The NXE is go and we spent rather a lot of time making some Avatars of the team, and here are the results. (more…)

It seemed like the Xbox Live cull last night largely affected the nicer people of the world, as I encountered a complete bunch of thwunts online last night. Particular praise must go to MAULEDUP, who after taking a 2-1 lead in the first half of a game of FIFA, decided to pass the ball around his back four for the rest of the game, before sending me a message informing me to ’sell your xbox mate’. Lovely.

After trying a bit of ten-on-ten and having to abide a group of laughing chimps who found it funny to play with the offside rule switched off, I was actually hoping for a Live disconnect around my parts. No such luck.

As many of you will no doubt have noticed there have been some issues with Xbox Live over the weekend. I didn’t personally know anything about it until I was unceremoniously booted out of a co-op game of Fable II mid-quest. Then I noticed all the hoo ha online as rather panicked MS reps ran around shouting “don’t panic, don’t panic!” Some have suggested we should be concerned about these events so close to the launch of the NXE. I would hazard to suggest that it’s precisely because of that console altering event that we’re having troubles right now. (more…)

As Tim sits behind me in the 360 pod playing Battle Fantasia, it struck just how little its cartoon animals and hooker-looking femmes fatale appeal to me these days. Perhaps it’s just a case of my tastes changing with age, but I think it might run a little deeper than that. Where once I had considered Japan the mecca of gaming greatness, now I look a little closer to home.

Sometimes I like to put things into lists in my mind, to pass the time. This morning, I decided to list the games that I liked that had been released since September this year. I’m basically a man with the brain of a child, it would seem. Anyway, I started at FIFA, and then it’s Midnight Club, Gears Of War 2, Fable 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, Dead Space and quite possibly Left4Dead, which arrived with us yesterday. Not one from Japan. And while the DNA of some - GH4 in particular - might find its origins in the East, the shift of power in the industry is impossible to ignore.

It’s not a new topic, but one worth discussing nonetheless. It seems crazy to me that I no longer dote on Nintendo and Capcom as I did in my adolescence. I still like the same types of games, after all. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I only like shooting people in the head. Guess I’ll just have to wait for Resident Evil 5 to find out.

That is all… almost. See it for yourself here.

A.L.I.C.E. is an artificial intelligence program tat can be found at Pandorabots.com and we thought that to usher in the inevitable rise of the AI superpowers we should offer a gaming welcome by interviewing A.L.I.C.E. to find out her views on the Xbox 360. Here’s what we found out. (more…)

With all the talk of the games industry maturing (a topic I do have a tendency to talk about a lot and that I’m very passionate about) I sometimes forget where I began. Videogames used to be about something other than gripping plots, sophisticated control mechanics, smart AI and political comment. I have Microsoft and its affiliates to thank for reminding of the pure joy of playing games after I played Fable II and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

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360 has been covering all things XNA with great interest since the software was released and games started popping up for the Xbox 360. It’s a great program that while not quite as popular as we might have hoped, is still managing to deliver some really interesting projects. Thanks to this small group of innovators we have been waiting with much anticipation for the Community Games section being added to Xbox Live. Well now we have a date and it’s not all that surprising. (more…)

Don’t know how many of you may own a Zune, but it’s not the easiest thing to get a hold of in Europe right now mainly thanks to the fact it hasn’t been released over here yet. Due in part to this there hasn’t been much coverage of the fact that there was a new Zune update this week and that Zune 3.0 has made the media player compatible with games made through XNA. This is something that we’ve covered in the mag when it was originally announced earlier in the year, but now it’s here and we’ve played it. (more…)

So, the blogging from Germany didn’t really work out. Quite apart from being booked up from 9am to 6pm every day I was there, with no lunch breaks and only pretzels for sustenance (I like pretzels, but really!?), the internet connection situation left much to be desired. The important thing though is that I survived and returned home in something that resembled a single piece. However, none of this is of any concern to you. What you want to know about is games and so you should because there were plenty. (more…)