Here is the latest report on Xbox 360 LIVE Activity for the week March 15, 2010. This includes Xbox Live and our own 360-HQ Xbox Live statistics combined.
Where we can, we will display our own top list of most played games on XBOX LIVE. Our own data is tracked by our registered users here on the 360-HQ.com website and their activity on Xbox LIVE! Please note we do NOT track demos.
The 360-HQ Xbox LIVE top 20 list is compiled automatically by the HQ server. Our server tracks each and every Xbox LIVE Gamercard registered on our site and which games our members are playing or have played most recently.
To see the most popular game on Xbox LIVE scroll to the bottom of any page on HQ and the top 20 games are listed in our footer.
You can also browse our Xbox 360 "Top 50 Games" list which is ranked by total page views daily. This is what you see on our homepage!
The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.
**Combined sales of all Hasbro Family Game Night titles
Get the latest Xbox 360 news from 360-HQ using our FREE Toolbar for Internet Explorer & Firefox. The FREE 360-HQ Toolbar has over 150 FREE online hi-score flash games built in, with local weather, radio stations, Xbox LIVE features, 360-HQ Site menu, news, achievements, trailers, facebook and much much more.
Microsoft introduces the Xbox 360 250GB Hard Drive at $129 USD. The 250GB HD is currently only available in the USA..
Available in stores today, Xbox 360 introduces the 250GB Hard Drive, which offers more space to store your favorite game and entertainment content. Available at the incredible value of $129.99 (U.S ERP), the 250GB Hard Drive offers more freedom to download the latest demos, Xbox LIVE Arcade games, full game titles with Games on Demand, TV shows, movies and more straight to your Xbox 360 console.
Xbox LIVE is the premier destination to download the best games and entertainment at the touch of a button, 24x7. With a growing library of more than 13,000 pieces of gaming content, and more than 25,000 movies, TV episodes and music videos available to download or stream instantly – you’re bound to find something you love.
Want to express your personality and style on Xbox LIVE? With the added storage space of the 250GB Hard Drive, it makes it easy to download and save new Avatar clothes and props from your favorite clothing brands and games, including Roxy, Quiksilver, Adidas, tokidoki, “Halo,” “Gears of War” and more. Or, download a pet to keep your Avatar company.
Get your very own limited edition Bing T-Shirt for your Xbox LIVE Avatar right now! To equip your Xbox LIVE avatar with this cool Bing shirt, log onto Xbox LIVE and redeem one of the tokens available by entering the magic search term into the BING search engine.
What do you get when members of the Xbox LIVE team hang out with members of the Bing team? Good ideas…that’s what. The next time your open your browser, swing over to Bing and and when you enter the magic search term, you’ll end up with the results of your search…PLUS a very special gift for your Xbox LIVE Avatar from the two teams. Grab it while you can, not sure how long it will be around.
After an investor visit with Electronic Arts, analyst Michael Pachter said that the publisher is planning a strategy that will involve selling "premium downloadable content" before a packaged game's release.
According to a Monday investor note from Wedbush Morgan's Pachter, Nick Earl, general manager of EA-owned Dead Space studio Visceral Games, revealed the new strategy.
Pachter wrote, "The PDLC would be sold for $10 or $15 through Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and would essentially be a very long game demo, along the lines of 2009’s Battlefield 1943."
He added, "A full-blown packaged game would follow shortly after the release of the PDLC, bearing a full retail price. Mr. Earl believes that the release of the PDLC first limits the risk of completing and marketing the full packaged version, and serves as a low-cost marketing tool."
Pachter separately told Gamasutra in an email, "I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point."
"If DICE were able to follow Battlefield 1943 with a full-blown European WWII campaign game a few months later, it would have been a wild success," Pachter said.
He continued, "EA’s view is that the PDLC costs a lot less to develop (essentially, it’s the first few levels of the full-blown game), and they have the opportunity to fix whatever needs to be fixed in the packaged product that is released a few months later, whether that entails doing more of what people like or doing less of what they don’t like. It sounds like a brilliant strategy to me." Gamasutra has contacted EA for further clarification about the new strategy.
EA is becoming increasingly active in digital distribution and other online-focused revenue streams. Aside from a $300 million acquisition of social gaming company Playfish last year, COO John Schappert recently said at both the DICE Summit and Game Developers Conference this year that the publisher would be using physical discs as the basis for digital strategies.
