After ~3 weeks of waiting for the replacement power adapter from Microsoft I finally got the package today and was able to hook my Xbox in.  Joy!
Got an Xbox too? Add me to your Xbox friends…

Tags: Xbox

Some games are timeless. Street Fighters is one of these games. I can probably dub it as my favorite game as a kid, spending hours at the arcade or on my friend’s Nintendo.

Capcom, unlike other companies who just loose customers by letting their games die , was aware of the game’s popularity and re-released it for Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE® Arcade platform adding HDTV graphics, achievement and more… Way to go Capcom!

In fact, since its initial release, the game has been one of the best selling games on the LIVE® Arcade:

Sunnyvale , California—Capcom® today announced that Street Fighter® II’ Hyper Fighting, the company’s first title for Xbox Live® Arcade, has seen a phenomenal record of downloads since its debut on August 2. Within the first 24 hours of its unveiling, Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting has become the fastest selling Xbox Live Arcade title to date with hundreds of matches being played every hour.

This proves the point I was trying to make in the post about LucasArts quests emulation for the iPhone. You don’t need top graphics and a Hollywood budget for a successful games. People can (and want) still enjoy the good old arcades and quests etc. and all companies need to do is to find the right channels that can make these games successful again.

Back to Street Fighters, I’ve been playing the game’s demo and being ass kicked by my Xbox opponent for the past hour or so. Its definitely more fun and challenging than playing it on my laptop using emulation but I’m finding the controls a little hard to get used to. Maybe I need to get a special fighting games arcade joystick for my Xbox…

I will definitely buy this game as soon as I get a decent internet connection that I can hook my Xbox to (which will probably only happen once I get back to Israel…)

I guess I need some practice and get back in shape…
I guess the game’s characters already did:

Hilarious… (you can find all parts here)

P.S.
Sega also released its new Virtua Fighters 5 title for the Xbox. Oh I remember playing the first version of this on the arcades…
Have to get this one too…

Tags: Xbox

Mass Effect, a new RPG developed by BioWare and published by Microsoft Games , was released to store in the US today.

“Mass Effect” combines a deep story with intense, sci-fi tactical combat. Through high-definition graphics and an amazingly realistic and innovative conversation system that allows for lifelike interaction with the voices of scores of digital actors such as of Seth Green, Marina Sirtis and Lance Henriksen, “Mass Effect” provides an immersive gameplay experience never seen before in a video game.

I just came back from the Microsoft Store where I saw this game was selling like hot cookies. More than 3 shelves got cleared in less than 30 minutes…

If you want to know more check out the following links:

• You can read the full press release here.
• Wondering how good it is? it has currently received 4 perfect scores out of 17 reviews on Gamerankings.com and over half of the reviews are 95% or above.
• The game’s home at xbox.com: http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/m/masseffect/

I can’t wait to get my own XBOX360 already…

Tags: BioWare, Gaming, Mass Effect, Microsoft Games, Xbox

Guitar Hero is a major hit here in the US and I just don’t get it…

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The 3rd game in the series was just lunched a few days ago and is being heavily promoted and seems to sell like crazy…
You can even buy custom painted guitar controllers on eBay auction…

What’s so fun about playing in-tune using a 5 buttons controller shaped like a guitar?
Get a real Gibson and learn to play…

Just reminds me how much I miss my Fender back home…

Tags: Xbox

Engadget recently published the transcript for an interview they had with Bill Gates at CES. You can find it online at The Engadget Interview: Bill Gates (again!).
Some highlights:

The last time we sat down the Xbox 360 hadn’t been announced yet — or at least it hadn’t been officially unveiled yet. It’s been a couple months now, are you happy with how things have gone so far?

Well, I spent most of my Christmas playing Xbox 360.

Which games?

We played quite a variety. Actually, the Xbox Arcade was a big thing, a lot of the adults wanted to sit down and play for five or ten minutes. It was Hexic or Zuma that were easy for them to learn the rules, get used to the controller. We had some younger kids who were just beating the heck out of me at Project Gotham Racing, Kameo, basketball, Perfect Dark Zero. We have, I think, a dozen titles in total. And the thing that I thought would never happen really did happen to me, where I was standing 12 feet away and I thought, “Oh, they’re watching a basketball game,” and then as I walked up I realized, “No, no, they’re just playing Xbox 360.” So that was a lot of fun.

The only problem we’ve got is we’ve just got to make them faster, we’ve actually ramped up as fast as anybody ever has, but demand is still way ahead of us.

There were some shortages this holiday season.

The demand was phenomenal, and we did add Celestica as a third manufacturing partner. We think by the time we get to the 4.5 to 5.5 million unit level that the backlog won’t be all that substantial. So obviously it’s a good news situation, but we want to meet all the demand.

Are you ready for Sony later this year?

Well, we think so. We’ve got a lot of things that they don’t know that we’re doing, so we’ll keep them on edge a bit. We think that this whole thing has become very software centric; that is, the toolkits that let developers do their best creative work — that plays to our software strength, as well as the idea of Live, where we had to learn a lot with Xbox 1, and the decision to require broadband, to go with VoIP, but we learned a lot about wanting to put things into the operating system so you can chat even while you’re playing the games, it’s really a level of richness that the games are built on top of that we didn’t have that last time. We learned how to do that, we learned about contests and spectators, and so this is really a second generation of Live for us. It’s very based on software expertise, so it will be interesting to see what Sony does in that dimension.

We also now have a situation where if your friend has already bought an Xbox and you go to buy something that you want to play with them, it’s not like last time where at his house you play his game and at your house you play your game. Now it’s all online, you’ve got your achievements and things, so it will be a fascinating competition.

Tags: Bill Gates, Microsoft, MSFT, Xbox