Inside every horror filmmaker lurks a budding comedian struggling to claw its way out, showering the audience with the goo inside. At least that's Microsoft's hope, as this week the company tapped a handful of directors, known for creeping us out in films like Hard Candy and Friday the 13th, to create a set of freely downloadable comedy shorts for release globally this fall over Xbox Live to coincide with the service's major facelift.
The brainchild of Slither's James Gunn and Peter Safran of Scary Movie infamy, the film series has a number of notable directors on board, including James Wan (Saw), David Slade (30 Days of Night), Lucky McKee (The Woods), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). With each itching to trade in their bloody hatchets for hilarious, madcap antics, with now look forward to the filmmakers' unique take on what promises to be sidesplitting comedy.
Microsoft's struggling Games For Windows Live service, which promised an Xbox Live like online experience with voice chat, unified friend lists, and cross-platform play between PC and console, is about to shrug off its chief criticism: cost. MS announced today that it is ending the XBL-style tiered pricing structure – which put a year of Gold membership at $49.99 – and making the service free for all users.
The change is effective immediately, affecting all current GFW Live titles (such as Halo 2 and Shadowrun) as well as future releases. MS is also set to expand the service through a GFW Live Marketplace, due this fall. Like the XBL Marketplace, the PC-centric store will offer free and paid downloadable content, demos, and trailers (is this PC Live Arcade?)
In addition to these announcements, MS is working to make the GFW Live interface "much more PC friendly" (read: not like the Xbox 360's now deprecated "Blades" interface) along with reducing the technical requirements for developers. One criticism of the interface from the development camp has been that it must be built into every GFW title, rather than a stand-alone client such as Steam.
The deafening din of a million, argumentative keystrokes. Silenced. The endless wave of hyperbolic, hyperactive hype. Held back. The battle of technology, software and back-of-the-box bullet points. Over. At last, the console wars can draw to a close, the vision of its victor burning bright in our minds and hearts as it crushes off-white shells beneath its monolithic frame. Here is the "ultimate proof" that Sony is winning: A CNBC business reporter and Los Angeles Emmy award winner, Jane Wells, has a son who totally ditched his 360 for a PSTriple.
Now now, don't discount the 16-year old boy's prescient abilities -- Mom writes he "tells me the latest trend three months before I read about it in the media." An avid Xbox fan, trend watcher Jane Wells Jr. (not his real name) decided to trade in his cherished system for a PlayStation 3, shortly after hearing about a little game called Metal Gear Solid 4 in Sony's E3 press conference. Sony's 2008 E3 press conference.
Following this discovery, not to mention news of other exclusive titles and "the awesomeness of Blu-ray," he "promptly packed up his Xbox 360 and all his games and went down to Game Stop to trade them in." And that about wraps it up for Microsoft and Nintendo. Our biggest regret in all this? Not telling our mom about that time we sold our PlayStation to fund the purchase of best console ever, the Dreamcast. We could have made a difference.
The announcement of Netflix for the Xbox 360 was certainly one of the major highlights of Microsoft's press conference. Inside Xbox has a video, featuring Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, walking through how Netflx will work on the New Xbox Experience. The standard definition movies seem to load and begin streaming instantly. This is a feature we imagine many Xbox Live members, who are also Netflix subscribers, will be taking full advantage of later this year.
Go! Go! Break Steady is a rhythm puzzle game set against the backdrop of an alternate WWII– er, actually it's a breakdancing themed puzzler from indie dev Little Boy Games. We first checked out this XNA-to-XBLA success story at GDC '08. You can pop and/or lock to your heart's content for 800 MS points ($10). If you don't care for the trial game, you can always use the $10 to support your local youth center, which was likely saved by breakdancers in the '80s.
Some would say Geometry Wars Retro Evolved was Xbox 360's best launch game -- it beat early hyped games like Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2, and Kameo to win the heart of 360 early adopters, despite the fact that it was 2D and a cheap XBLA version of a game that had previously been included with Project Gotham Racing 2. It held the record for a long time as the system's most-downloaded game, and that title was well-deserved, considering that a lot of $60 games haven't held a candle to the kind of frantic fun you can find pushing that little red ship around the board.
Now Bizarre Creations is attempting to follow up with Geometry Wars 2, and after our playthrough at E3, we're sold. Not only has the developer filled out the game with multiplayer and co-op modes, but Bizarre has figured out a way to make the super simple, yet extremely fun gameplay go deeper than ever before.
We had a lot of fun playing Fable 2 last night (more on that in a bit), so we were disappointed when we heard from several Lionhead staffers that the game's main story would take most around 12 hours to complete. It's not that we thought we were getting ripped off, after last night we just hoping the answer would be a little closer to a hojillion.
