GameStop has been dropping hints about its digital download plans for a little while now, but it looks to have done its most extensive and official talking about the matter yet at the recent BMO Capital Management Digital Entertainment conference, where it confirmed that it will start testing the program “early next year” with kiosks in an unspecified number of stores. That program will apparently work in conjunction with services “such as Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Live and Sony Corp’s PlayStation Network,” and will focus primarily on add-on content rather than full game downloads. Why’s that, you ask? Well it seems that GameStop thinks “a large market for full game downloads is not imminent, (but) the add-on downloadable market will grow” — a view that some would obviously beg to differ with.

[Via Joystiq]

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GameStop to start testing game downloads early next year originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm all will debut on the Microsoft Xbox Live service beginning on Nov. 17, Microsoft officials said Thursday.

Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten made the announcement at the NewTeeVee Live conference on Thursday, according to a company spokesman.

Users will be able to update their Facebook status or send and read Twitter tweets directly from the Xbox Live interface, the company said. Last.fm stations will also be available, complete with gamer-specific stations, Microosft said. Microsoft will also enable Zune Video on the Xbox 360 interface, with up to 1080p video available instantly. A “News and More” section will add content from MSNBC, The New Yorker, and the cartoon “Dilbert”.

“We’re delivering some truly exciting social entertainment experiences to our members,” Whitten said in a statement. “Xbox Live’s differentiator has always been our community, and we’ve already seen a tremendous response to these features in our public preview. It’s the community that drives us forward and allows us to pioneer new ways of connecting people through the entertainment they love.”

Users need to have an Xbox Gold account. For those that don’t, however, beginning on November 20 at 9 PM PT, Xbox Live Silver members can enjoy a free upgrade until the end of the on Nov. 23.

This article was written on May 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

What timing. The Halo 3 beta was just launched out to a pool of overly-excited fans, with a chunk of them undoubtedly using a modded Xbox. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft is cracking the whip and denying consoles with modded firmware access to Live.  This means that they aren’t able to play the most anticipated game of the year with others online.

Any Xbox that has been detected to have modified firmware will be banned from connecting to live.  For those who liked to play their games multi-player with others online, this isn’t a good day for them. For those who don’t care and would rather play games by themselves on their modded console, this is no big deal. The image below shows the message some users are receiving:

Generally, the comments around the web tend to be positive and people are happy that Microsoft is taking the steps to cut them off.  It’s another way for Microsoft to help curb piracy, and a big way to help eliminate unfair play online.

In part of a statement from Microsoft, they said that “This is an important part of our efforts to try and maintain a fair gaming environment for the large majority of gamers that play by the rules.”Those who have accounts that are found to have a modified system will still have access to Live, they just won’t be able to do it from their console.

Clearly Microsoft can do whatever they want with Live, but do you think they were right in doing this?

Source: Xbox 360 Fanboy

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Twitter and Facebook, on your Xbox. It’s weird, like people who put ketchup on their eggs.

Tweet Tweet

Twitter actually makes the most natural jump to the Xbox. It’s a really basic app, with your timeline, search, and trending topics, but it works, largely because the vertical stream is preserved, even if you can only see four (very legible) tweets at a time, so you won’t be power-browsing, TweetDeck style, by any means. It’s slow, and typing’s reeeeeeeally frustrating, like having your eyeballs poked out one pinprick at a time, if you don’t have the chatpad (part of thinks this entire update is all a giant conspiracy to sell more Xbox 360 chatpads). Updates can sometimes take forever to hit your Twitter stream, too. Still, it’s pretty, and works the best of the new apps.

Facebookin’

Facebook uses the standard Xbox tile UI instead of rolling its interface, like Twitter did. Which is disorienting (and disappointing), since you’re browsing through a stream horizontally, one choppily-animated tile at a time. Why is the tile-sliding animation so terrible on a monster console like the Xbox 360? We don’t know. Like Twitter, it’s basic—focused on Newsfeeds. Your groups are ported over, so you can browse their newsfeeds individually, but you literally have to browse one post at a time, which is agonizing, making you far less inclined to comment on updates.

The interface works much better, and feels way more natural, with photo albums. What’s interesting is that, at least in the preview, your friends have to link their Xbox Live and Facebook accounts together themselves in order to show up in the “Xbox Live Friends on Facebook” (and vice versa) pages—you can’t manually go in and link Jason Chen’s accounts so you’ll see them together in your app. That might change though, with the final rollout. (Here’s some video of it, from Kotaku.)

Last.fm

This would be would be waaaaaay better if it could play in the background. It can’t. Meaning once you link your accounts and all of you stations are nicely and automatically ported over, to listen to Last.fm, you just have to sit there and leave it running, with band pictures floating up to your screen every once in a while. Lame. (You can see it in action on Kotaku.)

Zune Video Marketplace

Not a whole lot to write home about yet besides 1080p streams—it’s a video store on Xbox, with movies for rent or purchase, TV shows, trailers—but Zune Video is here and it, um, works. You browse through the standard Xbox interface, like Netflix. We didn’t get a chance to use the possible killer feature—Party mode, where you can watch stuff with your friends—yet, but if anything makes the Zune video store really stand out, that could be it. Previews, alas, didn’t come in at 1080p, even over FiOS, which clearly has the bandwidth to deliver.

All in all, the new apps, they’re interesting, they add something, but with the exception of Zune Video Marketplace, aren’t critical. At least for now.

Microsoft VP Shane Kim has been anything but a stranger to these pages over the years: we first had a sit-down with the man way back in the halcyon days of early 2006, and as recently as this summer he was discussing the probable-possibility of Xbox games making their way onto mobile devices. Now, after nineteen years with the company and a career spanning the original Xbox through the present day (and Project Natal), our man has officially announced his retirement at the end of the year. Apparently his duties will be split between Dennis Durkin, who’s been named chief operating officer of the company’s video game unit, and Phil Spencer, who will oversee Microsoft Game Studios. Kim has yet to proclaim any post-Microsoft plans, saying he intends to relax and spend time with friends and family. Now that that’s out of the way, Microsoft, when can we expect to see Live Anywhere up and running?

Filed under: Gaming

Microsoft Xbox head honcho Shane Kim retires, declines to offer us a piece of cake originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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