Gamespot recently released an official Q&A, trying to clean up this whole Jeff Gerstmann mess and I saw this in their sidebar.
Speaking with a Gamespot employee yesterday who asked not to be named for this story, we've learned that, despite the neutral nature of the Gamespot news item on the matter, the editorial staff is said to be "devastated, gutted and demoralized" over the removal of former editorial director Jeff Gerstmann. While the termination of Gerstmann, a respected fixture at Gamespot, was pitched to his remaining colleagues by management as a "mutual decision", it was anything but, we're told.
The confusion over the reasons for Gerstmann's termination, compounded with a lack of transparency from management has created a feeling of "irreconcilable despair" that may eventually lead to an exodus of Gamespot editorial staffers. "Our credibility," said the source, "is in ruins." Over the course of the previous days, a "large number of Gamespot editors" have expressed their intentions to leave. Tales of emotionally deflated peers, with no will to remain at the site, were numerous.
Unless cooler heads prevail or concerns are addressed, Gamespot could see "mass resignations", our source revealed.
Rank and file employees of the Gamespot organization are unaware of the real reasons behind Gerstmann's termination. Our source admitted that Eidos was less than pleased with the review scores for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, but the team has "dealt with plenty of unhappy publishers before." Our contact stressed that "Money has never played a role in reviews before" and that "[Gamespot] has never altered a score." No pressure from management or sales has been exercised to remove or alter content, the source reiterated.
However, the source did speculate that disagreements between Gertsmann and VP of games Josh Larson may have been the root cause of the former being terminated. Larson, successor to former editor in chief Greg Kasavin, was described as out of touch with the employees who report to him. The VP is the one allegedly responsible for telling Gamespot editorial staff that it was Gerstmann's "tone" that was at the heart of his dismissal.
Midway's Harvey Smith has admitted that relatively low review scores for Blacksite: Area 51 are "no surprise", admitting to various problems during development.
Speaking at the Montreal International Game Summit 2007, Smith pulled no punches: "This project was so f*cked up," reports Wired.
Smith said that he wasn't all that enamoured with the Area 51 property when he first came onboard, but a rush to completion became a bigger problem as development went on.
"It took eight months to get one thing working," he said. "With a year to go, the game was disastrously off rails." It even "went straight from alpha to final," leaving virtually no time to spend play-testing the game.
Asked why he was being so honest about all this - and his belief that they "deserved" a critical hammering - Smith said: "I believe in personal accountability."
The comments won't please publisher Midway. Area 51: Blacksite is due out on PC and Xbox 360 tomorrow in Europe, with a PS3 release also on the way.
Silver subscribers will be forced to wait a week to download new content such as demos from Xbox Live Marketplace following Microsoft’s latest Xbox 360 dashboard update.
Apparently it pays to be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber. According to Microsoft’s Major Nelson, gamers who are only registered for the free version of Xbox Live will from now have to wait a week longer than Xbox Live Gold subscribers to access new content such as game demos.
“Just a reminder that if you have a Silver account, you won’t have access to free content on the Marketplace (like demos) when they are first posted," Major Nelson writes on his blog. "That content will be available to Gold level exclusively for one week, after which Silver members will have access to the free content.
“If you have a Silver account and you see a piece of content that has a red circle with a slash through it you’ll have to wait until a week after the content is released to access it.
“This is not done to annoy our Silver members,” he adds. “Limited time exclusive access to content is just one of the many benefits of having a Gold Xbox Live account.”
Xbox Live’s free Silver subscription service allows gamers with an Xbox 360, a hard drive and a broadband connection to create a gamer profile, create a friends list, to send and receive text and voice messages, as well as to access Xbox Live Marketplace (including Xbox Live Arcade, demos, and trailers). Prior to Microsoft’s recent Xbox 360 fall dashboard update Silver subscribers weren't subject to any time restrictions when it came to accessing Xbox Live content.
BUNGIE has made available a valuable tool that may give you an edge in your online battle plans..
In any battle situation, Knowlege is power. Knowing your enemy, and his tactics and knowing the mistakes of those that have come before you will always give you an advantage. Bungie offers access to its " Global Heat Maps" (no they dont have anything to do with Global Warming). It is a compileation of information on the habbits of online players in multiplayer Halo3 games.
