Tag: Xbox 360

EA Sports Cancels NBA Elite 11

EA Sports: it’s in the game…except, you know, when it’s not. One game EA Sports won’t be in — at least in the near future — is basketball. The company has announced that NBA Elite 11, previously delayed until 2011, is flat-out canceled. According to Gamasutra:

CFO Eric Brown confirmed today on the company’s call to investors that the game is actually canceled, although the publisher doesn’t plan to terminate the franchise.

Instead, it’ll be moving development of the brand from EA Black Box to its Florida-based Tiburon studio, as part of a wider reorganization of some of its key franchises’ development with the aim of cost-efficiency.

While the NBA Elite franchise has hit a major bump in the road, 2K Sports’ NBA 2K11 has the floor to itself and has time to build on its excellent base. Do you think EA Tiburon will be able to whip EA Sports’ basketball efforts into shape? Or is NBA Elite destined to be Scottie Pippen to NBA 2K’s Michael Jordan?

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This Week’s Videogame Releases

Leading this week’s video releases is Kinect for Xbox 360. Some of you are still in denial about Microsoft’s motion-control device, but it will surely sell millions. Just accept it and move on. Naturally, a bunch of launch titles are accompanying the hardware launch, but Dance Central is pretty much the only interesting one.

Other notable releases include Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage, Dragon Ball Z: Raging Blast 2, James Bond 007: Goldeneye, James Bond 007: Blood Stone, God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Ys: The Oath in Felghana, and Patapon 3.

Any of you planning to pick up Kinect and/or any new games this week?

Steve Jobs Was Pissed Off When Microsoft Bought Bungie

Former Microsoft vice president Ed Fries told Develop a fantastic story about how Apple CEO Steve Jobs was pissed off when Microsoft acquired Bungie. Apparently His Royal Worshipfulness High Master Steve phoned up Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and unleashed the wrath of Jobs. Here are the details from Fries:

As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called. He was mad at Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we’d just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer.

So, during the day, I got an email from Steve Ballmer asking me to phone Steve Jobs and calm him down about the whole thing. Anyway, we did this deal with Apple where we’d port some PC games to the Macintosh and help Peter Tamte create this company to do it, and I had to go to a Mac developer conference and get on stage and talk about this whole new partnership. It was a pretty strange time.

Man, that conversation must have been awesome. Both Jobs and Ballmer have tempestuous personalities, so it must have taken a lot for Ballmer to back down and ask Fries to assuage Jobs. Let’s play a game and imagine what Jobs said to Ballmer. I’ll go first. In my head Steve said something like this:

Listen you bald-headed f*ck. I don’t care if you’re in charge of Microsoft now. You’ll always be Bill Gates’ b*tch to me and you better do something to make me happy. You just took away the Mac’s best game developer. Seriously. Have you ever played Marathon?!? That’s the best thing Bungie ever did and ever will do. How the f*ck do you take that away from my glorious platform and put it on your stupid-ass game-box, which — by the way — will never go anywhere. I’m going to have fun watching Nintendo and Sony rape your skull on this one.

Your turn!

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This Week’s Videogame Releases

This is probably 2010’s most important week in gaming since WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 — the early pick to win “best writing” awards from every publication and professional organization in the civilized world — comes out this week. You should all buy this game (I’ll even autograph your box!). You want to hear about the other games too? Why?!? Oh…I’ll humor you.

Fable III is a huge exclusive for the Xbox 360 and currently ranked #1 on Amazon’s sales charts. If music is your bag then you’ll want to pick up the new and exciting Rock Band 3. Jedis, ewoks, and gungans alike are anxiously awaiting Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. Activision hopes the kids will get back into skateboarding games with Tony Hawk Shred (not to be confused with Tony Hawk Shrek). The Sims 3 looks like it’ll be the best console version of the franchise yet. Finally, if you’re late to the game, here are two collected editions with DLC and all: Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition and Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition.

SO many great games coming out this week!!! Any of you planning to pick any of ’em up?!?

The First Xbox 360 Kinect Commercial Leaked?

Here are two Xbox 360 Kinect advertisements found on YouTube. The first is allegedly Microsoft’s first commercial for the motion-control product. The second is a longer marketing video that looks like the one shown at E3 2010. Check ’em out and let me know what you think (please)! Big thanks to Timmy for emailing this in!

Coffee Talk #232: Will Kinect for Xbox 360 Be a Mass Success?

Kinect for Xbox 360 is shipping in two weeks and my industry friends can’t stop talking about it. A lot of them are dismissing it, saying that it’s too expensive, the launch titles are crappy, few enthusiast gamers give a damn about motion controls, and it’s simply…

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Kinect for Xbox 360 is shipping in two weeks and my industry friends can’t stop talking about it. A lot of them are dismissing it, saying that it’s too expensive, the launch titles are crappy, few enthusiast gamers give a damn about motion controls, and it’s simply impossible for some people to make Kinect work in their living rooms. I don’t completely disagree with any of those things, but I have a feeling that Kinect is going to sell like crazy. Here are three reasons why:

  1. Kinect has generated more mainstream interest than many enthusiast gamers think. Whether it’s Kudo Tsunoda on Jimmy Fallon or Oprah giving away Kinect units to her audience, the system has gotten ample mainstream attention. Hell, RPadholic N8R’s son wants one and it’s not like he’s on the Internet reading gaming web sites all day (he’s not, right Nate?).
  2. The pre-orders have been strong. Microsoft has been suggesting that Kinect supply could be a problem for the holidays. Some people believe that this is artificial, but the pre-order numbers are there. I was shocked to see that Kinect is #13 on Amazon’s videogame sales charts. This is a $150 product that’s not out for two weeks!
  3. The biggest reason I think Kinect will sell is that Microsoft is throwing a large wad of money at it. Product director Aaron Greenburg mentioned that it will be backed by hundreds of millions of marketing dollars. The word on the street is that between Kinect and Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division will spend $1-billion this holiday season. The sheer amount of marketing should result in hefty sales.

Keep in mind that I’m saying all of this as someone that’s mostly uninterested in Kinect games (of which there are currently two I’m interested in). Most of my industry friends don’t care about Kinect and most of the people I “see” on the Internet don’t care either, but I have a feeling that it’s going to put up some nice numbers this year.

What do you think? Will Kinect be a mass success? Or will the hundreds of millions of marketing dollars be a waste of money?

Microsoft Launches New Xbox.com, Allows PC Avatar Editing

The new Xbox.com is here, complete with an dolly avatar editor. I’ve been playing around with it for a few minutes and it’s pretty neat. If you have time to check out the new Xbox.com — it took me like an hour to finally log in and it’s still kind of wonky — please let me know what you think!