Archives / Tag: Consoles

Just over 2 years after I first got my Xbox 360 and I have been graced with the 3 flashing red lights or “Red Ring of Death’ as it is affectionatley known.

I’m particuarly narked as I just bought GTA IV a few weeks back and hadn’t had a good chance to play it until tonight!

So, I called Xbox support here in the UK (though I think I was re-routed to India along the way) and my fears were confirmed. My Xbox is dead. They are sending me a returns lable via email and have asked that I wrap the Xbox in bubble wrap and place it in a plain cardboard box. When I asked if I could return it in the original box they stated that under no circumstances should I return it in a box with any Microsoft or Xbox insignia. How strange… perhaps they are trying to hide the number or returns from UPS staff here in the UK.

I gave the nice lady a bit of grief about the fact that I had to provide my own coffin for faulty hardware that they had produced but to their credit they confirmed that the returned Xbox would be subject to a further 3 year warranty and that they would provide me with a months free Xbox Live Gold membership. Not bad.

Apparently it should take 3 weeks for my Xbox to be returned minus the three red rings. I’ll keep you updated…

Update: My Xbox 360 arrived back home today, just 1 week to the day after it left, it’s been to Germany, had the mortherboard replaced and a new faceplate (Thanks Microsoft!), the old faceplate had been vandalised by my son. I also got a months free Xbox Live Gold Membership.

Add to this the fact that it’s significantly quiter when idle than it was before, I’m well impressed. Good job. :)

Having just read through a really rather good interview over at Ars Technica I was astounded by following statement made by Ben Kuchera:

There is no real difference in quality based on what I’ve seen between HD DVD (Xbox 360) and Blu-ray (PS3). Keep in mind that unless your display can handle a 1080p or 1080i resolution the PS3 will downgrade the image into 480p.

What? That is some crazy shit. To quote one of the commenter’s on the article:

It blows my mind that Sony put the Blu-ray drive into the PS3 as a trojan horse that I’m forced to pay for, but it can’t even support my 720P (Sony!) HD television…

I’d be interested to hear from anyone out there with a PS3 as to what experience they have with playback of Blu-ray movies on a 720p HDTV.

In what can only be described as an inspired move, Microsoft is bringing HD-quality movies to the 360 without requiring that owners purchase the external HD DVD drive.

On November 22nd, Xbox 360 will become the first gaming console in history to provide HD TV shows and movies directly to (US) gamers in their own living rooms. Xbox 360 owners will be able to download full-length TV shows to own, and will be able to rent movies via download from the Xbox Live® network.

via Major Nelson.

It will be interesting to see how Sony responds to this as bit by bit they seem to be losing the upper hand which they once held over high capacity media and 1080p output.

News on the Autumn 360 dashboard update is out. I’m well chuffed to see that they’re including support for streaming video from any PC running Windows Media Connect or similar (WMP11 or Zune Software). This was a much requested feature and true to their word Microsoft are actually listening to the users.

The Autumn update also includes a new high def mode, the illustrious 1080p which Sony will have you think is the holy grail of HD. In reality it’s nothing to write home about until console hardware is significantly more powerful, enough at least to output at 1080p and still 4x anti-alias like the 360 currently does at 720p.

Elsewhere there are a bunch of UI enhancements, most notably in the Live Arcade though from the screenies I saw over at Xbox.com it looks like the UI team may have departed slightly from the iconic interface. Will be a shame if they have but I’ll take a look tmrw and post back here with first impressions.

Update: Well, I powered up the 360 this morning at about 10:30am, no prompt to get the dash update but starting a game seemed to force a check and the update downloaded and installed.

First thing I headed off to check was the new Live Arcade menu area, there are some great improvements here in terms of functionality but it’s painful to see that the UI standards adhered to elsewhere in the dashboard have been thrown to one side. I wonder what the original interface design team from AKQA think about it?

Video streaming from my Windows XP box works a treat though videos have to be plain vanilla Windows Media Video (WMV) to show up in the 360 media blade. Thankfully it’s an easy (albeit lengthy) task to take any DivX encoded AVI’s and convert them to WMVs using Windows Movie Maker (or whatever it’s called).

Update: Actually, although it’s easy, the results are piss poor. Instead I suggest you take a look at the rather brilliant write up on Joystiq.com RE Transcoding & streaming videos on Xbox 360. Not only is it considerably faster than using Windows Movie Maker, but the results are infiniteley better too! :)

110 High-Definition Xbox 360 games showcased at TGS.

In addition, Microsoft announced that its fall dashboard update, scheduled for release later this year, will allow all Xbox 360 consoles around the world to output game and movie content in 1080p resolution.

Wow, didn’t see that one coming. Up until now the PS3 was slated as the only console capable of outputting 1080p. Hats off to Microsoft for yet again demonstrating their commitment to the Xbox 360 as an evolving platform.

