Simple, all they talk about is their “achievements.”
Every owner I’ve met has already started bragging about their latest “achievements.” Don’t know what these are? Well, MSN Search brought me these answers:
1) Gaming Steve notes that Xbox 360 Achievements seem to be inspired by the Atari 2600.
2) The Xbox360ballyhoo blog points us at the fragism site that has a list of achievements for all the games.
They are basically things you get after completing various tasks. Last night I saw that folks are getting very competitive when playing games. By the way, the audio capabilities work very well (we were talking with people around the world while playing games).
Of course, you might know you’re talking with an Xbox owner if they have some Xbox earplugs. Thanks to Major Nelson (aka Larry Hryb of the Xbox Live team) for bringing us those.
One last big of Xbox reactions: the Xbox Live arcade games are the shiznit. I could play Geometry Wars for hours. They took “old style” arcade games and gave them modern graphics. The grid on Geometry Wars is wild. I’d love to talk to the developer who did that and learn about the algorithms behind it.
Are you hearing about achievements? Getting tired of it already too? I think that’ll be the new way to be annoying at holiday parties this next week “I have 24 achievements, how many do you have?” Heheh.
Scobleizer 
“By the way, the audio capabilities work very well (we were talking with people around the world while playing games).”
Yeah, that’s really funny. I was able to experience that first-hand the other day at a friend’s place… it’s all the rage to hear someone on the other side of the Atlantic say “Oh damn, I believe it crashed AGAIN!!!”
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“By the way, the audio capabilities work very well (we were talking with people around the world while playing games).”
Yeah, that’s really funny. I was able to experience that first-hand the other day at a friend’s place… it’s all the rage to hear someone on the other side of the Atlantic say “Oh damn, I believe it crashed AGAIN!!!”
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How are these selling in Tokyo? Gathering dust on shelves, you don’t say!
Why do you think that is? Couldn’t Japanese buyers just ebay them to Americans?
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How are these selling in Tokyo? Gathering dust on shelves, you don’t say!
Why do you think that is? Couldn’t Japanese buyers just ebay them to Americans?
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Ralph: they said that cause they were playing one of the road race games! 😉
Anon: do you believe everything you read on the Internet? Ever think that maybe a competitor of ours is wanting you to believe no one is buying them in Japan? Hmmm?
Your conclusions are like going into a Costco in Kansas, finding some iPods on the shelf, and concluding that they aren’t selling well in the USA.
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Ralph: they said that cause they were playing one of the road race games! 😉
Anon: do you believe everything you read on the Internet? Ever think that maybe a competitor of ours is wanting you to believe no one is buying them in Japan? Hmmm?
Your conclusions are like going into a Costco in Kansas, finding some iPods on the shelf, and concluding that they aren’t selling well in the USA.
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Geometry Wars actually uses all 3 cores, from what I understand. The grid alone uses 1.
Geometry Wars is actually a great example of an “indie” game being produced w/in the structure of a big-name Developer. In this case, Stephen Cakebread conceived and wrote the game, and then completed production with the help of coworkers and resources at Bizarre Creations.
We see this a lot with independent filmmaking – many in fact are being produced on the fringes and “off-hours” of the film industry.
I think there’s a lot to be gained from developers embracing this model – it gives their star talent an incentive to innovate (and stay at the company) while at the same time expanding the Developers’ offering beyond their core IPs.
How many more programmers out there have a “Geometry Wars” caliber game up their sleeves? Probably quite a few.
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Geometry Wars actually uses all 3 cores, from what I understand. The grid alone uses 1.
Geometry Wars is actually a great example of an “indie” game being produced w/in the structure of a big-name Developer. In this case, Stephen Cakebread conceived and wrote the game, and then completed production with the help of coworkers and resources at Bizarre Creations.
We see this a lot with independent filmmaking – many in fact are being produced on the fringes and “off-hours” of the film industry.
I think there’s a lot to be gained from developers embracing this model – it gives their star talent an incentive to innovate (and stay at the company) while at the same time expanding the Developers’ offering beyond their core IPs.
How many more programmers out there have a “Geometry Wars” caliber game up their sleeves? Probably quite a few.
