The Full Circle: 360 News Report 09.18.09
Posted by Dan Owen on 09.18.2009
The Full Circle is back with news on Microsoft cracking down on people cheating over Xbox Live. This week also featured a lawsuit revolving around the Fallout series, the unofficial unveiling of a new upgrade to the Xbox 360, and the lineup of games Microsoft will be revealing at TGS. All that, plus my take on sports games!
Welcome back to 411mania.com's #1 Xbox 360 Friday news column! This is The Full Circle, and for this week you, my faithful readers, are being treated to the special Swine Flu edition. Yes, that's right, I've seemingly contracted the dreaded H1N1 flu virus. Truthfully, it's not all it's cracked up to be. I've felt mostly fine, just the other day I was out throwing a football around with a few friends. The only downside is that I've been cooped up for the past 4 days, though I'll finally be getting back to regular life on Friday (just in time for the weekend!). Last weekend was a pretty crazy time, the University of Minnesota had their first home football game in our brand new, on campus stadium. The atmosphere was absolutely off the hook, and I'm very much looking forward to this Saturday's game against Cal. We're going to lose horribly, but it will be fun to meet up with a few friends for tailgating before the game. In addition to football, last weekend I may have happened to drunk dial my credit card company (several times) and cancel my credit card, so I've been dealing with the fallout from that recently. Finally, before we get to the column, I told you last week I was a huge gambling fan. I nearly blew all of my betting money on college football last weekend (how bad is Colorado and when is Notre Dame going to fire Charlie Weis?), but then I put everything I had left on a 4-line NFL parlay (Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Green Bay beating the spread and Seattle straight up) which I won, so I'm now sitting pretty again. I haven't finalized my bets yet this week, but after a cursory glance of the lines I'm liking the Giants to cover +3 against the Cowboys and Green Bay to beat –9 against the Bengals. Alright, enough small talk out of me, let's get to the gaming news!
Headlines
Crackdown On Cheating
Heads up to cheaters, your days might be numbered. Chair Entertainment, the creators of the hit Xbox Live Arcade game Shadow Complex, are unhappy with players who are cheating on the game in order to sit atop the leaderboards. They have been reporting those names to Microsoft and asking them to take action. Microsoft will review the cases and, if the player is found to have cheated, they will reset your entire gamerscore. Yes, the entire gamerscore!
I say bravo for this. People who cheat at video games really are pathetic, and it ruins the fun for the people who play the game legitimately. This is a pretty good punishment, too, since I'd be willing to bet that the people who are cheating at these games are also the ones that care most about their gamerscores. The question remains, though, will other games follow suit. There are a lot of games that could use a crackdown on cheating (Tiger Woods 2010 comes to mind as a recent game I've been playing that this goes for). Bravo to Chair Entertainment for taking a stand on this!
New Wireless Adapter On Its Way
Recently the IEEE solidified the guidelines for the 802.11n wireless standard, which has been 7 years in the making. This new standard can support wireless internet speeds up to 300 mbps, compared to current standards which only get up to 56 mbps (You may have seen other networks which did get up to 300, the "n" standard has been around for awhile, it just hasn't been completely finalized or, for the most part at least, commercialized). We now have a rumored 802.11n wireless network adapter coming out soon for the Xbox 360. While no official announcement has come from Microsoft there are websites out there that are saying that insiders from Microsoft have confirmed it. Rumors also hold that the new adapter will match the old adapter's price of $100, with the old one getting a price drop.
This is very good news. On a non-gaming note, it's about time we started making the move to the faster speeds for home routers. For the 360, this should mean some nice upgrades become available for some Live services. For one, streaming better quality movies perhaps? Maybe, down the road, we'll even see games that have capabilities over Live that currently aren't achievable (of course that could open up a big can of worms for people who didn't want to pay the money to upgrade their wireless adapter). Of course, this also give the Xbox 360 a nice bonus in an area that had previously been seen as a deficiency. One of the big complaints raised about Microsoft's console is the lack of a built in wireless receiver, something both the Wii and PS3 boast. Well, now that there's an upgrade to be had, Microsoft has something of an advantage. For Microsoft owners it will be as simple as swapping one piece of hardware off the console for another. For PS3 and Wii owners, who knows what they will do in order to bring their wireless abilities up.
Microsoft's Lineup Announced For TGS
Microsoft has released the list of games they will be demoing at the Tokyo Game Show.
Samurai Spirits Sen (video/playable)
FIFA 10 (video/playable)
Lost Planet (video/playable)
Mushihime Futari Version 1.5 (video/playable)
Shin Sangoku Musuo Multi Raid Special (video/playable)
Castlevania Lords of Shadow (video only)
Ninety Nine Nights 2 (video/playable)
World Soccer Winning Eleven 2010 (video/playable)
Front Mission Evolved (video/playable)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (video)
Nier Gestalt (video/playable)
Bayonetta (video/playable)
End of Eternity (video/playable)
Dragonball Rising Blast (video/playable)
Tekken 6 (video/playable)
Steins Gate (video/playable)
Forza Motorsport 3 (video/playable)
Alan Wake (video)
Fable 3 (video)
Halo 3: ODST (video/playable)
Halo Legends (video)
Halo Reach (video)
Crackdown 2 (video)
Borderlines (video)
Assassin's Creed 2 (video/playable)
Splinter Cell Conviction (video)
Infernal: Hell's Vengeance (video/playable)
0 Day Attack on Earth (playable)
Bomberman Live: Battlefest (playable)
Ray Storm HD (playable)
Shadow Complex (playable)
Good lineup, at least to me. Looking forward to this thing actually kicking off so we can start getting some news on these games.
250 GB Hard Drive Available In Modern Warfare 2 Bundle Only
Microsoft has announced that they will be releasing a new Xbox 360 bundle to coincide with the release of Modern Warfare 2. The bundle will include a 360 with a Modern Warfare 2-themed casing, 2 black wireless controllers, a 250 GB HDD, and of course the Modern Warfare 2 game. The bundle will set you back a cool $400. It can be preordered on Amazon.com right now and will be released at the same time as MW2, November 10th.
Sounds like a pretty good deal when you consider the cost of each item individually. The word on the street is that Microsoft has no plans right now to release the 250 GB HDD separately, which is a smart play on their part since I'm sure there will be some people out there that will end up springing for this largely because of the hard drive. I'm not a huge fan of the themed 360's, but this one doesn't look too bad. I certainly won't be picking it up as I've got my Xbox 360 and I'm just fine with it. Plus, there are plenty of other things I could spend $400 bucks on that I need more than a new 360.
Fallout From Fallout
Bethesda Softworks, makers of the game Fallout 3, is suing game developer Interplay for breaching the contract the two companies agreed to in 2007. The contract, which gave Bethesda the rights to make games in the Fallout series, also stated that Interplay had to get approval from Bethesda before selling the pre-existing Fallout games (Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics). Bethesda is also asking the court to declare a trademark licensing agreement void. The licensing agreement gave Interplay the rights to develop a Fallout MMO game. However, one stipulation of the agreement was that Interplay had to begin development by April 4, 2009. Interplay, for their part, has vehemently denied this claim, and it is speculated that their mysterious Project V13 is in fact the Fallout MMO.
This will be another legal case that will be interesting to follow. I'm not 100% sure what happens if the court sides with Bethesda on the first half of the case. Perhaps there will be a money settlement, but I suppose it's possible that something else happens I'm a little worried this could negatively affect the overall Fallout property. As for the MMO, I'm not sure how this will end. If Interplay can prove they are working on it, then all systems should be go and development should continue. If Bethesda wins, then we can probably kiss it goodbye. Either way, both sides seem pretty firm in their stance that they are right, but I can't imagine Bethesda filing this suit without decent cause. Who knows, I'm no great legal mind, but I'll try to keep you updated on this story as it progresses.
Quick Hits
Left 4 Dead 2 has been banned in Australia thanks to the Australian Classifications Board.
The Madden Curse has continued to live on as Troy Polamalu, featured on this years Madden cover, was injured and will be out for the next couple of weeks.
A 12 year old from Everett, Washington beat the world record for highest score in Guitar Hero, putting up 1,019,000 points on one song. I'm currently working on the review for Guitar Hero 5 and I most certainly will not be matching that.
Within 24 hours of being made available for pre-order, the Modern Warfare 2 Bundle that I detailed above reached Top 10 in sales.
Ubisoft has reiterated that the reason their game, Splinter Cell Conviction, was delayed until March 2010 is because they want to make it more polished, not because they don't want to face Modern Warfare 2.
