Four Independent Developers Take Home Share of $75,000 Today Microsoft Corp. revealed the highly-anticipated winners of its 2009 Dream.Build.Play Challenge, which encourages independent and hobbyist game developers to create fun and innovative video games for Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio.
Four winners received a share of $75,000 in cash prizes and could have the opportunity to publish their games on Xbox LIVE Arcade. This year’s global Dream.Build.Play Challenge garnered over 350 games from more than 100 countries. Those who participated in the contest, and are located in a supported region, will have the opportunity to publish their games on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games Channel.
Dean Dodrill of the United States earned the grand prize of $40,000 for “Dust: An Elysian Tail” a side-scrolling, action role-playing game in which the player controls Dust, a man searching for himself. Set in the beautiful yet mysterious world of Falana, this game chronicles Dust’s journey to liberate an oppressed village and rediscover his past. Meticulously hand-animated and painted, “Dust: An Elysian Tail” welcomes exploration, action, and above all else, mastery of a fighting system that rewards skilled gamers. Panya Inversin and his team from the United States took home second place and $20,000 for their stunning 3-D, four-player brawler/space-shooter, “Max Blastronaut”. Nivel21 Entertainment, led by Mauricio Garcia from Spain, received third place and $10,000 for the challenging puzzle game “Rotor’scope – The Secret of the Endless Energy”. China’s Hu Ling and his team came in fourth place and received $5,000 for the stylish martial arts action game “HurricaneX2 Evolution”.
“Once again, the community of indie developers has blown us away with the quality of games submitted to Dream.Build.Play this year,” XNA General Manager Boyd Multerer said. “Beyond the creative talent unleashed with XNA Game Studio, it’s great to see Xbox LIVE Indie Games coming into its own as the home for independent console games.”
Earlier this year, Microsoft released the next iteration of its industry-leading game development toolset, XNA Game Studio 3.1. By building on the momentum of XNA Game Studio 3.0, which made it easier for developers of all levels to build great games, this update takes full advantage of new Xbox LIVE features and strong existing partnerships. With XNA Game Studio 3.1, developers are able to add support for customized Avatars and enables support for Xbox LIVE Parties. XNA Game Studio 3.1 also benefits from improvements and new partner product support from Synapse Gaming with their SunBurn products, Toon Boom Animation Inc. with their product Toon Boom Studio, and Autodesk with the Softimage 7.5 Mod Tool. More information about Dream.Build.Play, XNA Game Studio 3.1 and the XNA Creators Club Online can be found by visiting http://creators.xna.com
Today, Microsoft unveils a “Halo 3: ODST” live-action short, a 90 second ad spot for the eagerly awaited Xbox 360 exclusive, “Halo 3: ODST.” The ad debuts today exclusively on MySpace at www.myspace.com/gametrailers and IGN.com. The “Halo 3: ODST” live-action short is a haunting, action-packed production that charts the life of a UNSC Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, or ODST.
In addition to the online debut of the 90 second short, Halo fans in the United States will be treated to a special, extended two minute 30 second version exclusively on Spike TV on Monday September 7. The extended version will premiere during “Band of Brothers” at 10:30 PM ET/PT.
The short will also be available to download on Xbox LIVE starting September 8.
For the production of the “Halo 3: ODST” live-action short, Microsoft and Bungie partnered with ad agency TAG SF, Legacy Effects (props), Asylum (visual effects) and Final Cut (editing). The short features an original musical score written and produced by Human. The short was directed by Rupert Sanders with MJZ, the director of the award-winning “Halo 3” ad spot “Believe.” The short was filmed on location in Budapest, Hungary.
Also launching today at 6:00 p.m. PT is a unique “Halo 3: ODST” interactive experience site on www.xbox.com/halo. Visitors will be in control of an Operations of Naval Intelligence (ONI) application that blends science, psychology and analysis to evaluate which ODST candidates are best suited for upcoming missions in “Halo 3: ODST.” Featuring over 20 minutes of interactive content, visitors can interact with the evaluations of the four ODST squad members they will be fighting alongside in “Halo 3: ODST” in order to dive deeper into the fiction of the game. Microsoft and Bungie worked with AKQA SF and TAG SF on the experience site.
Suit up and prepare to drop September 22 when “Halo 3: ODST” hits retail stores worldwide.
Do you want to know if your favorite bands or tracks are on the new "Guitar Hero 5" for Xbox 360?? If you do, check out the entire list of bands & tracks listed below.
The set list is entirely made up of master recordings instead of cover versions, including those from over 30 musicians who have never appeared in a music game before. This time the game is geared towards playing songs in a four-person band experience, including lead and bass guitars, drums, and vocals.
Anyway, onto the complete list.. Get involved in the 360-HQ forum discussions for Guitar Hero 5 from the links located on the bottom of this story.