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Robert: Race games are one thing but that’s not quite the reason… I could show you some people who firmly believe from their own experience that the XBox 360 was named that way because it crashes after one lap of PGR – your users are still waiting for the day Microsoft manages to ship a mature product 😉
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Robert: Race games are one thing but that’s not quite the reason… I could show you some people who firmly believe from their own experience that the XBox 360 was named that way because it crashes after one lap of PGR – your users are still waiting for the day Microsoft manages to ship a mature product 😉
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Ralph: we played for hours last night and had three freezes, all on multiplayer mode. PGR worked just fine through hours of play (and when we had the three freezes Chris said it was the first time it had happened to him — and we were playing all four players at one time).
Anyway, someone just sent me this interview with the Geometry Wars developer:
http://www.bizarreonline.net/page.php?p=cakeyinterview&f=gwre
Q: One of the most striking new graphical features in the game is the “gravity grid” play area. How did you make this look so cool; does every object in the game really have its own gravity?
The grid itself is made up of 60,000 points, each one exerting a small amount of force on its neighbour. The simulation itself sits on the edge of stability which is what causes it to swing about so much when one of the game objects gives it a small push!
Only a few types of object affect the grid. As the grid system is rather expensive to calculate, it actually runs on the second core along with the audio system, (the first core being dedicated to gameplay and particles, the third is used to render the audio).
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Ralph: we played for hours last night and had three freezes, all on multiplayer mode. PGR worked just fine through hours of play (and when we had the three freezes Chris said it was the first time it had happened to him — and we were playing all four players at one time).
Anyway, someone just sent me this interview with the Geometry Wars developer:
http://www.bizarreonline.net/page.php?p=cakeyinterview&f=gwre
Q: One of the most striking new graphical features in the game is the “gravity grid” play area. How did you make this look so cool; does every object in the game really have its own gravity?
The grid itself is made up of 60,000 points, each one exerting a small amount of force on its neighbour. The simulation itself sits on the edge of stability which is what causes it to swing about so much when one of the game objects gives it a small push!
Only a few types of object affect the grid. As the grid system is rather expensive to calculate, it actually runs on the second core along with the audio system, (the first core being dedicated to gameplay and particles, the third is used to render the audio).
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Robert, do you have a 360?
You sound very enthusiastic about it (and ya should be, it is really a great console.)
Maybe you can game with some of the XBox MVPs.
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Robert, do you have a 360?
You sound very enthusiastic about it (and ya should be, it is really a great console.)
Maybe you can game with some of the XBox MVPs.
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Scoble:
Actually, the Japanese keep very accurate statistics about units sold and the 360 has been doing miserably — worse than even the original Xbox.
Comparing iPods in Kansas to 360’s in Japan is ridiculous. Japan is the 2nd largest gaming market in the world and is the home of gaming’s best known developers.
Get your facts straight. The 360 is a good product but it is nowhere near an iPod level success. And then of course, there’s always the economics of the Xbox…
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Scoble:
Actually, the Japanese keep very accurate statistics about units sold and the 360 has been doing miserably — worse than even the original Xbox.
Comparing iPods in Kansas to 360’s in Japan is ridiculous. Japan is the 2nd largest gaming market in the world and is the home of gaming’s best known developers.
Get your facts straight. The 360 is a good product but it is nowhere near an iPod level success. And then of course, there’s always the economics of the Xbox…
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Forgot to put this in my other post.
I havent had 1 crash. Alos, MS is under the industry standard for faulty products (of a new product release).
Also, if you are having that big of problems, you should call support. The North America support number is 1800 4MY XBOX.
You can talk to them, and they should send you a box for you to send your 360 in to be repaired/replaced. While I havent done this, I believe the box is 2 day, should be sent back within the week, and (i believe), free of charge.
If you also have more questions, just head down to the Xbox.com forums (http://forums.xbox.com). People like me, the other MVPs, the moderators, Xbox support and some actual Xbox staff would be happy to help you.
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Forgot to put this in my other post.
I havent had 1 crash. Alos, MS is under the industry standard for faulty products (of a new product release).
Also, if you are having that big of problems, you should call support. The North America support number is 1800 4MY XBOX.
You can talk to them, and they should send you a box for you to send your 360 in to be repaired/replaced. While I havent done this, I believe the box is 2 day, should be sent back within the week, and (i believe), free of charge.
If you also have more questions, just head down to the Xbox.com forums (http://forums.xbox.com). People like me, the other MVPs, the moderators, Xbox support and some actual Xbox staff would be happy to help you.
