Lots of Facebook screenies on XBLive!

More Qore HOME Beta news…arrives

“The November issue of Qore contains a beta key for Home, which means a public beta is finally approaching.”

November is right around the corner..remember SONY PS3 owner if you want to get into the HOME Beta this upcoming month you will have to buy either the one month Qore or the annual Qore to get the Key to the HOME Beta.

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Xbox Experience will have special Avatar Store/Shop.

“Where you’ll be able to buy branded items for your Avatar.”

Microsoft is planning to launch an ‘Avatar Store’ next spring, which will allow gamers to buy branded items for their Avatars, a new feature coming with the release of the New Xbox Experience update on November 19.

Gamers will be able to buy game related items from publishers, like T-shirts, as well as non-game related items, perhaps related to football, Microsoft has revealed.

Robin Burrowes, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) product manager for Xbox LIVE, told VideoGamer.com at a recent hands-on preview event for NXE that it believes the potential is there for fashion brands to launch new clothing ranges through the store, and that gamers will be able to dress their Avatar like a character from a game.

The New Xbox Experience update will allow gamers to create an Avatar, which will become the virtual representation of their 360 gaming self. For launch there will be a raft of free accessories and clothing items, but Microsoft said it has plans for gamers to be able to buy new items, like game-branded T-shirts, and unlock accessories that are related to in-game Achievements, like Guitar Hero guitars.

Burrowes said: “The plan of record will be to launch a more extensive Avatar Store from spring time onwards next year, and that store in theory would have branded content in there, game publisher IP stuff in there as well.”

When asked what might be sold through the Avatar Store, Burrowes replied: “There’s a whole creative canvas for these things. Due to tight time lines there’s nothing at launch as such but our vision for these in the future is well and truly tied to game releases and us working with publishers very closely to encourage rewards from those games to be tied to your Avatar.

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This November Buy Qore and your in HOME “BETA”

Veronica Belmont will take us Home in the next issue of Qore. No, she’s not taking us to her house, you silly people; she’s going to show us what’s up with PlayStation Home. That’s much more exciting, isn’t it?

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PlayStation Home hacked

Hackers, like life, will find a way. Sony knows that all too well thanks to the PSP, but so far the PlayStation 3 has stood strong in the face of legions of nerds trying to find a way to exploit it. A potentially major breakthrough may have been made, though, as well-known PS3 hacker StreetskaterFU (we’ve no idea what he’s going for with that name — really) has managed to decrypt the beta client for Sony’s PlayStation Home service. Curious devs can now poke around in the files looking for a way to exploit the newish in-game XMB functionality, potentially allowing homebrew apps and game backups without hard drive swapping. There’s no guarantee it will lead anywhere in the end, but you don’t care either way, right? Our upstanding readership would never participate in such heinously illegal activities.

<PS3 Hax post>

Does the NXE enhance your Live! experience?

There were two main reasons Microsoft decided to totally redo the Xbox 360 interface: 1) to make everything easier to find and 2) making it easier for the Xbox team to make changes to the system on the fly (instead of having to wait for semi-annual updates).

After spending a little hands on time with NXE, I’m pretty convinced they’ve succeeded with that first goal (time will tell with the second). A whole slew of navigation options make it easier to locate anything from a recently downloaded demo to a group of friends playing Call of Duty 4 that you can party with. The Spotlight channel highlights whatever’s new in any channel (movie trailers, content packs, demos, etc.) and the actual game library (gasp!) has a details page that will display all the stuff you’ve downloaded for it. You can even see stuff you haven’t downloaded, like if there’s a new map pack, and jump from the detail page directly to Marketplace to buy the content.

So no more frantically scrolling this way and that, trying to find the Alpha Protocol demo I just downloaded or figure out where they put the Fable 2 trailer. Even better, the game detail page displays box art, screen shots, streaming videos – the kind of stuff you normally have to go to a website to find. So maybe we won’t need a web browser with NXE (and if we do, they can apparently add one with a quick updated that we don’t have to wait half a year for).

The big ticket item for me is the avatar system. It’s the only part of NXE that I’m skeptical about. I don’t mind that they were replacing the left-to-right scrolling “blades” with up-and-down scrolling “channels” (that are populated with “slots” – gotta love that 360 vocabulary). I also don’t care one way or the other that the visual style of the interface is more “casual-friendly” with a simple (if dull) layout and punched up movie/Netflix features.

I do mind that they’re spending money to make a total rip off of the Nintendo Miis. I mean, really, does capturing the casual audience really mean you’ve gotta have chunky people with big, bright eyes that wander around, doing nothing but sneezing, winking and waving?

As soon as I started making my NXE avatar, I had to stop comparing it to Nintendo. The system Rare came up with has more in common with the Sims than it does with anything else. There were more options for facial and body structure, color and decoration. I could have freckles, vampire fangs, or a mullet. There were ear piercings, soul patches and whacky skin colors (e.g. green). There are idle animations (my favorite is the guy one where he picks lint off his arm, grimaces and flicks it away), and hidden “treats” that the avatars react to (like when you zoom in too fast – you might bump your avatar in the head and knock him senseless).

It’s all very cute and accessible – the kind of thing I’d give to my grandma to get her to even go near the 360. But there’s also a larger goal that the avatars accomplish for seasoned 360 users: they give you a sense of personality.

“We wanted gamers to be able to express themselves,” says demo expert Albert Penello, Director of Global Marketing for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. “Like when you’re going into Friends to party with [strangers]… we wanted you to be able to look at a group of avatars and [automatically] know whether or not you’d like to party with them.”

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NXE dedicated page is up…!

We put up a dedicated Xbox Experience page to detail the functions and features that all connected Xbox 360’s will get come this November 19th. Information will be added as more become available. Please feel free to comment and leave any suggestions you may have. You can find the link to the NXE Page on the left under the Pages section.
Have a great day…!

1st no Netflix Party Mode, now NO PRIMETIME?

This morning I was looking over the usual major blogs and to my surprise I ran into this little bit of news on the Forbes website game shows for the NXE. I was really looking forward to this offering as well as the Netflix party stream mode but look like the only functional feature other than the ability to install me games is, creating a cool avatar. Why oh Why are we losing Xbox 360 losing all of the main functions stated throughout the entire marketing campaign?

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Home Release Date?

Is HOME coming to us on 10/24…..?

Home Release Date?

Is HOME coming to us on 10/24…..?

Fable 2 let’s you be friendly-er?

I am not sure if you remember a week or so back the report was that Fable 2 was not going to ship with Co-Op play on disk, but would be given as a game update shortly after launch. Today I saw this on the Official Lionhead Studio’s website:

“Remember a couple of days ago (or was it a week) where on a blog it was mentioned that Fable II would be shipping ‘without’ Online Co-op? And remember we said we were busting our balls to get it ready in time for a ‘Day One’ release? Well – news folks! It looks like we’ve done it…for all of you who are connected to Xbox Live, when starting up your copy of Fable II (on 21st October in USA, 24th October in Europe and 18th December in Japan). So all of you getting upset and all, you wouldn’t even have noticed… Sort of. Well done to the team.”

“Taken into account we don’t fail certification!”