See at E3 2012

Posted By: Michael Lacerna In: Blog On May 12th 2012

5 MIA Games We Hope to See at E3 2012

E3 is less than a month away, and I’m already salivating at the thought of all the new games that I’ll get to see and play. It’s an exciting time for the industry: we’re on the cusp of a new generation of consoles, and there’s lots of high profile, triple-A titles scheduled to come out this Fall… but while I’m sure everyone is excited to see more of Assassin’s Creed III, Resident Evil 6, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, there are a handful of lower key, oft-rumored, unannounced, or un-localized games that I’m hoping will make an appearance at this year’s E3 as well.

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Humpday Bump: Angry German Edition

Posted By: Dave Bast In: Gaming News On May 2nd 2012

Humpday Bump: Angry German Edition

On Wednesdays I spend my time looking for a digital buffet of gaming goodies – I post them here on the Humpday Bump.

Today’s bump features the angry antics of the German court, and their decision to pretty much prohibit Microsoft from selling anymore Xbox 360’s or copies of Windows 7. It seems more like a haughty threat more than anything else, apparently a U.S. court has granted an injunction in the matter so until this is all over Microsoft is free to sell whatever products it likes.

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No Xbox “720” at E3 this Year

Posted By: Dave Bast In: Console News, Gaming News, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 On March 16th 2012

No Xbox “720” at E3 this Year

Well phooey; it looks as Microsoft won’t be unveiling any information about the next-gen console that everyone assumes is in the works. According to Venture Beat, not only will there be no new information at E3, they’ve also stated that there will not be any information regarding new Xbox hardware “anytime soon.” This isn’t too surprising as rumors of longer console cycles have been floating around now for a few years. Hopefully the extra time spent on new hardware will prevent millions of ruined Christmases and Birthdays due to red rings of death.

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Bargain Bin Slumming: The Best Xbox 360 Games for $10 or Less

Posted By: Michael Lacerna In: Blog, Console News, Xbox 360 On January 31st 2012

Bargain Bin Slumming: The Best Xbox 360 Games for $10 or Less

In tough economic times like these, it’s not unwise to tighten your belt and cut your expenditures down to the bare necessities. Of course, what qualifies as a “necessity” is open to interpretation: while some (sane) people make paying the rent or making sure they have food to eat their top priority, my personal need to be entertained overrides any basic survival instincts. I am an 20-something American male dammit, and society demands that I engage in blind, insatiable materialism and media consumption. As worrying as the thoughts of going hungry or bankrupt are, my hands shake like a withdrawing drug addict at the thought of not being able to afford more games.

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RUMOR: Say Good Riddance to Microsoft Points

Posted By: Michael Lacerna In: Console News, Gaming News, Xbox 360 On January 25th 2012

RUMOR: Say Good Riddance to Microsoft Points

Tired of having to convert your money into Microsoft Points every time you buy something off of XBLA? Sick of always having 40 or 80 points left over after buying a sale item, and having absolutely nothing worthwhile to use them on? Well, these annoyances may be a thing of the past, as Microsoft is rumored to be phasing out their version of Itchy and Scratchy Dollars in favor of simply allowing users to pay for downloads directly.

According to the rumor, Microsoft is phasing out the use of Microsoft Points in favor of real currency in order to create parity between the Windows Mobile app store, the Zune marketplace, and Xbox Live. Mobile app developers have allegedly already been told to plan their future pricing strategies around real money MSRP’s instead of points, and Microsoft is supposedly going to phase out the old points system before the end of the year.

Now, obviously Microsoft is denying all this at this point, but the change would make sense: the whole points system makes XBLA seem anachronistic when compared to the more streamlined check-outs available on Steam and PSN since you don’t have to convert your money into points, and I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve had to buy $10 worth of Microsoft Points (800 MSP)  in order to buy a game that was on sale for 500 or 600 MSP. I think Xbox Live would benefit as a whole if Microsoft got rid of their pointless nickel-and-dime-ing MS Points scheme and simply let users make purchases with real money like, y’know, every single other website in the universe.*

(*except for the Wii online shop, but seriously, who uses that anymore? I think even Nintendo forgot that it exists.)

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Microsoft loosens a restriction on Indie Games

Posted By: Rian Quenlin In: Gaming News On January 5th 2012

Microsoft loosens a restriction on Indie Games

Indie game development on the 360 had one problem according to the developers, and that was that all games over 50MB in size had a price of 240 or 400 Microsoft points. This resulted in developers doing everything they could to reduce the filesize of the game to have it worth 80. This could result in cutting content, compressing the quality of graphics, or removing music.

I’m not much of a developer, but I can tell you that even simple games like Touhou, VVVVVV, or Super Meat Boy can blame their filesizes (which numbers well into the hundreds for Touhou and SMB) on the music. Poor compression of graphics can also be blamed, especially if your engine cannot play nice with all filetypes.

Microsoft has greatly reduced this restriction, by increasing this cap from 50MB to 150MB. In addition, the number of games a developer can have on the marketplace has gone from 10 to 20.

This is a good move, but I still find it completely unnacceptable that they can say “Go over this we make you charge a pittance for it”, which greatly harms the indie game industry. 20 years ago, if you told someone they had 2MB to work with, they would scoff and say “Who would need TWO megabytes?”, nowadays it’s not unusual to have a single track on the OST to be 5, 10, or even 15 megabytes in its size. Whenever technology of that era can be used on modern consoles or not remains unknown to me.

I still find it weird people would make such a big deal over $2 on a game’s pricetag. Most indie games I’ve played got for around 1000 yen.

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