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Matt: not yet, but that’s why I go from friends’ house to friend’s house to play! The three of us (Patrick, Maryam, and me) will be at Jeff Sandquist’s house tomorrow. His gamer tag is jeffsand.
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Matt: not yet, but that’s why I go from friends’ house to friend’s house to play! The three of us (Patrick, Maryam, and me) will be at Jeff Sandquist’s house tomorrow. His gamer tag is jeffsand.
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Some of the MVPs played a week or so ago on PGR3. It was alot of fun, especially getting your MVP lead in there.
Hopefully you can join us one day.
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Some of the MVPs played a week or so ago on PGR3. It was alot of fun, especially getting your MVP lead in there.
Hopefully you can join us one day.
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Scoble – did you see the trippy Jeff Minter visuals on the 360? I did an interview with him a couple years ago. He would be the perfect guy to produce a bunch of Xbox Live arcade stuff. He programmed Tempest 3000 for the Nuon and Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar.
I’m looking more forward to the Xbox Live Arcade stuff than the current launch games. It would be cool if they made that so smaller indie developers could develop for that part of the Xbox 360. There are many smaller game developers that rock.
I still hope I have the same enthusiasm for the 360 in March/April when I can actually buy one. And no, I’m not going to pay three times the going rate on eBay or hope a plane to Tokyo.
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I don’t think MS ever felt they would make a dent in the Asian market w/o the games to back it up. Obviously they had to downgrade expectations once DOA4 was pushed back. It’s still the must-have title for the console – I’d expect to see the sales increase progressively as more games are released.
Down the road, what do Xbox gamers in Japan have to look forward to? Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and Ninety-Nine Nights, not to mention a dozen other high-profile titles recently announced.
A “launch” by definition isn’t the end of a process, it’s the beginning. I’d agree that this wasn’t the best beginning.
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Scoble – did you see the trippy Jeff Minter visuals on the 360? I did an interview with him a couple years ago. He would be the perfect guy to produce a bunch of Xbox Live arcade stuff. He programmed Tempest 3000 for the Nuon and Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar.
I’m looking more forward to the Xbox Live Arcade stuff than the current launch games. It would be cool if they made that so smaller indie developers could develop for that part of the Xbox 360. There are many smaller game developers that rock.
I still hope I have the same enthusiasm for the 360 in March/April when I can actually buy one. And no, I’m not going to pay three times the going rate on eBay or hope a plane to Tokyo.
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I don’t think MS ever felt they would make a dent in the Asian market w/o the games to back it up. Obviously they had to downgrade expectations once DOA4 was pushed back. It’s still the must-have title for the console – I’d expect to see the sales increase progressively as more games are released.
Down the road, what do Xbox gamers in Japan have to look forward to? Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and Ninety-Nine Nights, not to mention a dozen other high-profile titles recently announced.
A “launch” by definition isn’t the end of a process, it’s the beginning. I’d agree that this wasn’t the best beginning.
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Matthew:
It becomes progressively more difficult for a console to gain traction as it ages. Japan is lost.
That having been said, I think it’s a fantastic product. Next Christmas will decide how it does here in the States. If Microsoft get Halo 3 out next November then things could get interesting.
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Matthew:
It becomes progressively more difficult for a console to gain traction as it ages. Japan is lost.
That having been said, I think it’s a fantastic product. Next Christmas will decide how it does here in the States. If Microsoft get Halo 3 out next November then things could get interesting.
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I can usually identify 360 owners and most other gamers by the big L on their forehead. Losers!
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I can usually identify 360 owners and most other gamers by the big L on their forehead. Losers!
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While the arcade isnt something new, (it was available to North American gamers for the Xbox1), the new approach is really making it popular.
The fact that it is so easy to download a game. You dont need to put a disc in, it is just there. Not only that, they are not all that mind intensive. You can sit there for 10 minutes and play, you dont have to set an hour of your time to complete 1 mission.
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While the arcade isnt something new, (it was available to North American gamers for the Xbox1), the new approach is really making it popular.
The fact that it is so easy to download a game. You dont need to put a disc in, it is just there. Not only that, they are not all that mind intensive. You can sit there for 10 minutes and play, you dont have to set an hour of your time to complete 1 mission.
