Xbox 360 News

Two More Infinity Ward Leads Leave

Activision has had a rough week, to say the least. It’s 15 dollar “Stimulus” map pack for Modern Warfare 2 is facing backlash from the community and critics alike for it’s pricey nature and glitches it had right out of the gate. To make matters worse however, two more Infinity Ward leads have left. The two leads in question are Lead Designer Todd Alderman and Lead Software Designer Francesco Gigliotti. Alderman is a significant blow to the developer, as he reportedly was the lead creator on Call of Duty’s multiplayer. Activision is not commenting on the situation, so whether or not this has to do with the recent lawsuit against Activision by Vince Zampella and Jason West is not known.

Halo Reach Multiplayer

A few weeks ago a video was released of the Halo: Reach multiplayer and it was in short, awesome.  However, they gave very little detail about everything they showed till now, Bungie has released some information about things to come in the new Halo game coming out this fall.  For the whole story go to Bungie for all of the details but here we’ll give you a quick over view of what they said.

First of Elites are actually different than Spartans, they are faster, bigger, have a stronger shield and have the ability to evade (I’ll go into detail about that later).  So how does this work?  Seems like everyone would pick the Elite over the Spartan, and while Bungie hasn’t given detail about how the Elite vs. Spartan will be they said it will mainly be Spartan vs. Spartan and Elite vs. Elite.

XBLA Price Cuts are Abound! Until April 7th.

Thankfully, this is not a very poor April Fools Day joke. Ten, from what I hear, decent little XBLA games have had their prices slashed until April 7th. I have actually only played, out of those 10, Rocket Riot and South Park Let’s Go Shenanigans. Both well worth the price, but Rocket Riot is definitely the superior one. A very cute, lovable, time-sucking game.

Lost Planet 2 Moved Up a Week

In a change of pace for 2010, a game is actually being released sooner than planned. Capcom originally set the release date for the XBox 360 version of Lost Planet 2 for May 18, 2010. However, a new announcement has moved it up a week to May 11th, 2010. Also, the PC version has been given a release window to be in shelves this fall. There will be a new multiplayer demo on April 21st for Xbox and April 22nd for Playstation 3.THis demo will have a single map with voice chat, stat tracking, and a player cap of 16.

Natal’s E3 Hype

Microsoft will be holding two separate conferences at this year’s E3 gathering in June.

Aaron Greenberg’s blog announced that the Natal’s event will be held on Sunday and that Microsoft will hold a conference for the XBox 360 on Monday. This appears to show the importance Microsoft is placing on Natal while also showing that it is also meant for a different audience than the more traditional Xbox 360 demographic.

With the recent announcement of Nintendo’s 3DS and all the fuss Sony has been making about Move, this E3 should be one of the more exciting in recent history.

Insomniac working with Microsoft?

At GDC, whispers have said that Insomniac Games has gone multiplatform.  For a long time they have been working with Sony making the Spyro, Ratchet and Clank and the Resistance series.  All of which are very popular franchises. 

Now it seems that they are trying to expand their horizon and release their games on multiple platforms, so what does this mean for their series?  Spyro has already been released on the Nintendo before and could go to the 360, but let’s be honest Spyro hasn’t been a high demand game in the last few years.  Both the Resistance’s games, and all the Ratchet and Clank games, have been published by Sony in the past, so the chances of these beloved series being used by Microsoft are very slim. 

Drake’s Role In Gears Of War 3

As Gears of War grows older the cast of characters do too and part of the reason we all love this franchise is because some of it’s memorable characters such as Cole Train, Marcus and the rest of the group… and we love it because of chainsaw rifles.  With the new trailer that was release a few weeks back they introduced two new characters and while we’re still waiting on more information on the first woman gear ever seen in the game, we have some news on the other.  Aubrey Graham, aka Drake the rap artist, will be playing the role of Jace Stratton a character that was introduced in the comic books.  This will definitely be an interesting addition to the cast of characters and hopefully he’ll be fleshed out in the story and not just thrown in as another throw away character.  And maybe we’ll get another sick song in the credits like we did in the first game which still was one of my favorite parts of that game. 

This news does come at a surprise since Ice T. did talk about how he will be doing a part in Gears of War 3 which I originally thought was going to be Stratton but since it’s not, I’m curious to see what role he’ll play, if any.  Even with this news, all anyone really wants is some game-play demos and Cliff Bleszinski up on stage talking about what they’re doing different to make this game ten times better than the first two.  With E3 just around the corner that’s better be what we get so make sure to check back on all your video game news during the biggest show of the year.

Italian Ad Shows New 360 Model

With little time left till E3 officially kicks off, an interesting ad has leaked before Microsoft’s press conference. The ad in question is an Italian ad showing a new “slim” model of the Xbox 360. The ad in question is now gone, but that should not matter seeing that Microsoft will be showing it in the morning.

Video Games Live!

Since the video game revolution really started plowing forward back in the mid 80s, one of the most underrated aspects of the aspects has been the music. The 8 and 16-bit processors that the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis systems could produce were not much more than melodic beeps and pings made to sound like a catchy tune.

Of course, times have changed. Now, many of the best and brightest games have scores composed by full orchestras or big time, main-stream bands, but those original compositions still bring back childhood memories of simpler times to go along with our simpler games. The themes from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Castlevania, are still lovingly talked about alongside the newcomers from Metal Gear Solid, Halo, and Kingdom Hearts.

Natal Now Called Kinect and 360 Slim?

For anyone keeping up with Project Natal news they already knew that this wasn’t it’s official name and during a smaller conference last night they finally announce the real name, Kinect.  I don’t know why they decide to pick a name now after all this time and why they’re acting like it really matter but […]