The Heat Maps show you exactly in a map where certain things happen most. Where are most sniper kills made from, where is the most likely place you will get sniped, where are most people killed by rockets etc.
You can choose a online map, ask where people make kills from or where people get killed, and also the specific weapon used in that action.
Lets say you are a sniper hater and want to know where snipers hang out. You go to the map you are interested in, pick Kills with a sniper. Then you will see heat blotches where the most kills are made from AKA Most popular sniper spots. Ok so now you know where the guys are now where to set up with your sniper? well now choose "killed by sniper"... The same type of thing comes up showing where most people are killed by snipers ( where to avoid) now you can choose a possition where people never die from snipers and set up in one of those areas that also gives you line of sight of the sniper dens.
Or maybe you would like to see where most deaths by Warthog drivers (hit and runs) occure, this would be a great spot to leave a mine with highest chance of getting a kill.
These maps work with all weapon types, Let the hunting begin...
With the most recent dashboard update Microsoft has included DivX and XviD .avi file support on the xbox 360 but most of us here on 360-HQ.Com have still been wondering what's the best way to store all our media.
Sure, we tested our DivX and XviD files from DVD/CDR and usb sticks but we are thinking more long term here. Well, why not format a External USB HDD.. :)
Anyway, thanks to some nifty software from the guys over at www.mediafour.com called "MacDrive" we have successfully been able to format a NTFS USB Harddrive which would not work or be found by the xbox 360 to the HFS+ format.
Since most USB HDD's on the market are formatted in FAT32/NTFS we have found that if you format these drives to the HFS+ format there is no longer a 4GB file size limit like FAT32. Once your usb HDD is formatted as HFS+ it can then be used on the XBOX 360 for viewing HD WMV, DIVX and XVID files of any size and can also hold your mp3 collection and images.
For those of you who are interested Ozzy and I (forahobby) have written a small tutorial to help you all get the most out of your Xbox 360.
This tutorial will explain how to format a External HDD drive into the HFS+ Format and enable it to be used on the XBOX 360 for viewing HD WMV, DivX, XviD, Mp3's and other supported content of any size. No longer is there a 4GB file size limit like FAT32.
If you would like to discuss this topic further please get involved in our official 360-hq.com forum topic which can be found here.
Don't forget to add 360-Hq to your favorites guys.. We try our best to bring you all the xbox 360 info you will ever need. Hardware, Software, Games and more.
The Xbox 360 supports DivX and XviD as of today, which may make some of you with big file collections (like us) as giddy as a kid in store with puppies made of candy. We threw our entire collection of movies, TV shows and random clips at it and found that the 360 can play back pretty much anything. Here are some notes.
You can play files off of a CD/DVD. This feature wasn't listed on the Xbox Team's website as one of the supported locations for playing back content, but this is fantastic for homes that have wireless networks (or no network at all). In fact, reading off a disc is probably the best way to ensure your movie won't cut out in the middle due to network congestion (unlikely) or someone turning off the computer accidentally (fairly likely).
It supports almost all files. It played back all TV shows we threw at it, including My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Battlestar Galactica, and The Venture Bros.. Most of these, and most TV downloaded TV shows, are encoded in XviD format. As for DivX, that's supported back to version 5.0, but it's unlikely that you're going to find any DivX 3 or DivX 4 online, unless you're talking about old files you've saved for a couple years.
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The confusion over the reasons for Gerstmann's termination, compounded with a lack of transparency from management has created a feeling of "irreconcilable despair" that may eventually lead to an exodus of Gamespot editorial staffers. "Our credibility," said the source, "is in ruins." Over the course of the previous days, a "large number of Gamespot editors" have expressed their intentions to leave. Tales of emotionally deflated peers, with no will to remain at the site, were numerous.
Speaking at the Montreal International Game Summit 2007, Smith pulled no punches: "This project was so f*cked up," reports Wired.
“Just a reminder that if you have a Silver account, you won’t have access to free content on the Marketplace (like demos) when they are first posted," Major Nelson writes on his blog. "That content will be available to Gold level exclusively for one week, after which Silver members will have access to the free content.
The Heat Maps show you exactly in a map where certain things happen most. Where are most sniper kills made from, where is the most likely place you will get sniped, where are most people killed by rockets etc.
