Posts Tagged "xbox"

360 Woes

August 3rd, 2009

Towards the end of June my Xbox 360 decided it didn’t like me, or the weather, or just life in general and died with the ever maligned red ring of death (RROD). This was most annoying, as I use it for both gaming and as my DVD player. I suseqently filled in the form on the Microsoft site and got my return stuff. For me this was a pre-paid UPS label to print myself, and then had to sort out a box and whatnot to ship it back in.

A month later I actually got round to having the console collected, and off it went on a jaunt to Germany. Procrastination is seemingly still rife for me when it comes to some things, despite having a job that should supposedly make me get stuff done.

Still, just over a week later and it was returned to me – complete with a month’s free XBL gold and a sheet explaining that not only had they replaced the motherboard (which was expected given the RROD) but also the DVD drive, which was unexpected. This has seemingly caused my Xbox to get quieter, as the DVD drive was never particularly subtle and the fans make one hell of a noise, and I’m certainly not going to complain about that.

All in all, excepting the fact that some shoddy design has been involved and has lead to it failing, I’m quite happy with how the process has worked. I’d have probably had it back working within 10 days had I been more efficient with getting it sent off, and Microsoft have been quite good with the communications as to the repair status. Of course, I know people who have had multiple failures, and I’m going to be wary of that happening again – but touch wood I’ll avoid that problem.

 

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The XBox’s Shift

December 15th, 2008

Recently it seems that the XBox 360 is making a move away from its roots as a console for gamers, with titles such as Gears of War and Halo, to where it is also suitable for family and party gaming.

The move towards a more family oriented console was first seen with the New XBox Experience that was launched in November. This added avatars, the XBox equivalent of Nintendo’s Miis. It also added in lots more sound effects when performing actions and changed the interface drastically so there were bigger pictures of what options were available at each stage. The changes in interface are for the better, and do make the XBox easier to use, but there’s no mistaking that they also make it more family friendly.

As the run up to Christmas draws towards a close, it is no coincidence that the adverts for games are more for those where the family can get involved,  with titles such as Mario Party 8 and Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party for the Wii and Little Big Planet for the PS3 getting advertised heavily, alongside the XBox’s latest weapons in this arsenal; Lips, You’re in the Movies and to a lesser extent Scene It!.

This shift places the XBox in an interesting middle ground, where it is appealing to families on one side, and more serious gamers on the other side with this year’s release of distincly non-family games Grand Theft Auto 4 and Gears of War 2. Of course, this means that it is now open to a wider audience, and could well increase the console’s lifespan.

 

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Grand Theft Auto IV

May 5th, 2008

After months of hype, people complaining about violent games and stories in the national press about it; last week saw the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Of course, as with most game franchises with numbers in the title, this isn’t actually the fourth in the series but the sixth – and the first not to be a Playstation exclusive upon launch (not including any portable formats).

The hype around the launch, including articles about it heading towards the fastest selling game ever (eclipsing last year’s new record breaker – Halo 3) lead to a lot of people pre-ordering, queues to get the game at midnight and people suggesting that there’d be no chance in hell of getting hold of a copy without a pre-order. Of course, this was all nonsense as I happily walked into a shop at lunchtime on Tuesday and picked up a copy with no problems whatsoever.

Eventually I arrived home and threw the disc into the Xbox, and away I went to Liberty City. For those who aren’t aware, Liberty City is modelled on New York; in a not-very-loose way. The names have been changed, but there’s no mistaking the Statue of Happiness for the Statue of Liberty, or Star Junction for Times Square (especially with the replica of one of the offices at work on it). This resemblance makes the game very interesting, especially having only visited New York within the past couple of months.

So far I haven’t managed to explore too much within the single player, as work has got in the way of playing, but what I have encountered has been good fun. Compared to Vice City, the last GTA game I played, the vehicle handling is much better, and the AI is also very good (with people getting out of their cars and running away if you point a gun at them). Another great new feature is the mobile phone, allowing you to call up your contacts to arrange things, prank call the police, and most crucially – get to the multiplayer.

GTA IV is the first of the GTA games to support multiplayer natively, although previous versions have seen the Multi Theft Auto mods add this to it, and despite it being a new venture for them it seems to work remarkably well. There are a number of different game modes, with different ones being suited to different numbers of players, and my only criticism would be that at times the areas seem a little too large when playing with 8 people.

All in all, GTA IV is one of the best games I’ve played, and with the mass of achievements available and stats being tracked left right and centre, I’m sure that I’ll be playing it for a while yet.

 

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BT Vision and On Demand Content

January 27th, 2008

For those who don’t know, BT Vision is an digital television service provided by BT with no annual charges. As part of the service you get a “V-box”, which is essentially a computer running a version of Windows CE with a couple of DVB-T tuners in there to allow it to function as a PVR. It also connects to the internet and, through Microsoft’s service that they’re also going to implement on the Xbox 360, allows you to access a whole raft of on demand content.

Now, I’ve had this for a while – having decided to get it when I moved in due to it being cheap – and until last night I’d only really used it as a PVR. In this it works remarkably well, with a couple of niggles – mainly that sometimes the schedule isn’t up to date (as it gets that over the network rather than airwaves) and therefore it doesn’t adapt well to programs running a little late. I’ve also discovered that occasionally the clock gets a bit out of sync, and therefore I get the last few minutes of a show cut off. Other than these things it’s great and you can record up to two channels at once whilst watching something else that you’d already recorded (you can’t watch a third channel due to there only being a pair of DVB-T tuners).

Last night, however, I decided to investigate the on demand service. This provides a whole range of content from films (both provided by BT Vision and Film4 On Demand), to TV (BBC and Channel 4 providing a lot of content here), music and specialist know-how things (I discovered an entire section on pickles…) with prices varying from £0.79 for some TV up to £2.99 for a newly “released” film, with optional monthly subscriptions allowing you to watch an unlimited number of items from certain sections (depending upon the pack), although there isn’t one for Films. Once rented, you can watch the content an unlimited amount of times within the 24 hour period after playback starts, which is instantaneous due to it being streamed over your internet connection, and despite my connection not always being the best, it worked perfectly when I tried it out last night.

Of course, Microsoft also recently rolled out films to the Xbox 360 marketplace video store recently (in the UK at least, it’s been in the US for a while I believe). This also provides some on demand functionality, including HD versions of some films. This operates on much the same principle, only you download the film to the Xbox’s hard drive, and can start watching it any time within a 14 day period, with the same 24 hour limit after playback commences. The downloading to the hard drive, however, means that you can’t just select a film and go – and the selection is no where near as wide as that on BT Vision.

All in all, however, I think that on demand content like this is a great idea and certainly going to be used more in the future. Sure it might be more limited than going out and buying a DVD; but for one off situations where you just feel like watching something it’s great.

 

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