Xbox Live Price Increase Coming

Microsoft has announced that they will be increasing the cost for a year of Xbox Live from $50 to $60 come November 1st.

Microsoft claims this price increase is due to inflation, but the increase will only affect Canada, Mexico, the UK and the United States. It's probably also no coincidence that November is the month Microsoft's Kinect controller will be released for Xbox.

Of course, thrifty shoppers can usually find a cheaper year long membership card on various sites on the internets. Right now, Amazon is selling year long membership cards for just under $40.

Editorial: Why Microsoft Points Don't Make Sense

Okay. Many complaints have been given about Microsoft Points for the Xbox Live marketplace. They help Microsoft avoid excess credit card transaction fees. You can only buy in batches. For some reason, 80 points equals approximately $1 US. But my main complaint - the bulk purchases don't follow typical bulk purchase mentality. Buying more in bulk actually costs you more!

I can buy 400 points for $4.99. 800 points costs $9.99. 1600 = $19.99 and so on up to 6000 points = $74.99.

These numbers make absolutely no sense. People don't typically buy the 24 pack of toilet paper because they're going to need that much toilet paper tonight(unless they are TPing some jerk's house). They buy it because bulk is cheaper and then you have it when you need it.

If I bought 6000 points at just 400 points each, it would only cost me $74.85.

Sure it's only $0.14 cheaper, but the point is that the bulk purchase should be the cheaper option!

Come on, Microsoft! Bulk should always be cheaper!

Dead Rising 2 Webisodes Now LIVE

The first three webisodes of Dead Rising 2's Zombrex Dead Rising Sun are now available on the Xbox Live service under Game Videos. They are all free and shows a live action zombie outbreak in Japan. The full movie will be released on Xbox Live August 11th.

Personally, I love the Dead Rising series, but I found the videos pretty terrible. It uses POV shots and flash backs but in an amateurish way. The acting is also sub-par.

Of course, the first three parts are free so you can't argue with the price!

1 vs. 100 Beta

So I finally got to play the 1 vs. 100 Beta tonight. I played for the entire two hour long show. Overall, I like it.

It's a little confusing at first. There were over 100,000 people playing and at first I thought I was in the Mob. But I was actually in the Crowd (which is where most people play).

In the Crowd, you can have a party of four or the game will assign you into a party of four total. This way you have a little competition within your group and it's not too overwhelming.

I actually found most of the questions pretty easy, sometimes ridiculously so. I never got to be the One or the Mob tonight, but I hear it's based on weekly stats of how much you play, your response time and percent of correct answers. Playing the Extended Play shows during the week is supposed to help increase your chance of being the One or the Mob. It seemed to me that the One was usually in the Mob right before being chosen.

For the most part, only the One or the Mob can actually win prizes(although no prizes are being awarded during the Beta(even though it looks like they are because they need to test all that stuff too)). The Crowd plays for fun and prestige.

Once Beta is over, there are supposed to be restrictions - you can only be the One once per season, you can only be in the Mob once per episode.

If you are in the Mob, you get eliminated when you answer a question incorrectly. You still answer until the end of the game but you are ineligible for any prizes.

As the One, your prizes increase for every ten Mob members eliminated. You can then at certain points choose to walk away with your prize(microsoft points) or keep playing. If you answer a question wrong, the prize gets split amongst all remaining Mob members.

The top three players in the whole game (Crowd and Mob) also get prizes.

This game is free to play for all Xbox Live Gold Members.

Fable 2 DLC Next Week

Official word has come down today that Fable 2's first downloadable content, Knot's Island, will be available on January 13th for 800 Microsoft points($10). The DLC had been delayed by Microsoft certification.

Lionhead Studios will also be releasing a patch for Fable 2 on the same day.

I guess I should get around to beating Fable 2 before I play the DLC.

Free Avatar

Microsoft released an interesting little toy on xbox.com - Free Your Avatar. It allows anyone to make various pictures with Xbox Live avatars.

You type in someone's gamertag and it pulls up their avatar. You then drag the avatar into the picture where you can move it around and/or resize it. You can even drag in multiple avatars. You can also add in a background and a line of text.

But you can only add one line of text(in black or white). If you want to add other lines, you'll have to do it with a picture editor after exporting the image.



The weird thing about it is that you can use anyone's avatar. So you can make pictures with griefers and people you have problems with on Xbox Live.