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“Your conclusions are like going into a Costco in Kansas, finding some iPods on the shelf, and concluding that they aren’t selling well in the USA.”
Scobes,
What do iPods have to do with the conversation?
I see Microsoft employees are still unable to face fair-market failures without punching a competitor below the belt at the same time.
Is it any wonder people look down at Microsoft’s business methods?
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“Your conclusions are like going into a Costco in Kansas, finding some iPods on the shelf, and concluding that they aren’t selling well in the USA.”
Scobes,
What do iPods have to do with the conversation?
I see Microsoft employees are still unable to face fair-market failures without punching a competitor below the belt at the same time.
Is it any wonder people look down at Microsoft’s business methods?
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Anon: why do you take everything I say as a punch at a competitor? That’s your problem, not mine.
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Anon: why do you take everything I say as a punch at a competitor? That’s your problem, not mine.
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Ralph – you do realize that the Xbox 360 has had fewer returns than the industry standard expectation, right? Some guy posting a video of PGR3 crashing doesn’t mean the system has a problem.
Chris’ system crashed when we tried to play COD2 with 4-player split screen. The console wasn’t hot nor was the power supply (it was surprisingly cool actually). Turned out it was the map. We tried a different map and the problem went away. We played it for another hour or so on different maps and had no problems the rest of the night.
So it looks like Activision let a bug slip into COD2. Sucks, but what can ya do.
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Ralph – you do realize that the Xbox 360 has had fewer returns than the industry standard expectation, right? Some guy posting a video of PGR3 crashing doesn’t mean the system has a problem.
Chris’ system crashed when we tried to play COD2 with 4-player split screen. The console wasn’t hot nor was the power supply (it was surprisingly cool actually). Turned out it was the map. We tried a different map and the problem went away. We played it for another hour or so on different maps and had no problems the rest of the night.
So it looks like Activision let a bug slip into COD2. Sucks, but what can ya do.
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Scobes: it isn’t only you. It’s pretty much every Microsoft employee. In the post above mine, Brandon fingers Activision as the culprit for xbox crashes.
That’s laughably predictable.
Lots of people have posted their fixes to xbox 360 crashes – which they claim is overheating – by increasing airflow to the xbox 360, by suspending the power supply in air, etc. Are those activision’s bugs too?
What level did COD2 crash on, Brandon? Have you tried posting your findings to the activision COD2 boards? If the “bug” can’t be recreated with only one or two players, do you suppose a more plausible explanation for the crash on that particular level is due to the xbox overheating from the processor load caused by four players?
I wonder if Sony’s PS3 will crash when 7 people play a game simultaneously at 1080p on two screens.
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Scobes: it isn’t only you. It’s pretty much every Microsoft employee. In the post above mine, Brandon fingers Activision as the culprit for xbox crashes.
That’s laughably predictable.
Lots of people have posted their fixes to xbox 360 crashes – which they claim is overheating – by increasing airflow to the xbox 360, by suspending the power supply in air, etc. Are those activision’s bugs too?
What level did COD2 crash on, Brandon? Have you tried posting your findings to the activision COD2 boards? If the “bug” can’t be recreated with only one or two players, do you suppose a more plausible explanation for the crash on that particular level is due to the xbox overheating from the processor load caused by four players?
I wonder if Sony’s PS3 will crash when 7 people play a game simultaneously at 1080p on two screens.
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>Lots of people have posted their fixes to xbox 360 crashes – which they claim is overheating.
We played for more than six hours and there wasn’t any overheating problems on our unit.
But Pirillo doesn’t put his power supply on shag carpet or put it in a closed in entertainment center.
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>Lots of people have posted their fixes to xbox 360 crashes – which they claim is overheating.
We played for more than six hours and there wasn’t any overheating problems on our unit.
But Pirillo doesn’t put his power supply on shag carpet or put it in a closed in entertainment center.
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we played for hours last night and had three freezes
Funny when I was playing it with a friend, day after launch and said we had freeze’s/lock up’s, you and Brandon accused me of being a baldfaced liar. Overheats, glitchy games, multiplayer bugs, COD2 save file corruption, Ubisoft bugs, backwards compat. bad patches, PGR3 bugs, Activision bugs (yeah, COD2 full of them, found around 5 areas) whatever. I don’t care the cause, or the rants thereof, just damn well fix them. At least I feel vindicated. Do I get an apology?
