Category: Xbox 360

My Repaired 360 is IN

Green Ring of Light

I received my repaired Xbox 360 yesterday at 6pm. I opened it up to find the, as promised, 1 month free Xbox Live gamer card. After unwrapping the console I looked for the dent that my system had and it wasn’t there. No I didn’t receive someone else’s Xbox 360, I received a brand-new one! Microsoft appears to be fixing the Ring of Death issue by sending newly manufactured systems that fix the heat sync issue.

When I powered up the system I could barely hear it running! If you remember turning on your 360 for the very first time when you got it a year ago, it sounded like a beast. Whatever Microsoft did it seems to have worked. I haven’t played any games with the console other than demos off the harddrive, but I’ve left the system on for six hours straight as I downloaded more demos and the system worked like a charm.

I noticed however that when laying the system on its side and running it for hours, the side touching the floor was still very hot, while the opposite side was relatively cool. My suggestion for all you 360 owners out there is to stand your console up when you use it. This way you can get maximum airflow in and out of the system on both sides of the console.

Personally I’m going try and to keep my Xbox 360 off to the side rather than in my media center cabinet.

It took me four posts to cover this repairing event and I’m sad to see this saga come to an end. In total the whole process was 1 month and 1 day.

Considering that Microsoft has extended the warranty to three years, I might break my console on purpose to get the new hardware 3 years from now. Who knows how much Microsoft will have improved the 360’s architecture by that time.

GameThinker Records Your Games

GameThinker

We’ve got an exclusive interview with the founder of GameThinker.com, a forum where gamers can not only ask for strategy tips on games, but can ask for their games to be recorded and the video added onto YouTube.com.

Who are you?
My name is Nick. And GameThinker was founded by me. I have a partner he’s the guy who helps manage the game recordings.

Why did you start GameThinker?
I love gaming, games are all around me. I thought GameThinker would help previous gamers help on Xbox 360, PS3, or the Wii. I use to always need help on a strategy game. We are here to help all the users who enter our forum. Our main feature is recording people’s games. We will record your gaming for FREE. We can record any game that’s online enabled on the Xbox 360 console!

What is GameThinker’s objective?
GameThinker hopes to reach out to the new technology of recording people’s games. We hope to be able to get enough attention from the public and have our videos all over YouTube.com.

How fast can you create these game videos?
These game videos can be created very quickly, as long as you respond to us, we can record your game within 24 hours! We are also editing people’s videos to there likings. Adding music, text, etc.

You also have another project on your site called LifeHit. What is it?
LifeHit was a previous MMORPG I owned, but recently my server hard drive crashed and we lost everything on the server. We hope to bring it back up shortly.

What do you expect to get from GameThinker?
I expect to get the publics attention about this new technology we offer to our people.

What are your future plans with GameThinker?
My future plans with GameThinker is to become one of the top gaming forums out there. We hope to help everyone on their gaming needs.

Gearbox’s next shooter to offer “near-endless variety” in stuff

Borderlands 1

Yep, it’s me – the Garbled Zombie giving you your near-daily fix of awesome games. Today we shed light on Borderlands, under development at Gearbox, the famed dudes who made the Brothers in Arms series, the Halo: Combat Evolved PC port as well as several Half-Life expansions. All in all, Gearbox is one kickass developer, that I’m sure will not disappoint.

Borderlands was revealed when Game Informer showed off the cover for their September issue, which is where we’ll probably learn more. The game will be published by 2K, another splendid company. It’s going to be a post-apocalyptic sci-fi (deja vu?) and will feature 4-player online co-op, several RPG elements and vehicular action.

What gets the gears rolling, though is the game’s “content generation system” that will make for “near-endless variety in mission, environment, enemy, weapon, item and character customization”. Now that sounds too sexy to be true. A game that reinvents itself over and over?

