Crispy Gamer News

It’s official. After months of buildup, hype, pomp, and circumstance, Xbox owners are finally getting their hands on the “New Xbox Experience”. At 5:00a EST, Microsoft opened the flood gates and 360 owners were greeted to a mandatory system update when they started up their consoles. So, how smooth was the launch? We’ll see over the next few days and weeks, but in the meantime, I can at least share my own “New Xbox Experience”.

Well, like many of the gaming masses, this morning was my first solo run at the NXE. Sure, a number of people managed to get in some early access, courtesy of a consumer survey from Microsoft a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t one ‘em. So at 5am on the nose, I booted up my 360 and, sure enough, the update was ready for me. The download process was much faster than I expected, as apparently MS had already done a lot of the heavy lifting with earlier updates. From start to finish, the whole thing only took about two minutes.
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Ubisoft was upbeat about the video game industry, and about future plans for the company today, as CEO Yves Guillemot addressed an audience of potential investors at BMO Capital Markets’ 16th Annual Interactive Entertainment Conference.

Guillemot opened up the discussion talking up Ubi’s video game adaptation of James Cameron’s upcoming epic, Avatar. While no release date was given, or even hinted at, Guillemot was extremely high on the property, calling the film “the best movie ever and, and we expect it to be one of the most impressive box office” for 2009.
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Avatar: The Last Airbender - Into the Inferno has shipped to retail outlets in North America. Based on the popular animated Nickelodeon television series, Avatar: The Last Airbender (which recently enjoyed its final episode), takes players into the Fire Nation on a journey to face the Fire Lord and end a 100 year war.

Playing as one of their favorite characters from the show, players will perform martial arts moves, as well as bend all four elements - Earth, Fire, Water and Air - to help them in their journey. Cinematic air battles will take place as players soar through the sky on gliders in new flying levels. The Nintendo DS version of the game will also introduce a brand new and unique “bobble head” style of animation previously seen in Nickelodeon’s special Avatar series of animated shorts.

Look for it in stores beginning today.

Why Nickelodeon, why? As someone who has watched every last episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, today’s announcement that the company is working on a watered down MMO combat game is a bit disconcerting. Why? Because talk in my circles about an Avatar MMO have been frequent and stimulating. But instead of getting the robust MMO experience I’d imagined from such a game, it looks like fans of the show will get a watered down arena combat game. Here’s some free advice for developers making games for kids: they can handle decent, deep and engaging gameplay.

The game, Avatar: Legends of the Arena, will serve as a prequel story to the events in the series, letting players create their own Avatar character and test their skills against players from around the world in 3D online arenas. Each game level will introduce new content, challenges, custom character outfits and powers on an ongoing basis. A beta version of the game is being unveiled today at Comic-Con in San Diego.

The game will be rolled out in 81 markets in ten languages, including the United States, United
Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India, Southeast Asia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Korea, Japan, Israel, Holland, Northern Belgium, Germany, Brazil, and Portugal. A total of 77 countries will launch the game on Sept. 15, with the remaining markets launching shortly thereafter.

The game is part of an initiative to promote the continuing re-runs of the series on Nicktoons Network, the July 29th release of the Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 3: Fire - Volume 4 DVD and the upcoming Avatar live action film being handled by M. Night Shyamalan, and the Avatar The Last Airbender: Into the Inferno video game from THQ.

Linden Lab and IBM said this morning that they have successfully demonstrated virtual world interoperability by teleporting avatars between the Second Life Preview Grid and an OpenSim virtual world server. The joint development project represents an industry first of a quantifiable milestone for virtual world interconnectivity.

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