Games For Windows Magazine Goes Online

Games For Windows (GFW) announced that they will no longer be issuing paper form magazines. Ziff Davis and Microsoft announced the change yesterday and that GFW will now be an online entity.

The magazine has taken many changes over it's 27 year run, but this is a common problem among traditional newspapers and magazines. All the news people want can be found online sooner and from many different resources. I don't read GFW, but I do enjoy the weekly podcast that addresses some PC gaming news, but they mainly talk about the gaming environment and politics. I don't see that changing since it's a pretty popular podcast on the 1up site.

The Zune Gaming System

Remember XNA from the Xbox team? It's the tools for hobbyist and pro game developers to make games for XBLA. Well Microsoft's, Chris Satchell, demoed how XNA will work across GFW, Xbox 360, and also your Zune. Major Nelson has an audio version of the announcement as well as some specs for the XNA games.

Now Zune owners will be allowed to play some of the XNA games on their Zune multimedia player at no cost. Some restrictions include:

• Not available in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan
• Xbox 360 HDD Required
• You'll Need a Zune

There has been no announcement as to whether or not this will be opened up to other MP3 players, but I'm pretty sure it won't be. Also I'm not sure what quality of games we'll see from this free community, but I'm pretty sure there will be a couple of hits in the pile of crap that will emerge. I know Jeff is pretty excited about this update.

XYBA Podcast Ep 11

We are back after several busy weekends that prevented us from getting together. The latest XYBA has lots of news and opinions about gaming for you to soak your gaming brains in.

0:00 - Intro Jam
0:20 - Introductions: Josh, Andy, and Charlie
0:50 - Games We Be Playin: Overlord, Shadowrun, Bioshock Demo, Orphan Feast and Psi Ops
10:41 - Talk about Josh's Xbox 360 death experience
13:14 - Gaming News: Halo 3 has 4 player co-op, George Lucas is a sellout, GTA IV delayed to 2008, Andy and Charlie not buying Rockband, Bioshock news how shocking, Microsoft lays down the laws for machinimas, King of Kong movie released, Metroid getting good reviews from Nintendo Power, Bungie Pro, Games for Windows Live will support XP, COD4 beta coming to 360, and Nintendo bringing original games to Wii
1:01:50 - Roundtable Discussion: Games built with only Multiplayer vs games built with only singleplayer. Shadowrun vs Bioshock
1:17:00 - Indian Summer video
1:17:50 - Games we are looking forward to: Bioshock, Mass Effect, Stranglehold, Super Dodgeball DS, Two Worlds, Halo 3
1:25:20 - Rants: Andy wants to know why Josh hates Eric and Grant.
1:27:21 - Shoutouts, Jigsaws Gamefly Hookup, Happy Birthday Andy, and End Music

Download XYBA Podcast Ep 11

Shadowrun Coming in June

I told ya, and I was right! Shadowrun is not coming in April. As part of a recent press release about Games for Windows Live coming out May 8th, there's a small blurb about Shadowrun coming out in June.


Shadowrun will be the first game to be cross platform on both Games for Windows and Xbox Live. The second game that will be cross platform is Uno. Which seems less exciting to me.

Free Gaming Magazine

You want some free news? Other than the free news you steal from us?

Here is a free year long subscription to Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. Supplies are limited so hurry up.

I know I will use my free subscription to try and post some PC news so you crybabies stop saying there's not enough PC news.