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Castlevania To Break Live Arcade 50 MB Limit
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Retro, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace,
When Microsoft announced that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night would be heading to the Xbox Live Marketplace, gamers were concerned that the production values of the game, most notably the lush soundtrack, would have to be compromised for the release in order to fit the game within the Live service’s strict 50 MB limit for Arcade downloads. Gamespot was able to confirm with Konami that they were able to get an exception to the rule to bring the console game to Live Arcade intact. Gamespot also confirmed with Greg Canessa, Live Arcade group manager, that while the company would issue exceptions from time to time to the 50 MB limit, the majority of Live Arcade games will still have to fit within the size restrictions. Microsoft’s size limitations exist to open Live Arcade titles to the widest audience and for portability on memory cards, and Konami’s exception to the rule should not change that.
Read More 
| Gamespot
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New Gears Of War Maps, Patch Coming
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Third Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace,
Epic will be offering two new free multiplayer maps along with a software patch for Gears of War in the upcoming days. First, on January 9, a software update for the game will be made available. According to a posting from Mark Rein on the Gears forums, the following changes will be made:
- Fixed aspect ratio distortion when using VGA cable with 4:3 displays at resolutions higher than 640x480
- Fixed voice issue with new players joining Player Match games in progress
- Players can now get the Achievement for “Dish Best Served Cold” when using Troika turret to kill RAAM
- Fixed rare situation where host could loop countdown and never start match
- Fixed rare situation where players could get stuck after chainsawing in multiplayer
- Reduced Grenade Tag melee distance
- Enabled “Strict” NAT check on host to prevent possible connection issues
- Optimized server browser queries to return results more quickly and prevent scroll bars from hiding quality of service icons
- Reduced number of possible revives in Execution to match Warzone
- Removed host name from Ranked match server browser
- Disabled security cameras in Ranked matches
- Ranked matches now require balanced teams (3v3 or 4v4)
- Increased penalty for quitting a Ranked match to -50 points
- Added additional cheat detection code
- Additional housekeeping updates
In addition, January 10th will bring two new multiplayer maps, Raven Down and Old Bones. According to John Porcaro at Microsoft’s Gamerscoreblog, the map downloads will be free, thanks to a sponsorship from the Discovery Channel. Gamerscoreblog has descriptions of the maps as well as four screenshots of the new content.
Read More | Gamerscoreblog
More Doom Titles Leaked For Xbox 360
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: First Person Shooters, Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace,
Siliconera has pored through the ESRB online rating database again, and this time it looks like a couple of potential Xbox 360 Live Arcade releases have leaked. The database is listing Final Doom and Ultimate Doom as “M” rated titles for the Xbox 360. With Doom standing as one of the few Arcade titles with strong online play, it would seem to make sense to take advantage of all the extra content available from the franchise.
Read More | Siliconera
Two New Ways To Get Halo 3 Beta
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
When Microsoft opened their initial sign-up for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, the form was swamped with gamers hoping to get access online. Now, the company has announced two new ways of getting into the upcoming beta release. First, the company has confirmed that those people buying Crackdown will be able to download the multiplayer beta upon release. Those gamers not willing to pony up the cash to get the game and access will have an alternate method; Microsoft’s “Rule of Three” program. Starting in February, gamers that qualify on Xbox Live and are among the first 13,333 Halo 2 players that register on the official Halo 3 website will also have access to the beta. One would also expect that there will be other promotions in the future to get into the test program as well.
The full press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Two New Ways To Get Halo 3 Beta
Worms For Xbox Live Arcade HD Screenshots
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Retro, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace,
Team 17’s Worms has been rumored to be hitting Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service soon. Supposedly the title will sell for 800 points with the possibility of future downloadable add-ons. While the release date of the title is still unknown, HD screenshots of the 2D turn-based game are now available on Xbox Attitude. The most recent 2d entries in the series were somewhat mediocre on the DS and the PSP, and neither supported Internet play; a fully multiplayer version on the Xbox 360 that returns to the series’ roots would be a welcome addition.
Read More | Xbox Attitude
Microsoft’s Xbox Live matchmaking service went down for about six hours today; the first reports starting appearing at around 5:30 PM Pacific Time, and Major Nelson reported that the service was fixed at around 11:30 PM Pacific. During the outage, gamers would have a hard time connecting to the Live service and could not get into online games. Supposedly, voice chat and achievements were still working during the outage, but gamers looking at playing the single player campaign in Gears of War needed to disconnect their Ethernet connections to play. While outages like this are frustrating, Microsoft’s Major Nelson was able to keep gamers abreast of the situation through his blog; hopefully he will be able to share some post-mortem insight into the outage.