I don’t care the cause the mere fact they happen is problem enough. Fix it. Maybe it is actually good that I get to wait. Leave it to Microsoft, I had a 1.1 PSU glitch on Xbox 1, but got it replaced anmd running fine ever since. Xbox 1 running great. 360 in one COD2 2 hour session, was running neck with Windows ME. What gives? You got it down with Xbox, why so much angst with 360?
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we played for hours last night and had three freezes
Funny when I was playing it with a friend, day after launch and said we had freeze’s/lock up’s, you and Brandon accused me of being a baldfaced liar. Overheats, glitchy games, multiplayer bugs, COD2 save file corruption, Ubisoft bugs, backwards compat. bad patches, PGR3 bugs, Activision bugs (yeah, COD2 full of them, found around 5 areas) whatever. I don’t care the cause, or the rants thereof, just damn well fix them. At least I feel vindicated. Do I get an apology?
I don’t care the cause the mere fact they happen is problem enough. Fix it. Maybe it is actually good that I get to wait. Leave it to Microsoft, I had a 1.1 PSU glitch on Xbox 1, but got it replaced anmd running fine ever since. Xbox 1 running great. 360 in one COD2 2 hour session, was running neck with Windows ME. What gives? You got it down with Xbox, why so much angst with 360?
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Brandon: I’ve owned quite some consoles ranging from the ColecoVision to some Nintendos and the PS 2, and apart from the latter, none of these has _ever_ crashed on me. There was a quality standard before Microsoft entered the scene, and it was definitely higher. In the days of the NES / SNES, these things just did not crash, and I have yet to hear from a Gamecube owner that their console ever crashed. Mine never has.
Sure, I’m a software developer myself, so we could argue that the XBox will eventually mature, and I’m sure it will. However, as a longtime console owner of various older devices, I’m just a user who expects that this thing “just works”. Technical complexity is no excuse here – Microsoft absolutely wanted to be first with the next-generation console, and the early adopters pay the highest prices in this console’s market lifespan for getting the most bugs.
Sony had some problems with DVD drives in the PS 2, and if you talk to those Sony guys, I’m sure that they will tell you that releasing service packs for the next five years (like with Windows XP) is _not_ an option for MS with this console because the gamers won’t tolerate that. Consoles simply have a different history…
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Brandon: I’ve owned quite some consoles ranging from the ColecoVision to some Nintendos and the PS 2, and apart from the latter, none of these has _ever_ crashed on me. There was a quality standard before Microsoft entered the scene, and it was definitely higher. In the days of the NES / SNES, these things just did not crash, and I have yet to hear from a Gamecube owner that their console ever crashed. Mine never has.
Sure, I’m a software developer myself, so we could argue that the XBox will eventually mature, and I’m sure it will. However, as a longtime console owner of various older devices, I’m just a user who expects that this thing “just works”. Technical complexity is no excuse here – Microsoft absolutely wanted to be first with the next-generation console, and the early adopters pay the highest prices in this console’s market lifespan for getting the most bugs.
Sony had some problems with DVD drives in the PS 2, and if you talk to those Sony guys, I’m sure that they will tell you that releasing service packs for the next five years (like with Windows XP) is _not_ an option for MS with this console because the gamers won’t tolerate that. Consoles simply have a different history…
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“Anon: do you believe everything you read on the Internet? Ever think that maybe a competitor of ours is wanting you to believe no one is buying them in Japan? Hmmm?”
Are you saying that CNN is making up stories about the 360 sales in Japan Robert? When you say things like that, why do you then ask anon why he/she thinks you are taking punches at the competitors?
As far as the failure rate being under the industry standard. I think Sony and Microsoft helped raise that standard with the original Xbox and PS2 releases. hehehe
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“Anon: do you believe everything you read on the Internet? Ever think that maybe a competitor of ours is wanting you to believe no one is buying them in Japan? Hmmm?”
Are you saying that CNN is making up stories about the 360 sales in Japan Robert? When you say things like that, why do you then ask anon why he/she thinks you are taking punches at the competitors?
As far as the failure rate being under the industry standard. I think Sony and Microsoft helped raise that standard with the original Xbox and PS2 releases. hehehe
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The audio capabilities work very well ??
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The audio capabilities work very well ??
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