Today it’s my Birthday, I just turned 29. 1 year closer to the big ’3 – 0’ and yet somehow I still feel like I’m young and have the whole of my life ahead of me, which I guess in actuality, is true!

My loverly wife went out and bought me something which I’ve being umming and ahhing over getting for months, an Xbox 360. Before today I had always been pretty loyal to the Sony brand, having owned a PlayStation the day they arrived on these shores and following that a PS2. I actively despised the first Xbox for it’s appalling aesthetics but the 360, well over the months since it’s launch it’s looks and its’ feature set have grown on me.

In many ways the decision to finally go out and get a 360 has been fuelled by the somewhat disappointing approach that Sony seem to be taking with the PS3. Yes on paper it might have more oomph that the 360, but I can’t help but feel that Sony are already playing catch up, and the impression I get is that they’re floundering a little under the pressure.

The PS3 will launch come November and will most likely be the most fantastic console to ever grace retailers shelves. But factor in the entry price, and consider whether Sony can really pull off the whole ‘Live’ experience to (and beyond) the standard which Microsoft have set. One things for sure, competition in the marketplace is good for us players, it’s certain to push our respective chosen brands to give us that little bit more.

Oh, and my gamer tag is ‘ninefour’ is you fancy kicking my ass at PGR3. :)

I must admit, I’ve been just a little dubious of all the banner ads you see sprinkled on the web advertising free ipods, PSPs etc. Well, after stumbling upon a blog entry by some seemingly normal fellow, and taking some time to do a little reading up on the subject, it actually seems that some of these websites are for real.

Freepay (aka Gratis Network) have been received a lot of favourable write ups in the press so I decided to sign up for a free account with them and suss out what it’s all about, and what I would need to do to grab myself a free XBox 360.

How does it work then?

Step 1 – Sign up:

Well, it’s pretty simple really. To claim your free Xbox 360 you need to sign up for a Freepay account, complete 1 ‘offer’ and refer 10 other people whom must also complete 1 offer.

Step 2 – Select an offer:

Offers are basically links to partner websites of Freepay where you can sign up for some or other service, Freepay obviously get paid for advertising the service and refering a new user. You’ll have to pick from 3 available offers.

The best offer to sign up for is the ‘ScreenSelect’ service, this is what I’ve plumped for. You sign up for a 30 day free trial, this entitles you to rent as many DVDs and Games as you want during that period. Thereafter you are charged £9.99 per month, but you can cancel your account at any time during or after the trial and avoid having to shell out any £‘s. However it’s important to note that to complete the offer you have to rent at least 1 item (for free of course).

Step 3 – Refer refer refer!

Now that you’ve signed up and completed an offer you have 90 days within which to refer 10 people whom must also sign up for an offer. The best way to do this is to send your referal link to all your mates, and post an entry just like this one on your blog. In fact, just copy and paste this text and be sure to include your ‘referal link’ instead of mine.

Step 4 – Claim your Xbox 360

God knows if this will work, but hey, worst case scenario, we all get a bunch of free DVD rentals delivered to our door. Saves a trip to Blockbuster only to discover that all the decent films are out on loan. :)

Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, took center stage at the PlayStation Business Conference in Tokyo (Japan) and delivered the news: PlayStation 3 will not release until November 2006.

However, he also revealed that Sony plans to release the system in Japan, North America, and Europe simultaneously this November.

PS3 will be in stores before the end of the year – within the first 10 days of November, to be exact.

Sony have officially unveiled the PlayStation 3. Where the Xbox 360 is ‘apparently’ based on the concept of ‘inhaling’ (WTF?) the PS3 looks more like it exhaled.

My initial response to the product design late last night was one of disappointment, I don’t think the PS3 has the ‘ooh’ factor which the Xbox 360 has, but then the PS2 was such a beautiful product, this is an evolution in design terms rather than the revolution that the 360 is compared to it’s predecessor.

There’s a ton of other related news over at ign.com RE PS3 specs, Sony’s partnership with NVidia, launch dates and backwards compatability.

Sony have announced a new, redesigned version of its Playstation 2 console.

Making its debut in stores from November 1st, the newly designed PlayStation 2 is half the weight of the original design, and the internal volume of the console has been reduced by an incredible 75%. The new design is only 2.8cm thick, compared to the 7.8cm of the original console.

Despite the smaller size, the new PlayStation 2 features an integrated Ethernet port for online gaming.

We have a copy of Burnout 3 for the PS2 at work. We’ve given it a little play over the past few days.

It’s a fantastic game, a definite step forward from Burnout 2… But there are a few things which aren’t quite right:

• There’s way too much motion blur at the screen edges in 2 player modes. It’s like someone is smearing large lumps of lard on the screen everytime you round a corner. Not good.
• The ‘Takedown Camera’ breaks the flow of play in race mode (Thankfully you can turn this off!)
• There are no race replays!!! What!?!?

No race replays! Watching a replay of a race where you totally whipped your mates was one of Burnout 2’s best features. What happened to race replays Criterion???