I'm a (short-lived) Xbox Live Celeb!

So, Josh and I spent like 50 hours playing Saint's Row 2 together. It's a great game and if I ever get time from playing Fable 2 and Fallout 3, I'll probably write about it. Anyway, the last few days I keep getting random messages from gamers that I don't know. Today I found out why - I'm a short-lived Saint's Row 2 celebrity.

The first message was masterfully written as "HOW DID U THROW SUM 1 SO FAR??????"

After a second, I realized that he was talking about Saint's Row 2. I ignored it but meant to write back later. I just thought he was trying to get the achievement for throwing someone in the game.

Today I got a bunch of other messages from strangers asking about the same thing. When I finally figured out why, I looked at the leaderboard for Saint's Row 2. Some of the early messages make me think that I was number one on the Throwing leaderboard for a while. When I looked at it, I was number 3 and I'm currently number 4 because one of the guys I told how to do it got it down enough to capture second place.

There's my celebrity status. Throwing people 6,971 feet in Saint's Row 2. :-P

Halo 3 Maintains Number One on Live

For the second week in a row, Halo 3 has maintained its number one rank on Xbox Live. In fact, very few of the top ten changed positions from last week.

The top ten for the week beginning July 21st are:

1. Halo 3
2. Call of Duty 4
3. GTA IV
4. Gears of War
5. Guitar Hero III
6. Rock Band
7. Battlefield: Bad Company
8. Too Human Demo
9. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
10. NCAA Football 09

Gamers must be loving that new and free Cold Storage map!

CONFIRMED: Cross-Platform Games Free on Silver

Some gamers have discovered that some games are now playable online by Xbox Live Silver members. The playable games appear to be cross-platform games(games where Xbox 360 gamers can play against PC gamers). Microsoft has not made any official announcement about this as of yet.

The games that have been tested so far by gamers are Shadowrun and Lost Planet. I'm not sure how many other games are cross-platform on the 360, but gamers guess that this is a result of Games for Windows Live going free.



Edited: 7/28 Microsoft has confirmed that cross-platform games are free to play online to Silver members. However, this will only last until the fall dashboard update.

And the only other game that is cross-platform is Universe at War.

Halo 3 Back on Top

Last week, Halo 3 retook its crown on Xbox Live from Call of Duty 4. Call of Duty 4 has been ruling the Xbox Live usage stats pretty much since release. It remains to be seen if this is a fluke or if Halo 3 is back to stay.

I'll tell you who's to blame for this. Me. Yep. We had a LAN party and played Halo 3 online for like 15 hours or so at the house with a bunch of gamers.

Actually, I felt like the number of players playing the various games were a lot lower than last time I'd played online(which had been quite a while). Maybe a lot of people were logging on for the Double XP of Griffball for the weekend...

Opinion: Xbox Live Marketplace Needs Reworking

With the news that Microsoft is delisting some arcade games, I decided to go online and look at some of these games. And the Marketplace is definitely a mess. I don't think that delisting games is going to really make the Marketplace more manageable.

There are a lot of good things on the Marketplace. The problem is finding them!

There are so many things on the Marketplace and the navigation system is terrible. Even when you find things that look like they might be decent, you can't usually tell from the description.

I downloaded the full version of Warlords, thinking it was the PC game Warlords I remembered from high school. Instead, it was some other game called Warlords. Is it too much to ask for a screenshot or two in the description area?

Also, why do only some of the Gamer Pics have pictures of what pictures you are actually getting? Many of the Gamer Pic packs make you just guess what the pictures will be or do a search on the internet to try to find it.

The categories themselves also need work. There should definitely be at least a "Free" category. And I could use a search feature or a page scroll option. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm looking for, but I have to scroll through hundreds of titles to get there.

1 Million Downloaded Daily

Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for XBox, has said that XBL users are downloading 1 million pieces of content on a daily basis.

That is crazy. I imagine that average gets boosted by downloads, like new maps and free games.

Xbox Live Time

Okay, I'm just going to put it out there. I've looked for an answer and haven't seen one yet. Why hasn't Xbox Live changed time yet? Has nobody noticed that when the latest daylight savings change happened that Xbox Live ignored it?