Read More | Major Nelson
Microsoft’s Video Marketplace Top Downloads
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace,
Major Nelson, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb, has updated his blog with the top Video Marketplace downloads for the week of December 10th through the 17th. The list doesn’t include absolute numbers, so one can’t really judge how popular the service is overall, but the selections making up the top ten are interesting to say the least.
The top movie downloads are Mission Impossible III, followed by Nacho Libre; both are only available in SD format. This may somewhat act as a gauge of the adoption rate of HD displays with Xbox 360 owners, or people may just not want to spend the extra time downloading the HD content. Other oddities are some of the movies on the list; Poseidon makes the top ten, which received generally unfavorable reviews and had a particularly weak opening weekend in May. Also on the list is The Lake House, a remake of a romantic Korean film that also got relatively poor reviews. The film choices may somewhat reflect the limited movie availability yet on Xbox Live.
The television choices seem to skew more towards the stereotypical Xbox core user, with titles like South Park, Enterprise, and Chappelle’s Show on the list. Again, since no total download numbers are released, the service’s popularity can’t really be determined, but the mix of titles gives some interesting insights into the users of the service.
Read More | Major Nelson
Updated Xbox 360 Backward Compatibility List Leaked
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
An updated backwards-compatibility list briefly appeared online on the Xbox.com site for Great Britain today. Some bloggers online were able to capture the list with some interesting titles getting support. Some of the better titles on the list included Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dead Or Alive Ultimate, Shenmue II and the much anticipated Psychonauts. If the date on the list was to be believed, Xbox 360 gamers can hope to get support for these titles some time in December. However, since the list was pulled, there may still be changes for the update, when and if it comes. Still, gamers have to be excited knowing they are possibly weeks away from being able to play Shark Tale again.
Read More | James Woodcock's Blog
This Week’s Free Xbox Live Marketplace Content: 12/8-12/15
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Music, Trailers, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace,
This week there was a lack of actual in game content available through the marketplace so I’ll focus on game and movie videos & trailers. Hopefully some good free content will be released as we move towards Christmas. I’ll keep my eyes open and make sure it’s posted as it becomes available. In the meantime check out this weeks free content. Enjoy!
GAME DEMOS
:
College Hoops 2K7 – Rated E - 2006 – 961.64MB
Splinter Cell Double Agent (Single Player) – Rated M – - 2006 – 505.86MB
RoboBlitz (Arcade) – Rated E10+ - 2006 – 49.32MB
GAME VIDEOS & TRAILERS
:
Halo3 1st TV Commercial – Rated : NR - 2006
SD - 480p – 14.07MB
HD - 720p - 48.21MB
Battlestations : Midway War Machines Trailer : Rated T - 2006
SD - 480p – 15.46MB
HD - 720p – 73.70MB
Bionicle Heroes Trailer I : Rated E10+ - 2006
SD - 480p – 13.07MB
HD - 720p – 74.07MB
Eragon : Making of Trailer – Rated T - 2006
Unknown format – 126.54MB
Eragon : Director and Designer Interview Trailer – Rated T - 2006
Unknown Format – 160.01MB
MOVIE CLIPS & TRAILERS
:
Eragon Trailer I : 1 Minute – Rated G - 2006
SD - 480p Widescreen – 23MB
HD - 720p Widescreen – 83MB
Eragon Trailer II : 2 minutes – Rated G - 2006
SD - 480p Widescreen – 33MB
HD - 720p Widescreen – 120MB
Transformers Teaser Trailer : 1 Minute – Rated PG-13 (2007)
SD - 480p Widescreen – 25MB
HD - 720p Widescreen – 86MB
MUSIC VIDEOS
:
Tenacious D : The Pick of Destiny : 2 Minutes – NR - 2006
SD - 480p Widescreen – 32MB
Song of the Heart : (from Happy Feet soundtrack) – 3 Minutes – NR - 2006
SD - 480p Widescreen – 34MB
Hold Me Down : (from Motion City soundtrack) 4 Minutes – Rated Explicit - 2005
SD - 480p Widescreen – 47MB
Bad Religion : Los Angeles Is Burning : 3 Minutes – NR – 2004
SD - 480p Fullscreen – 38MB
Matchbook Romance : Monsters : 4 Minutes – NR - 2006
SD - 480p Widescreen – 45MB
Halo 3 Beta Sign-up Active
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
The Halo 3 multiplayer beta sign-up is now active at Halo3.com. As previously noted, the beta is anticipated to start in Spring 2007. Users signing up must be 17 years old or older, have an Xbox 360 console with hard drive, an Xbox Live Gold subscription, and have their Microsoft .NET Passport linked to their active gamertag. Right now, the registration server is incredibly slow, so those signing up may have to be a little patient for the server load to drop a bit.
Update: The Halo 3 teaser trailer is now available for download from Microsoft here.
Read More | Halo 3 Official Site
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