Also, keep in mind: That's just for the main story. That's not figuring in the time you'll spend gambling, romancing, trying to get fat and all the other side quests that make Fable so Fabley.
After weeks of speculation regarding their new project, Bungie just updated their site with the sobering news that plans to announce the game at E3 "were just changed by [its] publisher." We can only assume that that publisher is none other than Microsoft Game Studios; if so, it's certainly not a promising sign for the newly freed Bungie's publishing relationship with former parent company Microsoft.
We've put requests into Bungie and Microsoft. Read Bungie pres Harold Ryan's message after the break. (Note there's no mention of the publisher; looks like they want to keep it clean).
[Update: We just heard back from Bungie's Luke "Luke Smith" Smith who tells us, "We still have an exclusive publishing agreement with Microsoft, as we confirmed when we announced the split last year. That arrangement has not changed." So, there you have it. No word back from the Big M. Update 2: Luke's keeping busy. He left two comments on NeoGAF (here and here) not only assuring skeptics that this was in fact not a part of the game's marketing plan ("not our style") and that Bungie's publisher is, indeed, Microsoft.
Update 3: Those sleuths at X3F have noticed a sort of reversal in Bungie's teasing: references to the superintendent in Halo 3 have been removed. Update 4: We interviewed Microsoft Game Studio's Phil Spencer earlier this afternoon, just before this news broke, but conveniently we had already asked him about the absence of Bungie's game at the Microsoft press conference. Read his comments here.
Eat it, Microsoft bingo! With six out of our 24 predictions for Nintendo's E3 press conference coming true, we wiped the floor with your paltry five correct predictions from Microsoft's conference. Of course, the Microsoft results don't count all the confirmed MS news that leaked out outside the press conference. And of course, both bingo games utterly failed to get the five in a row that's traditionally considered a win. But who cares? We're number one! We're number one!
If Halo Wars' absence from Microsoft's E3 keynote left you blue, you're likely in the right frame of mind to enjoy a new gameplay video of Ensemble's tactical take on the Halo universe set upon a descriptively titled "Ice Level."
Marvel as Spartans rain down MAC Cannon devastation from above. Be astounded as good guys gather resources, and then spend them. Be astonished as you forget to care about Halo Wars well before the game's early 2009 release.
We really don't care for those flimsy, frilly faceplates, but we think we've finally discovered one with some redeeming qualities. Glimpsed by one of the whiteboard cameras at Microsoft's E3 press conference and consequently by everyone in attendance, the unsanctioned, Joystiq-branded Xbox 360 faceplate has been a source of great mystery for those who spend their days posting inconsequential filler insightful commentary on this very website.
Is it real? Who made it? Why would they go through that sort of effort? Is it all just an elaborate marketing ploy? And most importantly, where can we get one? We hope to find the answers -- and the faceplate itself -- sometime before the week is out. It's not like we have anything better to do.
Ohhhh, you thought we all won the Microsoft co-op prediction bingo game? Nope, we're all failures. See, the rules were that the things on the card had to be mentioned during the press conference and, although many things on here came to fruition, they didn't fall within the rules of the game. Feel free to play along with Nintendo and Sony tomorrow. After the break we've added links for boxes crossed off and added another card with all pre-conference items crossed off as well -- bad news, we're still all losers.
Thanks to our friends at Button Bandits for noticing that the Xbox Live Primetime game show channel (revealed earlier today at Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference) will be launching only in North America, France, Germany and the U.K., according to a press release. The limited rollout could be due to licensing restrictions for Endermol's game shows, or it could be to simply try the service out in a limited release before kicking it to the larger world.
Want to add a little zing to the plain ol' white and black Xbox 360 color scheme? A Microsoft web page reveals a new limited edition red and black Xbox 360 controller coming on Sept. 30, 2008. The standard wireless controller will come with a matching red rechargeable battery and a play and charge kit for $64.99 (a $5 savings over purchasing them seperately!). We have no idea why Microsoft would reveal a new color so long before the controller is set to be available, but it's release is awfully close to the newly-revealed Gears of War 2 release date of Sept. 9 Nov. 7 [Update: Not sure how I made that ridiculous error. Jet lag, I suppose]. Hmmm ...
[Thanks, Scott]
Update: The Xbox press site also has images from a green version of the controller (shown below the jump along with a higher-res version of the red one). No information about this version, which is not even mentioned in the accompanying press release. [Thanks, jdkay20]
If you're looking for the unabridged version in all its glory, look no further than our liveblog with our fine friends at Engadget. If you're afflicted with crippling bouts of ADHD like we are and just want the meaty (beating, bloody) heart of the announcement highlights, please direct your eyeballs further down this post and after the break:
