Lifemode Interactive Launches Xbox 360 Facial Animation Support At Microsoft's Xfest 2006 In London
Lifemode Interactive, the leading pioneers and innovators of facial animation software technology, have announced today that their highly sophisticated multi platform SDK now fully supports Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. Lifemode will launch their Xbox 360 version at Microsoft's Xfest event in London on Monday, February 13th.
LIFESTUDIO:HEAD - a well known high quality and top performance facial animation engine created by Lifemode Interactive is now available for Xbox 360 platform. The solution takes the benefit of Xbox 360 multicore architecture to achieve top performance and bring realistic facial animation to every next-gen game.
We will start off this week with some juicy new 360 rumors freshly squeezed from the ever-reliable source of semi-reliable information “The Internet”. The game industry has always been full of rumors and speculations, and in contrasts to the movie and music industry where rumors usually are of a more destructive nature, the people working in the game industry have little to fear as the rumors almost always are harmless fantasies made up by overly enthuastic fans. But every now and then rumors are not rumors at all but true reports from people with inside information. If these latest rumors we are reporting today have any truth in them we’ll have to leave up to each one of you to decide for yourselves.
Xbox Live Arcade group manager Greg Canessa (pictured) tells Next Generation that retro downloadable Nintendo games "won't hold up", and as far as a Sony online service goes... "good luck".
ImageSince it was first conceived as a humble disc for the original Xbox, Xbox Live Arcade has grown from a side note in the Xbox Live story into a viable revenue stream. Games like Bizarre's original Geometry Wars and classics like Smash TV and Gauntlet are proving to be hits for the platform, and the list of games is becoming larger and more compelling. The upcoming Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting sounds like it will just be the first of many Capcom titles that will be hitting the system (fingers crossed for some "Versus" action), and large and independent publishers and developers alike are offering up games at a frantic pace. Deals with Konami, Midway and Atari ensure we'll see more classics, and healthy relationships with indie game publishers such as Garage Games will keep interest piqued with new innovative quick-play casual games.
Canessa gives us his thoughts on Nintendo's proposed Revolution retro-games download service, and how he believes Sony has a lot of groundwork to lay down before it even thinks of a games download service.
On Nintendo's retro service
"I think it was interesting to see Nintendo's announcement for the Revolution downloadable games service which, of course, came over a year after we launched our initiative internally and around nine months after we already launched the first generation of Arcade for Xbox. I think it was a responsive move. Their service is interesting in sort of a 'retro' way, but I view Arcade as being so much more than what they're planning on doing. Their service is kind of a subset of what we're doing. We have a retro coin-op category within Arcade - the Midway titles have been performing amazingly - and we're doing a lot more in that space. Of course, we're doing Street Fighter, we've announced our partnership with Konami, Atari, and Midway - more titles are coming from Midway. So, we're going to be doing a lot in the retro space, console and coin-op. But that's just one part of the Arcade strategy.
Yes! I've just played a backup DVD on a XBOX 1 without any modchip/softmod, just a hacked firmware :-) This completes our work on the XBOX 1. The drive I modded was a 8050L. The good news is that the firmware in this drive is very similar to the firmware in the GDR3120, used in the XBOX 360. I think it's time for me to buy one now :-)
Thanks to all the contributors in the firmware hacking thread!
This hacked firmware will fake the disc detection (will trick drive to detect disc as DVDXBOX media), the xbe must still be signed though (for DVDXBOX media), so this hack will not allow to run homebrew/linux stuff, atleast not directly (if there are possible font or other exploits in retail games, this could be used as alternative to gamesave exploits to install a dashboard exploit for example).
Lik-Sang.Com have received from the mighty Datel the first evaluation sample of their next product to come: a new 4GB "harddrive" solution for the Xbox 360. Will it rock or will it suck? Will it float or will it sink? We're about to find out soon.
One thing is for sure, if you are waiting for a third-party HDD for your core Xbox 360 system because you are pissed at both the high price and low availability of the official Microsoft unit... well, this is not yet what you have been begging for. This new device is connected to the 360 via the USB connection, same as any other portable PC hard drives or USB drives would be, and it does not offer the same range of options as the official HDD does (no game saves, no going online, only media files transfer). It also offers only 4GB of space, same as the very popular HDD that these guys just outted for the PSP. In fact, it uses the same Magicstor 4 gigs microdrives inside. From our point of view, the coolest thing about it is probably the greenish power button drawing on the top of the product. Or arguably the fact that a green glowin' light comes out of the USB connector when you slot it in your console [wow]. Lik Sang is not convinced if this gimmick will prove to be cool enough for geek-chic circles and hardcore gamers out there. But then again, Datel is probably aiming at the pick-my-games-at-supermarket-with-my-salad crowd on this one. Price point is expected to be above the 100 US$ mark [did I start the article saying the Microsoft 20 gigs drive was expensive?] and Datel plans to launch before the end of February.
The intro sets the stage deliciously: "Eyes around The Beehive widen and brows furrow in incredulity. I'm suddenly instructed to tell everyone at the table what I've just said to one half. I clear my throat. "The worldwide high score for Geometry Wars is 12.8 million." Nobody says anything. Everyone just thinks about it. "Terrifying," says someone, eventually." [Check out this Google Video of K4rn4ge's 7 million score for some eye-opening action.]
In the course of the piece, there's some excellent technical bollocks ("the 360 version's underlying game grid is a system of 60,000 points poised in a delicate gravitational balance that reacts beautifully when struck by shockwaves; it runs on the 360's second core along with the audio system"), and some irony-filled 'creator outscored' sass (Cakebread's top score is "2.1 million, which I originally thought was pretty good... but I've since been put to shame by all the people who've scored five times that!") So skim the article quickly, and go play it the Geometry disease again before the high wears off.
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Canessa gives us his thoughts on Nintendo's proposed Revolution retro-games download service, and how he believes Sony has a lot of groundwork to lay down before it even thinks of a games download service.