As you can see, comparisons between this and id’s Rage are rife, with both looking near-identical now. I wonder if after the famed id-Epic rivalry, is id going to lock horns with Gearbox? The gossip keeps building, but till then we’ll wait for Borderlands, which will be coming out in Holiday Season, 2008. As you can probably guess, it’ll be coming out for the usual stock – the PC, PS3 and the Xbox 360.

Check these screenies out, by the way.

Borderlands 1 Borderlands

My 360 is COMING!

Oh the joy! An automated UPS phone call came through today saying someone has to be at the house to sign for the package tomorrow! Low and behold the package is coming from Texas aka the Xbox 360 repairment center! You can read all my previous posts on this annoying topic Shipping Xbox 360 and Fix My 360. It only took 11 days from the time when my Xbox 360 arrived at the repair center to the time it was shipped back to me. I’m amazed at how quickly Microsoft was able to fix the problem. Now the question is, is this a short-term fix or I’m I good to go for life? I mean my Genesis still works after 15 years of loyal service, why can’t my Xbox 360 work after less than 1 year!

Don’t bother saying oh the Genesis is simple technology – it wasn’t back in the day!

I wish that was mine

Holy Diver suits Batman! It’s the Bioshock Demo!

Bioshock

The summer is generally a boring time for gamers. We get one, maybe two good games that’ll last a week if we’re lucky. It’s not until the end of summer, nearly the start of fall that the good games start to come out. Coming next week we’re getting one of those great games… at least us 360 and PC gamers. Bioshock, the Sandbox First Person Shooter from the people that brought us Freedom Force, System Shock 2 and Swat 4, is being released on the 21st. The game takes place in a once Utopian underwater city in the 1960s, where now super powered druggies, little girls, and giant monsters in old fashion divers suits are out to kill you.

It all looks very awesome, and with many great features, but it’s more than a week away. WE CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG! Well now we won’t have to. Today Irrational Games (or now formally known as 2K Boston and 2K Australia) released a demo to this game on the Xbox Live Marketplace. How much of the game can you play? What abilities do you get? Are you going to crap your pants after a Big Daddy starts chasing after you? I don’t know, the game literally crashed all of Xbox Live, and the downloading is a bit slow. I’ll get more to you when I can, but try to download the demo ASAP, because it’s slower than… well something really slow.

[Via: Major Nelson]

Sierra and Radical working on PROTOTYPE

Prototype Preview

Sierra Entertainment will be releasing a new open-ended, do-anything sort of game next year, under development by the almighty Radical Entertainment, known for games like Scarface: The World is Yours and The Simpsons Hit & Run. The game is titled ‘PROTOTYPE’ (the caps are entirely intentional) and will be set in New York City.

The game will revolve around a man named Alex Mercer, who has had a disturbing past and is currently raging a war. Things go downhill and you find yourself wrapped up in a story full of deception, double-crossing, conspiracy and perhaps more video game clichés.

Mercer will have unique powers that allow him to change shape and morph into anyone who crosses his path, complete with skills and powers. While I wouldn’t the call the ability particularly innovative, I’d like to see it in a video game! This ability will be no doubt connected to Mercer’s shady past which he must uncover while saving the world. C’mon, when are there going to be more original plots?

But good plot or not, Kelly Zmak, president of Radical Entertainment made me happy with the following lines:

Radical Entertainment set out to create the most dynamic video game character ever imagined. From free-form movement to over-the-top combat action; PROTOTYPE can climb or wall-run across any surface, jump 30 stories high, and destroy anything that crosses his path. Our team at Radical has built upon the technology that drove our previous best-selling games and now has the freedom to dream big and imagine a powerful character in a sprawling city like New York, cloaked in a conspiracy and ripped from today’s headlines.

Sounds real sexy, doesn’t it? I just hope these uber abilities aren’t some lame stuff added near the end of the game for an hour. I hate it when they do that.

PROTOTYPE will be coming out for the Xbox 360, the PS3 and your good ol’ PC in the Summer of 2008. Watch for it, but first check out these screenies:

Prototype Image 1 Prototype Image 2 Prototype Image 3 Prototype Image 4