Guitar Hero 5 - Bands & Track List
- 3 Doors Down: Kryptonite
- A Perfect Circle: Judith
- AFI: Medicate
- Arctic Monkeys: Brianstorm
- Attack! Attack!: You And Me
- Band Of Horses: Cigarettes, Wedding Bands
- Beastie Boys: Gratitude
- Beck: Gamma Ray
- Billy Idol: Dancing With Myself
- Billy Squier: Lonely Is The Night
- Blink 182: The Rock Show
- Blur: Song 2
- Bob Dylan: All Along The Watchtower
- Bon Jovi: You Give Love A Bad Name
- Brand New: Sowing Season (Yeah)
- Bush: Comedown
- Children of Bodom: Done With Everything, Die For Nothing
- Coldplay: In My Place
- Darker My Love: Blue Day
- Darkest Hour: Demon(s)
- David Bowie: Fame
- Deep Purple: Woman From Tokyo ('99 Remix)
- Dire Straits: Sultans Of Swing
- Duran Duran: Hungry Like The Wolf
- Eagles Of Death Metal: Wannabe In LA
- Elliot Smith: L.A.
- Elton John: Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)
- Face to Face: Disconnected
- Garbage: Only Happy When It Rains
- Gorillaz: Feel Good Inc.
- Gov't Mule: Streamline Woman
Having just got my hands on this game and only played for a short time i would have to say it is a solid 9.5 to 10 in my book, with that in mind and the fact that the feed back from all game sites has been just as generous we could be looking at a part 2 in the future.
VG247 reported: The most obvious question in the history of obvious questions: is Rocksteady working on a sequel to the almost universally acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum? Shall we ask Paul Crocker, AA’s lead narrative designer? Oh, go on then.
“We’re just waiting to see if people like the game,” said Paul, speaking in this week’s VG247 podcast.
But surely the UK darling-of-the-moment’s putting together DLC for the original, right?
“We don’t talk about the DLC, I’m afraid,” Crocker added.
“The DLC”? You’ll just have to wait to see what that’s all about.
With Halo 3: ODST releasing right around the corner (September 22 2009.) We at 360-HQ figured we would offer up everyone a little treat here. The official Achievements list with pictures! Remember this is an exclusive list and 360-HQ is where you saw it first
Well not much to say about this other than I'm super stoked to play this game, there are 47 Achievements and it looks like all but 3 can be achieved while offline, and only 2 requiring you to play online with other people. Let's hope those difficulty ones are stackable like in Halo 3.
Stoked to play this, comments? Post on our forums here
Click the link below to check out the achievement list and all info regarding Halo 3: ODST
It may have been a little while since the OnLive concept hit the news feeds but i would be willing to bet no one has fully forgot it, seems the closed beta has started but from the report below it seems we all might have a chance to still get in on it.
Steve Perlman blogs: It’s been a very busy and productive few months for OnLive. We’ve been focused on evolving the OnLive technology, installing lots of servers in our data centers and tuning the OnLive® Game Service based on feedback from our internal Beta testers.
And, I’m very excited to say that we are now opening the OnLive Beta to outside gamers who signed up on our website. It’s not too late to sign up if you haven’t already. We are very much looking forward to hearing from gamers all about their experience with the OnLive Service.
But first, let me tell you a little bit about OnLive Beta and how we are rolling it out.
One of the key challenges that OnLive technology addresses is providing a high-quality, fast-response gaming experience over a wide range of situations: different speeds/locations/types of broadband services, a variety of different PC and Mac configurations, several kinds of input and display devices, etc. So, a major focus of OnLive Beta is to test as many of these different situations as we can.
When you sign up for OnLive Beta, you tell us some general information about your ISP, your computer configuration and your location. We use this information to organize Beta testers into test groups so that our engineering team can focus at different times on testing different situations. If you are a potential fit for a particular test group, we’ll send you an invitation email, asking you to run a detailed Performance Test on your network connection and your computer configuration. The results of the Performance Test will then feed back up to OnLive, and if you are a fit for a test group at some point during Beta, we’ll let you install the OnLive plug-in into your browser. Then, we’ll ask you to spend some time playing…um, I mean…testing games OnLive.
As testers interact with the service and play games, OnLive will be constantly logging technical data, and then afterward, we’ll ask testers to give us feedback about their personal experiences with OnLive. This feedback will help us continue to evolve the features and experience of the OnLive Service, so it’s really important we get lots of feedback to bring the gaming community the best videogame platform and service possible.
Another important goal of the Beta is to shake out bugs so we can fix them. So, it’s very important that you let us know what bugs you run into.
Beta is an AWESOME milestone for OnLive, capping many years of work. We’re really looking forward to hearing what you think.
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