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According to Bloomberg anonymous sources, Microsoft is looking to hire an television executive to spearhead original programing on Xbox Live.
The computer company has hired Tom Schneider, a partner at a hiring consulting firm called Stratis LLC. Schneider’s job is to find the TV executive, so he or she may expand on Microsoft’s plans to make the Xbox console an internet set-top box. (more…)
Eurogamer is reporting that Microsoft is planning to significantly improve the sound quality of the headset, during an Xbox Live session. The upgrade is to coincide with the launch of Kinect, which Microsoft hopes will change the way we play games forever.
Jerry Johnson, who is the bigwig over at Xbox Live Studios, discussed how the voice communication has never changed since the launch of Xbox Live in 2002.
“The codec we used when we first launched was a low bit rate codec and we stuck with that. We launched and we said we required broadband. We required a 64k connection, which not many people think of as broadband any longer. But that was the minimum requirement to run the service at the time. It’s time for us to move on. Especially if we want to think about broadening – a crackly headset on the top of your head – not what people think of when they talk about popular entertainment.”
With upping the bit rate, Xbox Live members will be able to communicate in a clearer fashion. When the online service made it’s industry changing debut, Microsoft praised how chatting with a friend, while playing over the Internet, sounded almost identical to a cellphone conversation. And that wasn’t an exaggeration. However, that was almost a decade ago, and communication technology has enhanced so much so, that Xbox Live’s sounds fuzzy and outdated
Although the quality of how somebody sounds over the net isn’t a deal breaker for me if I want Live or not, it’s certainly a welcoming overhaul.
UPDATE # 2: Live seems to be running fine now and the outages of the online service have been resolved.
UPDATE: According to a tweet by Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, the service is down and engineers are working to get it back up,
Live is currently having issues….it’s not at your end. The LIVE Engineers are working on it.
Well I got home from a long day in the office and wanted to download the updated TMNT: Turtles in Time on Xbox Live but once I sat down on the couch, all heck broke loose. I tried to sign into my own account as well as my rommates but to no avail – I am indefinitely disconnected on Xbox Live. With a quick twitter search it seems numerous reports are coming in the Xbox Live is down this evening. We will update as soon as we know more.
So yesterday, Microsoft pulled the plug on Xbox Live for 24 hours because they needed to do their annual maintenance work on the service. As of now, Live is back up, however, customers who subscribe to the online service are having “technical issues“.
Microsoft is addressing the issue and are aware of the problems. They have even updated the status on the Xbox 360 webpage.
“Users may experience difficulties when attempting to use Marketplace and/or making purchases. We are aware of the problem and working to resolve the technical issues. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.”
This shouldn’t astonish people who have had Xbox Live for more then a year. It appears every time Microsoft shuts down their servers for Live because of maintenance, there are problems the very next day. Honestly, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
If you try to logon to your Xbox Live account today, it won’t work. Microsoft has pulled the plugged on the service for their annual maintenance of their online service. If you had a subscription to Xbox Live for more then a year, than you would know this is something the company is known to do once or twice a year. Thankfully, Microsoft is ensuring their users that Live will be up around 12:00AM PST, so just come down if you are trying to play Modern Warfare.
If you are hoping to see the long list of promises Microsoft said would be coming to Xbox Live like Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm, when the service is back online — don’t. This is only the company’s annual cleanup and preparation for these applications, which should be out later this year.
If you are a fan of Music and you have an Xbox Live Gold Account you will be in luck. The popular online streaming music website, Last.fm will be teaming up with Microsoft to put the music service on the Xbox 360.
From Engadget’s live blog of Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference: “Schappert: ‘Today I’m proud to announce that music is coming to Xbox Live” thanks to a partnership with Last.fm. And best of all Last.fm will be available to Xbox Live gold members later this year for no additional charge.’”
Check back later for updated information on this game as well as all other E3 announcements.
While at CES, Joystiq talked to Xbox 360 product manager Aaron Greenbery. One topic that came up in the discussion was the possible increase of Xbox Live user’s list of friends. At the present time, Xbox Live can save a maximum 100 gamertags — that is about 50 more names then when Live debuted in 2002. As of now, Microsoft is looking for ways to increase the limit, as Greenbery confirms:
“I can’t commit to when that will happen, but that is something we want to do,” said Greenberg. “It’s definitely something we’re looking at expanding and, as this social network grows, we’ve absolutely heard the pleas for that. It’s on the list.”
