Halo 3 Beta updates look to be coming shortly.. So if you experience any issues please be sure to check the official bungie Halo 3 Beta forums for more info.
Tomorrow, May 23rd, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. PST, Bungie are flipping a switch (temporarily) that probably won’t affect you one iota. But if it does, this is what will happen:
Should your game encounter a rare crash, your Xbox 360 will give you an alert screen, explaining that it’s uploading data to Bungie servers. We actually need this data, and we need your cooperation too. Although you probably won’t see that screen, if you do, let it finish uploading the data. It may take some time – upwards of 10-20 seconds and perhaps longer. So we beg your patience. When the process has completed correctly this is the message you'll see, "File upload complete. Visit http://www.bungie.net/forums/halo3beta for more information (safe to reboot)."
After 1 p.m., we’ll flip it back to normal, and if you do crash after that time, the data upload process will be much shorter. Helping us collect valuable crash data like this is one of the ways you can help us make Halo 3 a better game. And of course, we’re only collecting data on “natural” crashes, so please don’t try to make your 360 crash.
NullRiver released a new version of Connect360. Connect360 is a tool to stream your music, images and videos from your Mac OSX to your Xbox 360 console.
Connect360 v3.1, which fixes some issues had with streaming video after the Spring Update. According to Alex Lovett of Nullriver, there was a rounding error on a floating point number that was inadvertently causing the wrong data to be output at random intervals. Either way, it's been addressed in the update and any of you who have been having issues with video streaming should have smooth sailing.
Mad Tracks has passed the Microsoft final certification and is soon to be available on Xbox Live Arcade.
For more information on this title be sure to add this game to your wishlists on 360-hq.com.
Game Overview
"Mad Tracks" is an action-packed toy-car racing game, with toy cars powered by spring engines. Complete up to 45 challenges and gather 12 crazy achievements. Races are set in everyday places, like toy stores, mini-golf parks, and restaurants. Compete with your family and friends on a multiplayer split screen. And it's not just about racing: Outpace your opponents by winning at pool or darts, or befuddle them with rockets or freezers. The free download includes 2 complete challenges, while the full download comes with 15. Don't get even, get Mad!
"You buy the product, you get the content," says designer Robin Walker
Valve has no intention of charging for downloadable content for games like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, despite the increased prevalence of premium add-ons in the PC and console markets.
"You buy the product, you get the content," Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker told our sister site Eurogamer.net. "We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers."
"[In multiplayer games] the content you're playing is being created by the players you're playing against, so the more people that get into the game, the more content you're going to have," Valve's Charlie Brown concurred.
Valve's strategy is roughly in line with the traditional PC model, but in recent years services like Xbox Live Marketplace have popularised microtransactions as a means of continuing to extract development capital from completed games.
Gamestop is having a contest in which 50 lucky winners will be flown to LA to visit Infinity Ward's territory, go behind the scenes, meet the team and play one of the most highly anticipated games of the year!"
Head over and signup now. Use ONLINE for the Promotional Code.
This is limited to residents in the 50 United States, including District of Columbia, but excluding residents of New York, Florida, and Rhode Island. You also have to be 18 years old.
Here are some details about the Xbox360 LIVE bans I got directly and indirectly from GaryOPA, Commodore4eva (C4E), Iriez and others. Of course don't take any of this info as 100% confirmed, noone knows exactly based on what data MS is banning ... it's just an analysis of what they think is happening and what MS might/can be checking.
C4E thinks MS is probably detecting and banning consoles from LIVE by tracking usage of backups via timing of the challenge response (c/r) on the drive over the last few weeks or months. A modified FW will reply much faster to the the Challenges requests (stored in a table) than an original firmware (seek on drive). They probably do this test more than once and can ban you if you're above a certain average.
FuzzyLogic also found that microsoft is sometimes doing additional checks on discs: PFI/DMI (so images without these sectors (or if using an old FWs without support for PFI/DMI) can probably be detected easily), drive inquiry (reads ascii string from drive), and capacity (reports capacity of disc) are requested. Strange thing here is MS requests 0x8000 bytes for PFI and DMI, while it should normally be 0x0800 bytes. TheSpecialist pointed out that the remaining 0x7800 bytes contains the relocated SS and PFI on burned discs ... which would make it very easy to detect backups for MS. C4E however told us this would not work on TS drives as its cut off to 0800 even if more data is asked, it's unconfirmed how modified HLG FWs drives respond to this atm.
HQ Network: 9,323 | 
Guests: 5577 |
Members: 3
