xbox

This week brings us the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo--the video game trade show better known as E3. This is E3's 14th year, and my 10th time attending the show. But despite booming game sales and a firm foothold in the mainstream pop culture marketplace, the future of this gaming event is in jeopardy.

After years of big-budget extravagance for an audience of 60,000-plus visitors at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the game companies that form the backbone of the show felt their budgets were spiraling out of control, and even the large amount of media attention they got … Read more

Microsoft on Sunday cut the price of its best-selling Xbox 360 Pro model game console with a 20GB hard drive from $349 to $299.

The company also introduced a new Xbox 360 model with a 60GB hard drive. It will go on sale in stores in the U.S. and Canada for $349 in early August.

Microsoft's announcements, which were widely expected, come on the eve of the start of this week's E3 video game industry trade show in Los Angeles.

Rumors of the Xbox price cut swirled on popular gaming blogs Joystiq and Kotaku last week. The … Read more

CNET's Dan Ackerman drops by The 404 to give us some E3 2008 predictions and previews. We talk about the big three companies and what we can expect to hear from their respective news conferences at the big show. We'll also chat about Justin and Jeff's experience at the iPhone 3G launch this morning--it wasn't pretty.

At least in Taiwan, the Linux version of the Asus Eee PC is very popular among housewives and students. Meanwhile geeks want the Windows XP version. Also on the show today Microsoft finally declares war on Apple's advertisements, and an Xbox 360 price cut may be coming as early as Sunday. Oh and there was something about the iPhone. Apparently people are excited about it. Listen now: Download today's podcast

Apparently, one third of us have been copying DVDs! http://www.cnet.com/8301-17914_1-9985794-89.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080708-breaking-the-law-one-third-of-us-residents-rip-dvds.html

Xbox 360 price … Read more

While the reported cases were few and far between, last week's PlayStation 3 firmware update 2.40 rendered a select few consoles completely useless. Sony had removed the upgrade just a day after the highly anticipated patch was released and claimed it was "looking into it."

Well it seems a week was all that was needed as the very bug-free, nonbroken firmware Version 2.41 is currently available for download. All of the features we told you about appear to remain intact in addition to a newer platinum trophy icon.

We should note that if you were … Read more

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about rumors that Microsoft was planning to chop the Xbox 360's price in July. Well, that price cut was all but confirmed today by Kotaku.

After posting leaked photos of upcoming Best Buy, Kmart, and other circulars, the gaming blog now has a GameStop employee's cell-phone snapshots of shelf art and an internal memo announcing that the Xbox 360 Pro (aka the Premium) would drop to $299.99 on Sunday, July 13. Not coincidentally, E3 kicks off the next day with--you guessed it--Microsoft's press conference.

As Sony's PlayStation 3 … Read more

Sony's President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida had the opportunity to discuss his company's gaming division with ThreeSpeech.com recently and although he obviously needs to toe the company line and make sure he says the right thing, what he did say speaks volumes about the state of the gaming industry.

"My role is to run first-party development, and we are always exclusive," he told the publication. "Because, in this generation, it costs much more to develop one product, it's just natural for third-party publishers trying to recoup the investment from multiple platforms. I think that's pure economic pressure, pushing most of the third parties to move from some exclusive titles to more multi-platform titles. Because we know that is the trend, we, as a company, can invest in our first-party studios; in terms of exclusive titles, our role becomes more important."

With third-party developers selling titles for multiple platforms, first-party developers will need to step in and try to create games that matter to people and make them want a console. And although major games like MGS4 are exclusive, they're becoming a rarity and it's quickly becoming apparent that first-party titles are the only games that matter.… Read more

Turtle Beach has just unveiled its latest surround sound headset for the Xbox 360. The Ear Force X4 offers a wireless connection to the 360 (thanks to a separate base station) and it doubles as an Xbox Live communicator for chatting during multiplayer games (the microphone and headphone-to-controller tether can be removed during solo gameplay). The Ear Force X4 delivers full Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II surround decoding, and the standard optical digital and analog stereo inputs mean that it can be connected to virtually any other audiovisual source beyond the Xbox 360.

While previous Xbox-centric Ear Force … Read more

Don't feel like dishing out $100 for the Roku Netflix player? Well, if you have an Xbox 360 and a Windows Vista PC, you don't have to.

Last week we reported about this amazing hack and now we're showing you how to do it! It comes courtesy of Lifehacker.com and takes about 20 minutes to set up.

Streaming Netflix movies isn't the only thing you can do with this connection--once your Xbox 360 is added as a Media Center extender, you can stream pictures, music, or video from your PC to the console as well. … Read more