I guess it would be cool to see the number go up, although we won’t loose sleep over it. Seriously, do we really need more than 100? My list is full, but realistically, I only play with maybe 20 on a regular basis — so adding more people to my list won’t do much for me.
The worse thing about Xbox Live is how every game turns into a race war, or how someone is a homosexual, or who can say most ‘F-bombs.’ It has become such the norm, that most of the time I discount the microphone from the controller because I can’t stand how immature some gamers can be. It seems like Microsoft understands this growing trend and it’s getting more annoying. Because they hold a US Patent that is a audio filter and can detect foul language.
Part of the patent reads: “Either other participants in the online game or spectators who are observing and/or listening to the participants’ interaction should not be exposed to such undesired language.”
As of now, Microsoft has yet to mention anything about a download that would take advantage of this idea. Or even if they plan on making it for a future feature. But if they do, maybe I’ll talk again on Xbox Live.
After the jump, read the official description of US Patent 7,437,290: (more…)
Not only is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas one of the best games in the Grand Theft Auto series but it’s also one of the greatest games of all-time. Microsoft has confirmed on the official Xbox website that GTA: San Andreas is going to be available on Xbox Live under Xbox Originals.
The game will be released for download starting on Monday, October 20 and will cost 12,00 Microsoft Points. If you just started to get into the whole GTA craze because of Grand Theft Auto IV, than make sure you buy this. Because overall, we think it’s the best in the series.
During Microsoft‘s press conference at the Tokyo Game Show, they announced their Xbox Live service has reached 14 million subscriptions. Considering the PS3 has only sold roughly a little more than 14 million units, I’d say Microsoft charging $50 a year for their online gaming platform was a pretty good idea.
Of course I’m sure Microsoft is taking account of all of their customers who ordered Xbox Live, that dates back all the way to 2002 to now. I’m also thinking MS has included the free memberships that come packed with certain games. Either way, 14 million is still an impressive number.
If you tried to get on Xbox Live yesterday, than you couldn’t connect. That’s because Microsoft had their service shut off for the day to have a yearly maintenance fix. I’m not going to lie to you, yesterday I planned on getting one game of Madden against my friend who lives across the country. Even though I knew ahead of time the service was down for the day, I still forgot. I guess I’m so used to my fix of playing a game online, it was an automatic thing for me try.
If you plan on going online today, you’ll be fine. We just checked and Live is up & running, with no Avatars. Of course we already knew when Live went down, we were not going to see the new dashboard update when it came back up. But hey, it doesn’t hurt to hope for things we know have no flying chance of happing.
If for some reason you have plans on playing Xbox Live on the 29th of this month, think again. Big bad Microsoft will be shutting down the servers for 24 whole hours pissing-off hardcore Halo gamers. And you know they’re the bitchiest group of all.
If you’re hoping to see a brand new dashboard with Avatars at your disposal on the 30th, you’re going to be horribly disappointed. The update is reportedly going to be for maintenance only and not for the fall update we’re all patiently waiting for.
Although, that is happing this fall, so we won’t have to wait to much longer.
Senator Barack Obama is going to win the election…according to Xbox Live. If you haven’t heard by now, Microsoft has been promoting gamers to get out and vote. Not only did they have a unofficial poll, you can also register to vote and even download a gamer picture for your favorite candidate.
With almost 100,000 gamers participating — Obama beat out Senator McCain by 12 points. Obama had 43% of the vote and behind him was John McCain with 31%. While 13% were either supporting someone else (Ron Paul?) or was undecided.
Before you either get excited or depressed about the results, just remember these are not scientific. At the same time, you shouldn’t be that surprised. Most people can agree that many supporters of Barack Obama are young. This is so much the case, many ‘experts’ feel if young people register to vote, Obama should be able to win the upcoming election.
Considering most gamers are generally under the age of 40 years-old, one would have guessed the numbers would be in Obama’s favor. And with the numbers we have, the theory has come true.
The United States Presidential Election is on November 4, 2008. And the first debate between Obama and McCain starts this Friday.
Source: gamesindustry