Now I know the daylight savings weren't on their normal time, and this messed up a lot of things: smart clocks, VCRs, my GPS device, but you'd think that Microsoft would have noticed and fixed it. It seems like it should be a simple fix.

Halo 3 Maps Now Free

Just in case you live under a rock(or don't get Josh's e-mails(why he doesn't post instead I'll never know), the Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack is now free. You can download it off of Xbox Live.

There are three maps in the pack: Standoff, Rat's Nest and Foundry. It also includes some new items for you to play with in Forge as well. I bought them when they were 800 points($10). They're pretty fun. (And for some reason, Josh wouldn't download them even when I gave him points.)

The next Halo 3 map pack - the Legendary Map Pack - will be released April 15th for 800 points($10).

Free XBLA Game This Week

Remember when Microsoft had those Xbox Live problems around Christmas because of all the new gamers? And remember when Microsoft promised a free XBLA game to make up for the outages? (And then remember when some moron thought that wasn't enough and tried to sue Microsoft for $5 million?) Well, the free game is availabe this week!

The free game will be Undertow, a relatively new XBLA game that takes place underwater and has had a lot of good reviews. The game normally costs 800 Microsoft Points($10). If you already have the game, they say you can contact Xbox Support about a "possible" refund. Don't hold your breath, though.

Undertow will only be free for Gold and Silver members from January 23rd - January 28th.

Give the Gift of MS Points

Well, you could always give the gift, but it used to only be in these gift card forms. Now Microsoft is allowing US members buy Microsoft Points for other gamers, as long as they know those gamers' Windows Live IDs.

Unfortunately, you can't yet buy M$ points for people just by knowing their Gamertag(which would make more sense).

You can buy and give the points from Major Nelson.

Gamercards Now Track Old Games Too!

After the recent "Fall" Dashboard Update for the Xbox 360, gamercards are now keeping track of when you play original Xbox games on your system as well. The symbol for all older games is a white original Xbox and the achievements are always 0 out of 0.

Now, seeing these older games on someone's gamercard is only available when looking at their gamercard while on Xbox Live. The website xbox.com and other gamercard tracking sites do not show the older games.

It's definitely an interesting little tidbit which will help me to cyberstalk what my friends are doing even more! That's right, I saw you playing Spongebob: The Battle for Bikini Bottom!

Make Your Own Themes

I found this posting that shows a template for making a background for your Xbox 360 Dashboard. Now you can finally have that theme of your dog!

You can actually make any picture a background by looking at it through the Pictures option and then pressing Y to make it your background. This template makes it so the image isn't stretched or covered by the blades.

The only problem is that whatever picture you make your background is the background for the different sections. You can't make multiple backgrounds.

I even made this sweet XYBA Podcast theme:

Friends of Friends Coming to Xbox Live

Microsoft has announced a new feature that will be included in their December 4th Fall Update: Friends of Friends. This feature will allow Xbox Live members to browse their friends' friends lists.

Microsoft says that this feature was inspired from websites like Myspace and Facebook. In such social websites, users are able to find other people they know by browsing their friends' friends lists.

I don't think it will work as well on Xbox Live, though. You can't see as much personal info on Xbox Live. So I could scan Josh's friends list and see his Xbox Live friends, but that doesn't mean I would recognize them.

(And for those that scan my friends list. I just cleaned it out the other day. I'm down to pretty much only people I know from real life. Sorry to those who did not survive the Friends List Purge of 2007, but I got tired of constantly getting notices that so and so was online when I never play with so and so.)

Happy Birthday, Xbox Live!

November 15th is Xbox Live birthday. The gaming service turns five years old. Soon it'll be off to kindergarten to learn about tying shoes, the alphabet and socializing with others.

But in order to celebrate the birthday, Microsoft is giving gifts to its Xbox Live members. Free Carcassone XBLA games for everyone! (Provided you log in and download it on the 15th.)

What the hell is Carcassone? Some kind of medieval risk type game with cards. I guess. I really have no idea. It's one of those Xbox Live Arcade games that probably most of us have ignored. It came out in June.

But I'm still happy about Xbox Live turning five. I've enjoyed the service very much. (Even though it's been laggy and buggy the last week or so - growing pains, I guess.) And I look forward to enjoying it for years to come.

Also, anyone who joined Xbox Live in 2002 will get 500 Microsoft points. (I might actually qualify for that. It was close, but for me it might have been January 2003.)