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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Ah yes. The weekend. That special time away from the daily grind of the work week where you can get away from the ol’ 9 to 5 job and hang out online with friends for a good game of Gears of War 2. At least that’s the way it should have been for Xbox 360 owners this weekend. Unfortunately, the service had other ideas.

Starting late Thursday night and lasting through last night, the Xbox LIVE service started suffering from sporadic shutdowns, disconnecting thousands of gamers at random intervals. And while the Microsoft engineers were hard at work to get everything up and running again, every time things seemed fixed, the disconnects started back up again.
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To show its continued support for Burnout Paradise through 2009, developer Criterion revealed yet another downloadable content pack in the works for the game today. Two weeks ago the company announced the Burnout Paradise Party Pack and last week the Burnout Paradise Legendary Cars Pack was detailed. This week Criterion reveals the Burnout Paradise Toy Cars Pack, offering players special edition Burnout collectibles.

Details on this unique DLC will be released soon on www.criteriongames.com but for now you can take a look at the screenshot on the left. The new DLC packs will be released sometime in Spring 2009.

Various luminaries in the video game industry are voicing “cautious optimism” when it comes to the holiday shopping season. Speaking at the BMO Capital Conference in New York yesterday, folks like Mindy Mount, CFO of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, are saying that the industry is looking solid going into the holiday shopping season. Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America said during the conference that is would cut the price of the Wii to $250 and said he was “very optimistic.” Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, said video games are selling well at places like Wal-Mart and GameStop. He predicts a 20 percent increase in overall sales for 2008 and for 2009 to be a very good year.

Strauss Zelnick, executive chairman of Take-Two Interactive Software, said overall holiday sales do not look very promising for companies that who do not have huge hits on the shelves. Naturally, he is referring to his own company. Finally EA Sports president Peter Moore is hoping that consumers come out to buy games. He has “cautious optimism” that everything is going to be okay.

If October’s hardware and software sales are any indication, then the video game industry will be in the black. Of course that all depends on consumer confidence; will Americans make the big purchases or will they head for the bargain bin to save some cash in these trying times. We will let you know in early December as the first numbers roll in from NPD Group.

Source: Reuters

The Xbox 360 price cut may not be helping Microsoft beat the juggernaut that is the Wii, but it is at least giving the company the power to take Sony’s PS3 to the woodshed. According to NDP sales data for the month of Oct., the Wii remained the top selling console with 803, 000 units, with the DS moving 491, 000 units. The Wii has sold more than 13 million units since its release in November of 2006. But the real story for the month was the Xbox 360 moving 371, 000 units, beating out the PlayStation 3 (190, 000), PlayStation 2 (136, 000) and even the PlayStation Portable (193, 000).

Of course, both Sony and Microsoft cannot seem to catch up with the Wii’s monthly sales, leaving both to fight over the scraps from the master’s table. That could change this holiday season, assuming consumer confidence is there in light of economic uncertainty here and aboard. Despite a down turn in other sectors in our economy, hardware sales were up a modest 5 percent to $494.7 million, from the same period a year ago.

It seems like a lot of 360 owners got a rude awakening this week, as various forums were lit up with reports of sweeping bans from Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE service. While most of the posters seemed stunned by the action, a common thread from many of these posters involved them having played “backup copies” or “early copies” of games like Gears of War 2, and using modified 360s to do so.

Well, if these guys had any doubts as to why they were banned, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, decided to clear things up over at his official blog:
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gamerDNA.com, a social platform that allows people to build and express their unique gaming identity, announced today that it will celebrate the launch of Gears of War 2 on November 7th with a contest giving fans a chance to win a huge 8’ x 5’ Gears of War 2 banner that features main character Marcus Fenix and is signed by the Gears of War 2 development team. To enter to win, players must reach a 195 GamerScore in Gears of War 2 by 11:59pm PST on November 17th. On November 18th, gamerDNA will draw the grand prize winner.

To participate, players must register for an account at gamerDNA.com and add their Xbox Live account name to the “AKA” section of the gamerDNA panel. After reaching a GamerScore of at least 195 and signing into Xbox Live between November 7th at 12:00am PST and November 17th 11:59pm PST, players will be entered to win the grand prize. Current gamerDNA.com members will be automatically entered into the contest (and will just be required to have their Xbox Live name in the “AKA” section of their gamerDNA panel and to reach a 195 GamerScore in Gears of War 2). Entrants must be at least 18 years old.

More at www.gamerDNA.com.