A free map pack is on its way from Eidos for Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Activision has announced that they have no plans for a PS3 version of the Modern Warfare 2 Bundle.
One2Onecollectables.com has announced that they will be releasing a limited edition bust of Master Chief later on in the year. The kicker, though, is that it will set you back a cool $225.
Not sure if this is new or not, but you can expect Grand Theft Auto V to come out in Take Two's fiscal year 2011.
The demo for Pro Evolution Soccer is due out on September 23rd, not big news to me but I know that this game is huge in England.
Deal of the Week
Last week the featured deal of the week was from Amazon.com and this week it's from...Amazon.com. Eventually I'll get away from using that site, but for now it's what I'm finding first. Right now you can get a 12 month Xbox Live subscription for $39.99, which is $10 off the MSRP. Also, if you happen to be a member of Best Buy's Reward Zone Gamers Club (which is free, by the way), you can get $10-20 off of a few selected titles, though most of them are pretty low profile games.
*BONUS* I spotted this one late into the game here. Target is holding clearance on a few games. You can get Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for $19.98, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for $34.98, and Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires for $27.98. These games aren't that bad. Certainly not candidates for Game of the Year, but these games really aren't too shabby in my book.
Trailer Park
Our first trailer is the launch trailer for Need for Speed SHIFT. You'll get a nice little breakdown of some of the features of the game.
Next up is the launch trailer for NHL 10. My friends and I have spent many a day playing drinking games to the 09 version of this game, and this is one of the few sporting franchises that really is great.
With the release of Madden in the not-so-distant past, there's been the usual round of debate on how to better handle sports series. Gamers are rarely ever satisfied with the offering, saying that the game doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from last year's edition. If we were talking strictly about the gamers, the ideal would be to only release the game every other year or so, giving the company more time to make changes and redevelop things while just offering up roster updates in the meantime. Certainly, this would be ideal for us, but as everyone should know it's not a good idea for the game company. They can make a whole lot more money by releasing a game each year. Sure, people will be mad that it isn't vastly improved but guess what? They're still going to buy it. Now, the only way to get this to change is for people to stop buying the game each year. That's not realistically going to happen, at least not in big enough numbers for the developers to care. Things are they way they are, and I don't really envision that changing at all in the forseeable future.
Now, the sports game developers have not been helped by an unfortunate happening. The race to snap up the exclusive rights to sports franchises has given us some less than favorable results. The better NFL game the last year there was competition was made by 2k Sports, yet EA grabbed those exclusive rights. In retaliation, 2k Sports got the license for MLB games even though EA Sports' baseball game was far better. In the end, the gamers lost on both accounts. This race towards exclusivity has created a games market where this is no competition. I have to give props to Madden, even though they don't face any competition they've done a decent job of at least trying to give gamers something new and fun to play with. But really, in the end, it means that there are fewer minds working on these games that will come up with new, innovative concepts, and for that if nothing else, the gamer loses.
There is one thing, though, that I think deserves defending for sports games and it is something that I don't think I've ever heard much discussion on before. No genre of games faces as high of a standard as sports games do. Think about it. With military FPS, no one is clamoring for the game to completely and accurately depict the horrors of war. They want a fun game that isn't a completely accurate depiction of what really goes on. Same goes for all other genres of gaming. In racing games no one wants to play a game where if you crash your car you have to scrounge together thousands of dollars for repairs, maybe even having to work at a fast food restaurant just to get by. And hell, no one even has anything in real life to compare fighting flying spaceships around blasting aliens.
But with sports games there is a very real standard set by the actual sports. I can sit on my couch, watch the Minnesota Vikings crush the Cleveland Browns (heh heh), and know that this is what my Madden game should be like (not the Vikings winning, even though they should go undefeated, but just the way the players play). This is an extremely hard thing for a game to capture. It's nearly impossible to capture the human element that is forever present in sports. Try to add in some realistic randomness and you're going to get people complaining about how the game is cheap and makes them fumble all the time. Try to avoid this and all of the sudden the game is way too easy and no one makes mistakes. What about when a defensive back makes a poor read on a play. If that happens in the game, then gamers are saying that the way the game plays is stupid. It's also easy to exploit. All games are, but with sports it destroys the illusion of realism and that makes gamers upset. I do not envy those developers, as their task is nearly impossible. Of course, I'm sure they get paid handsomely, so what do they care, right?
