Archive for Xbox-360 tag
Compile XNA for your Xbox 360 tomorrow?
There’s a possibility that tomorrow will see the announcement of XNA Game Studio Beta 2 with support for compiling and running applications on your Xbox 360.
Originally this was scheduled for the final 1.0 release and would involve a $99 annual fee for the privilege but what better way to get hype and excitement than to offer it free for a month or two while it’s being polished and tested during the beta phase?
Before you think I’m dreaming consider that Microsoft released the Xbox 360 Halloween firmware update this morning complete with XNA support, admittedly overshadowed by the announcement of 1080p support – another thorn in Sony’s leaky side.
The official release notes made it clear that the XNA support was tied into future availability and subject to subscriptions. The page on Xbox.com just comes out and plain says "now".
Dave over at LetsKillDave says they’ll be an announcement about XNA Game Studio Beta 2 in the next 24 hours although he has previously stated that the demonstrated technique for deploying games to the 360 won’t be available until 1.0.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
[)amien
Lego Star Wars 2 on the Xbox 360
I enjoyed the original Lego Star Wars back on the PlayStation 2 some time ago. The co-operative play element, the Lego world combined with the Star Wars world (obviously) and a healthy dose of comedy slapstick that surprised me giving LucasArt’s strict control of the Star Wars universe. But then they let Spaced burn a pile of Star Wars merchandise to official music so maybe they’re not all humourless droids.
The original game covered Episodes I-III and so when Steve reminded me Lego Star Wars II was coming out and would be covering Episodes IV-VI (A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) I knew I had to have it. The only question was which format and in the end I bit the bullet and went with the 360 version at £29.99 – a whopping 50% more than the PC version. Thanks Microsoft.
I’ve only played through A New Hope so far but all your favourite moments are there albeit with Lego’s new take on everything such as the Storm Trooper helmet machines and picking up Death Star crew with a crane and dropping them in a hole for bonuses.
There are some additions over the original too. As well as blowing almost everything in sight up you can now find piles of blocks to assemble into bridges, parts of robots etc. as well as creatures, Luke’s speeder and AT-ST’s to ride around. There are also new dark-force glowing objects to interact with reminding you to come back and play the levels again to unlock all the mini-kit pieces you need to build your own virtual garage of craft from the universe.
If I have one complaint it’s pretty much the one I have in all 3D games… the camera angle.
Often it goes off all over the place and some parts such as controlling the AT-ST is pure infuriation in two player as the camera attempts to follow one of you and slides the other person/their ride around uncontrollably before trapping them in a corner. I’d much rather have seen a split-screen mode or a camera that wasn’t afraid to zoom out more.
Perhaps on Lego Star Wars III… oh, there’s no more Star Wars left to cast into plastic!
I guess the their trilogy stops here.
[)amien
Apple’s Showtime and the disappointing iTV
Today’s Apple Showtime event showed some great products, and some disappointing ones.
iPods
The tiny new iPod Shuffle G2, the fantastic looking iPod Nano G2 with the return of the iPod Mini aluminium casing and 24 hour battery life and 8GB flash option weren’t to be sniffed at.
The iPod got… downloadable $4.99 games and an 80GB model. No sign of the long sought-after wide-screen touch-screen model with the virtual wheel.
iTunes
The expected downloadable movie announcement was made with movies at 640×480 – that’s 4x their existing TV-show/music video size and now on-par with the resolution of PC’s circa the late 80′s.
Job advises us this is “near DVD” which is kinda true DVD being 720×480/576. DVD given good quality source material, careful encoding and decent equipment can look pretty fine even blown up to 120″ on your wall.
What I couldn’t find out thought was how they intend on fitting widescreen movies into their distinctly non-wide-screen resolution.
DVD’s resolution is a little wider but more importantly it has an anamorphic mode where rather than waste pixels on the black bars the picture is stretched vertically before being encoded on the disk and then stretched horizontally on the way out of your DVD player – much the same way as widescreen movies were shot on non-widescreen film albeit with anamorphic lenses.
Jobs didn’t elaborate on whether they’ll have such a mode or something better…
Thanks to the complex licensing agreements between studios worldwide movies are a US exclusive so the rest of the world will have to sit and wait anyway.
iTunes 7 & Software Update
Add’s support for movie & iPod G4 game downloads and the user interface may well be a taste of things to come in Leopard. Flat blue gradients where aqua bubbles previously existed (equalizer, scroll bars).
Also introduced is a couple of new ways to view your local library using high quality rendered album cover art (like FrontRow) and a sort of mixed up mode (like Windows Media Player 11).
It’ll also now helpfully grab album art for albums you ripped from your own CD’s and show the breakdown of the disk usage of your pod by content type (movie/art/music).
What is interesting is iTunes 7 introduces “Apple Software Update” which looks curiously like it’s Mac OS X counterpart…
iTV
Towards the end of the announcement came the one last thing…. code-named iTV (I can’t imagine they’ll get the rights to this name in the UK where ITV is one of the big TV stations).
The announcement itself was a little unusual – it’s for a new hardware product they haven’t finished and won’t be available for months. I can only conclude they are airing the product to help shift downloadable movies with users knowing they can play it back on the big-screen.
I’m sure neither Apple or the studios want another Sony UMD disaster.
When I heard the words “Mac Mini” and “TV” I thought this could be the answer to my home entertainment hub… alas no. Rather than extend to the mini with support for DVB-S/T/C or UHF tuners and PVR functionality they abandon the hard disk entirely… and the DVD-ROM drive to boot.
Which leaves iTV with no TV support in the traditional sense. If you want content it’ll have to come from iTunes and unless Jobs and his pals add illegal DVD ripping that means buying everything again from the iTunes Store, sticking with your DVD player or buying a more capable media centre.
Would the iPod have been such a success if you couldn’t link in to your existing content but had to pay for all your music again?
Very doubtful.
The final icing on the cake is that the box will set you back $299. That’s exactly the same price as the Xbox 360 which will also stream media from a host computer over a network. The difference being that the 360 will play DVD’s and let you play state of the art games for that price.
iTV? More like Apple Cube 2.
[)amien
Microsoft announces XNA for homebrew, score 1 for my prediction skills
Over the last few months I’ve pieced together various snippets and hints from the web to come to the conclusion that Microsoft’s forthcoming XNA platform, specifically the XNA Framework version, would be available to home-brew developers and let them develop on the Xbox 360 – the first official home-brew since the PlayStation 1′s Net Yaroze!
Indeed I’ve been telling people in IRC and on forums that I believe this to be true. One friend, after messing with Managed DirectX2, told me if I was wrong about this I was in trouble. I went as so far to claim that it’s already tested and GarageGames Marble Blast Ultra was an XNA Framework title.
Today Microsoft announced at their Gamefest conference the XNA Game Studio Express – a free download due this “holiday season” (a beta is out 30th August) – that lets anyone create XNA Framework based games on their PC which other people can run, on their PC.
The real icing on the cake however is that for $99 USD a year you can join the “creators club” and run home-brew XNA titles on your 360 – your own or other peoples.
Check out Microsoft’s XNA Developer Center and their XNA FAQ for the low-down.
Phew, seems my reputation is in tact.
[)amien