The “big three” pressers are over! Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony strutted their stuff and kicked off E3 2011 with a bang. Which company did best? Kindly vote for your favorite press conference and discuss!
The “big three” pressers are over! Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony strutted their stuff and kicked off E3 2011 with a bang. Which company did best? Kindly vote for your favorite press conference and discuss!
[poll id=”120″]
It’s time for Microsoft’s E3 2011 press conference! Microsoft is the only one of the “Big Three” that hasn’t confirmed new hardware for the show. Will the company counter with some hot games? How will it take Kinect to the next level? You think there’s a chance that there will be a hardware surprise? Follow this live blog and find out!
There are a pair of interesting games coming out this week. First up is Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. I’m looking forward to this action-RPG. It’s made by the peeps at inXile (The Bard’s Tale), a company founded by Interplay OG Brian Fargo. It looks like an evolved version of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance (one of my favorite games last generation). Fighting fans looking for action on the go will want to check out BlazBlue Continuum Shift II. Hardcore fighters raved about the first game and the second looks like it will deliver complexity that most portable fighters lack.
Any of you picking up new games this week?
Activision has officially announced details on its Call of Duty Elite online service. Offering advanced stat tracking and social features, Call of Duty Elite will have a free version and a premium version with a monthly fee. The primary goal of the service (in my opinion, anyway) is to keep Call of Duty gamers away from other shooters by offering “sticky” features. Here are some bullet points from the press release:
This is a brilliant move from Activision and a glimpse at the future of game publishing. The $60 buy-and-bye model is dying. DLC updates — both free and paid — help extend the lifespan of some games, but not others. Selling the socialization of gaming was the obvious next step, but it’s mostly uncharted territory for console game publishers. A unified system that allows you to stay in the game whether you’re on your console, work PC, mobile phone, tablet, etc. is genius for large, established franchises.
What do you think of Call of Duty Elite? Are you interested in the service? Would you be willing to pay for the premium service?
My review of L.A. Noire for Machinima went up last week. Kindly check it out if you have a moment. If you have two moments, please leave a comment over there. Here’s a clip from the review:
Team Bondi did a wonderful job of creating an enjoyable game that takes interactive storytelling to a new level. The production values and graphics are up there with Heavy Rain, but the gameplay is more appealing to longtime gamers. Rockstar fans that were expecting another Grand Theft Auto need to understand that L.A. Noire is a very different type of game. It’s subtle, deliberate, and atmospheric. It’s also just a well-crafted game that offers an atypical type of fun.
L.A. Noire was a big surprise for me. I haven’t enjoyed a Rockstar game this much in a long, long time. The company releases great stuff, but most of it doesn’t click with my personal preferences. I understand that its previous games are great and certainly understand why they’re great, but they’re usually not my kind of thing. L.A. Noire was totally my thing…and I wasn’t expecting it to be. Very cool.
When I first heard about Gotham City Impostors, I was psyched. In my head it combined the multiplayer gameplay of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood with the awesome characters of the Batman universe. I had visions of diving through the Gotham skyline as Nightwing, hot on the trail of Killer Croc.
Then a few of my journalists friends told me more details about the game and I read the press release. On paper, the game sounds like a standard shooter featuring characters “inspired by” Batman and The Joker. Here’s a clip from the press release:
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment today announced Gotham City Impostors, an original download-only first-person shooter where players battle for control of an unhinged Gotham City overrun by impostors inspired by the DC Comics characters Batman and The Joker.
Yeah, that sounds pretty lame. It could very well turn out to be a nice little downloadable game, but a shooter is not what Batman fans want. The “glorified tag” gameplay of ACB sounds perfect for a multiplayer Batman game. The Bat Family’s no-gun policy fits in with that style. Instead it sounds like Gotham City Impostors will be a fairly generic shooter.
What do you think of this game? Will it be a vanilla shooter with the Batman license slapped on? Or will the talented people at Monolith be able to make something cool?
After a huge release last week, there are a handful of interesting games coming out this week. The Nintendo 3DS gets a big franchise and big-boob jiggling in Dead or Alive Dimensions. Dirt 3 should keep racing-game fans happy, though fans of actual dirt might be disappointed. Last, but not least, is a move tie-in — Kung-Fu Panda 2 brings the adorable martial artisan back to consoles, but with some motion-control goodness this time around.
Any of you picking up new games this week?
Here’s a great deal for students: buy a Windows 7 PC ($699 or higher) and get a free 4GB Xbox 360! The offer is good at select retailers and student verification is required. Here are more details from Microsoft’s Kristina Libby:
If you have a .edu email address you can purchase your new PC through one of our participating retailers including Dell.com, HP.com or Microsoft Store. If you don’t have a .edu address or prefer to walk into a store, touch the PCs and test their features, bring your Student ID into Best Buy or any Microsoft Store retail location Check with your chosen retailer for additional specifics they may have in place.
That sounds like a brilliant deal…but I’m sure a free Xbox 360 will cause some students to get lower grades. Ha!
Do any of you qualify for this deal? Are you going to take advantage of it?
Microsoft has started rolling out an update for its Xbox 360 consoles. The update brings PayPal support and an auto-standby feature. It is being deployed on a rolling basis, so your console might not be able to download the new software right away. Here’s more from Larry the marketing guy:
I am happy to announce that, as a part of a new Xbox 360 System Update, we’re expanding our integration with PayPal to allow U.S. and international Xbox Live users to make purchases on their Xbox 360 consoles with their PayPal accounts.* Once you’ve linked your PayPal account to your Xbox Live account on Xbox.com, you’ll be off and running to use it as a billing option, allowing you to buy content such as Microsoft Points, Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and Games on Demand titles.
We are rolling out the Xbox 360 System Update gradually to all Xbox Live users starting today and throughout the next couple weeks to ensure a high quality deployment. Just like any other update to our service, you will know you’ve received it when you turn on your Xbox 360 console, connect to Xbox Live and receive a notification to download the update. It’s important to note that it may take a few days to make its way around the globe. Thanks for your patience if you don’t get it right away!
This particular update will also bring an auto-standby feature that places your console on standby if it’s idle for more than one hour, helping to reduce power consumption. This feature will be automatically enabled after you download the update. You can change this setting in the System Settings on your console.
Sadly, my Xbox 360 wasn’t able to grab the update just yet. I’m hoping that the combination of the update and bombarding my machine with my psychic powers will result in a free 250GB Xbox 360 Slim.
How about you ladies and gents? Are you able to snag the update? Are you going to use PayPal as your Xbox 360 payment method?
Are you one of the lucky Xbox 360 owners with a system that’s incompatible with the new XGD3 disc format? The new format allows for an additional 1GB of disc storage and helps Microsoft combat piracy. It’s also incompatible with a small number of Xbox 360 units already on the market.
If you have an incompatible system then Microsoft will hook you up with a 250GB Xbox 360 Slim and one year of Xbox Live service. The compensation was discovered by a Reddit user and confirmed by Microsoft.
Now please excuse me as I’m going to stare really hard at my Xbox 360 and try to make incompatible through my mutant powers.