Pachter stated in his investor note that EA CEO John Riccitiello "said that the line between packaged product sales and digital revenues would soon begin to blur, as EA intends to exploit all of its packaged games with ancillary digital revenue streams."
CFO Eric Brown also reportedly said that Visceral Games' formally unannounced Jack the Ripper game will be a "new PSN, Xbox Live game." Last year, word emerged that EA trademarked "The Ripper," leading to speculation about Visceral's next project. The studio just released Dante's Inferno earlier this year, and is also working on Dead Space 2.
The new demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction has just arrived on the Xbox Live Marketplace for Xbox 360.
Experience original game play based on improvisation where your environment becomes your weapon. You need to react to changing situations and use the environment and the crowds around you to create diversions, and deter your enemies.
For years, Sam Fisher has been off the grid and on his own, chasing his daughter's murderer. But the trail leads to the last place Sam wants to see again: Washington D.C. Now Sam must work with old friends he can no longer trust, forced to save a country he no longer serves. For unless he can stand against both a vast, faceless enemy and the shadows of the past, he'll never know what happened to his daughter - or himself. SPLINTER CELL - CONVICTION (Co-op) Russian weapons of mass destruction have been stolen and need to be recovered before they are sold on the black market. Third Echelon and their Russian counterpart Voron must work together to find them, sending American agent Archer and Russian agent Kestrel into the darkest heart of Russia's criminal underworld. Together, they will embark on a mission that will require their cooperation and combined skill, one that will test their very conviction in everything they think they are.
Content: Splinter Cell Conviction Price: Free Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions
Dash Text: Experience the highly-anticipated stealth action blockbuster critics have been raving about. Enter the treacherous world of rogue agent Sam Fisher and witness an unparalleled level of action. Arm yourself all with the high-tech weaponry and lethal skill of an elite operative, then take full advantage of cutting-edge gameplay innovations that let you outflank foes, mark enemies for execution, and much more. When you’re ready to take to the next level, get the full Splinter Cell Conviction. Inside you’ll find hard-hitting multiplayer modes, a co-op campaign with split-screen functionality, and a gripping single-player storyline that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat.
Documentation obtained by Joystiq – and subsequently confirmed with two separate sources – reveals that "USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360" will soon be a reality. The document, authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is purportedly coming in Spring 2010.
Once the update occurs, Xbox 360 owners will be able to download Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live Indie games, Games on Demand, DLC and Title Updates to the storage device. "USB storage devices may, however, have far greater memory capacity than MUs (at the date of writing, the largest MU is 512 MB), and may therefore support previously infeasible operations-such as installation of a full disc-based title." That's right, you can also store disc-based games to the USB device; however, it will require the disc to be in the tray for authentication, identical to the current functionality.
According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. "The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller." Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, "consumers are offered two choices: 'Configure now' or 'Customize'." The "Configure now" option will use "the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB" meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The "Customize" option will allow you to "preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device" such as music.
It should be clear by now that Microsoft is simply pulling out of the Memory Unit business and not the highly lucrative Xbox hard drive business. With an artificial cap of 16 GB – still shy of the 20 GB hard drive that shipped with the original 2005 Xbox Pro and a fraction the size of the currently shipping 120 GB hard drive – USB storage support simply removes the onerous requirement for a Memory Unit on Xbox 360 Arcade units, and brings the Xbox 360 platform a feature that's been present on the PlayStation 3 since that console's 2006 launch.
If you're intent on circumventing Microsoft's cutthroat hard drive pricing the Xbox 360, you can use two USB storage devices for a maximum of 32 GB of usable storage; however, the console "has a fixed limit of two external USB mass storage devices" regardless of whether they're "formatted for the Xbox 360 or not." If you fill all three USB ports on the console, only the first two to be connected will be recognized.
With talk of a new (slim?) form factor for the Xbox 360 picking up, and plans to abandon (or at least obviate) Memory Units underway, we're guessing those Memory Unit slots could be cut entirely from future iterations of the console.
Terminator: Survivors confirmed for Xbox Series, PS5 & PC via Steam Play as a survivor in the aftermath of Judgment Day in Terminator: Survivors, a new open-world survival game by NACON (@Nacon). Build the resistance and defy the machines in Terminator: Survivors, com..
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According to a Monday investor note from Wedbush Morgan's Pachter, Nick Earl, general manager of EA-owned Dead Space studio Visceral Games, revealed the new strategy.
