Xbox 360

New Xbox 360 Dashboard Update Scheduled Today

The new version of the Xbox 360 Dashboard is expected to hit the masses today, and it features many useful updates and fixes to streamline the Xbox 360 experience.  This user interface update is one of many for Microsoft’s console, and its sleek style and easy-to-use model stays mostly true with the last version of Dashboard.

The new menu layout is more centrally focused than previous iterations, and you will immediately notice the prevalence of advertising.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a step towards the inevitable “in-game” advertising blitz that’s sure to come sooner rather than later

Final Fantasy Remakes Coming to Xbox?

In a recent interview
with Official Xbox
Magazine,
Final Fantasy XIII-2 producer Yoshinori
Kitase hinted that it would be possible to remake an older Final Fantasy game (please, please FFVII) for the Xbox 360. When asked if Square Enix needed Sony’s
permission to remake Playstation 1-era FF
games, Kitase responded with “Well,
XIII and XIII-2 are only two years apart so obviously we have to stick to the
same platforms, otherwise we would have to give XIII-2 to the people who
haven’t played the previous work, but if we were to remake an old game that’s
ten years old or whatever, or make a sequel to that particular title, we don’t
have to worry about the same issue…Multiplatform is great if it’s possible.”

Gabe Newell Still Blames Microsoft for No Free Team Fortress 2 Updates

It’s often easy to forget that Team Fortress 2 is also an Xbox 360
title, due to the fact that it has none of the free updates that PC users
enjoy. In a recent interview, Valve CEO Gabe
Newell once again bashed Microsoft’s restrictions on DLC: “The coding part is a one-time fixed cost. The much larger problem is
the restrictive nature of the customer relationship where the console owner
won’t let you try to discover the best value proposition for each customer. On
the PC we’ve done 150+ updates for Team Fortress 2, while on the Xbox 360 we’ve
done two. We have lots of content we’d like to give to our Xbox 360 customer
for free which we are precluded from doing given the restrictions under which
we have to operate.”

Syndicate – Dub Step Anyone?

For anyone that doesn’t know, the original Syndicate was a tactical shooter originally released in the 1993 with a few expansions released as well as a second game later in the 90’s. The third game, coming next year, tosses out the idea of a tactical shooter in favor of a first person shooter approach. The game is set in 2069 and the government is no longer run by politicians, but rather large groups known as Syndicates and everyone wants to be “Chip’d” by their respective Syndicate in order to gain access to everything and anything that anyone could imagine. EA has recently released a new trailer for the game and it seems to be shaping into a very interesting experience.

Gift Buyer’s Guide: Xbox 360 RPGs

If there is a person on your shopping list that knows what you mean when you say “+90 damage points,” then this buyer’s guide is for you. RPGs are the type of soul-sucking games that trap players for hours, or days at a time. With that in mind, it’s probably the ideal gift to give to a gamer, as they won’t have time to play anything else. Why buy multiple games when you can save money and buy one large RPG? Here is a list of the top Xbox 360 RPG games you can buy this holiday season:

Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition Ver. 2012 Changes Detailed

Capcom has detailed its meaty changelog for the Version 2012 patch of  Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, which is quite a mouthful! If you’re not already on board with counting frames and pulling off Focus attack dash cancels into Ultra, you’ll probably want to skip this. Capcom also released a trailer showing some of the flashier changes.

Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition Coming in February

The British Board of Film Classification, which contrary to what the name implies also rates games, has blown the lid off the existence of Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition. What, exactly, this package contains is currently unknown, but it seems safe to assume that this year’s Mortal Kombat reboot, including all DLC, will make the cut. It will come out in February 2012.

Mortal Kombat famously added Freddy Krueger as a DLC character, along with blind ninja Kenshi, purple ninja Rain, and lady ninja Skarlet, which is a lot of ninjas. Whether this is enough to justify a re-release remains to be seen. It’s possible the package will include the remade package of Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3, which came out for digital download earlier this year.