Entries Tagged 'xbox 360' ↓

In our hyper competitive world of on line games, reports are in that Scrabulous has rebranded themselves as word scraper, so all you folks who really wanted to play scrabble type games on Facebook only had to suffer a few days of withdrawal from the game.

On line games are a huge business, they are excellent time wasters, and a good way to reduce stress as well depending on what game you play. Some games can focus errant thoughts, and allow you to “zone” when dealing with bigger issues (tell me you don’t crack open a game of bejeweled and go on autopilot as your brain works on other issues).

Well, word games are just as much fun, but probably more important, if you ever try to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) games like Scrabulous become very important to students and teachers in developing vocabulary and word skills.

The reason for Scrabulous’ extreme makeover has its roots in some pretty gray legal matters: the real problem wasn’t that it ripped off Scrabble, but that it ripped off Scrabble so blatantly. The colors of the board were the same, the list of rules led to a Wikipedia entry for Scrabble rules, and the two names were similar enough for Hasbro to cry foul. Source: Cnet

Further reporting can be found here at the Seattle PI (Thanks John Cook).

In all not surprising to see a rebrand, and this is also something that other casual game makers should be watching if they are making a rip of someone else’s game. There can be only one teritris, but there can be a million variations on the theme. So if you are running around wondering what to do now that Scrabulous is dead, trot on over to word scraper on facebook, and you might have a good time with it.

Tags: Scrabulous, word scraper, rebranding, casual games, game, fun, time waster, brain focus

Marketers and other folks will go anywhere do anything within the social networking space. Boundaries do not exist, and in general folks that market on the Internet are as busy using web 2.0 tools to send their message as you are talking back and forth with your friends.

Download Squad has a great article on twitter spam, and the problems that ensues when people randomly start following people because they decided to follow them.

Twitter users are increasingly starting to question whether the frequent number of Twitter accounts that are following them are actually people, or simply a form of Twitter spamming. The rule of thumb with that sort of question is usually that if you think something nefarious might be going on, unfortunately, you’re probably right. Source: Download Squad

The cool part is that there is also an introduction here to twitter twerp scan as a way to identify those folks who are spamming, although the thought that we are having is that this is only going to be as good as the collective community that starts adding things to the twerp scan process.

Askimet and other spam tools, even stopbadware.org are only as good as their scanners, and only as good as the people who report sites. There also has to be a mechanism to challenge the entry in twitter twerp, some nasty marketing folks think it is just fine to lodge complaints against all their competitors in systems like this.

Business is a nasty thing to be involved with, and if you don’t believe us, check out the Chilling Effects Clearing house to learn all about businesses that try to claim copyright against their competitors, and use the DMCA and other rules to get their competitors right off the Internet.

In all, it is a good idea, but as spammers get more creative, and marketers seem to be willing to take up any way to get their message across, all web 2.0 social systems need to take precautions. This should be a standard part of the business model for anyone that is hoping to make money off of user contributed content. Spammers are good, quick to hop on any new technology, and if they are allowed free reign on a system, will quickly figure out ways to saturate said system until it is no longer usable by anyone.

Keywords: twitter, twerp, scan, chilling effects, friends, idiots, web 2.0, users, sad

Reports are all over the Internet that XBOX Live is down, with anger mounting, so much for that Multi-player Halo 3 game you wanted to play today.

Umm, might be time to go outside and play, you remember the outside right?

Gamers who have tried to get on Xbox Live today have been met with nothing but pain. Apparently the service is down for most of it’s users. What’s worse than not having beloved online multiplayer during Christmas. Some users have still managed to get on but have had unpleasant experiences trying to find matches, while others simply can’t log on at all. Source: Gamereviews.com

Knowing the Xbox Team, they are all over this one and should return service soon. While we will never know why it went down, this should be interesting for all those fanboys to try to figure out what they are going to do today.

Maybe time to leave the basement and go do something else for the day. Maybe, just maybe.

Forbes is reporting November’s NPD numbers for game consoles sold, including black Friday and Cyber Monday, the bottom line; it is good to be Nintendo.

On Friday, the NPD Group, a research firm, released its November sales report for game consoles. At the top of the pack was Nintendo with 981,000 Wii consoles sold. Behind Nintendo, was the Microsoft XBox 360, with 770,000 consoles sold, and the Sony Playstation 3, with 460,000 units sold, less-than half of Nintendo’s figure. Source: Forbes

Not a bad showing for Nintendo, and not a bad showing for Microsoft either, although Halo 3 sales probably bumped that up a bit. Sony still stuck in last place, even with the price drop and the 40Gig model on the streets. There is little wonder that they did not want to talk about anything until the NPD numbers came out.

It will be interesting to see how Sony responds, if they do, as the PS2 sold 496,000 units in November, more than they sold PS3’s. December’s numbers should be equally interesting, and could cement Sony in a solid 3rd place.

Major Nelson puts out some major guidance in why cheating is bad on the Xbox Live system. While cheating happens, it is generally unpleasant when someone is caught cheating, and many game makers are getting wise to the idea that few cheat, but they have a disproportionate influence on the entire game when someone is cheating.

While I am on the subject of things you should not do, I strongly urge you not to tamper with your Gamerscore and Achievements. If you decide to employ some nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game, bad things will happen. What type of bad things? For one thing we may remove the entire Gamerscore for an account that contains manipulated gamerscore. Let me be more clear: If you use tampered gamesaves to boost your Achievements and Gamerscore, you may sign in to Xbox LIVE one day and discover that we have removed your Gamerscore. Once we do that, you will never be able to re-earn those achievements on that account. Even worse, you might have your account and/or console banned from Xbox Live. Source: Major Nelson

While the idea of cheating is nothing new, most of the gaming companies will literally ban you permanently from their systems. While it looks good for a couple of minutes, and you can get a screen cap to brag about it. That is about really all the game cheater gets. Once they have their account trashed, there is nothing else that they can do other than move on and start all over again.

What is also interesting is the idea of account sharing, while you might have one account for the whole family, sharing your account outside of that could be problematic, especially now that the system allows for paid content downloads. Nothing worst than having all your gamer points squandered in a way you didn’t want to have them spent, and no Xbox will not issue you a refund, and yes, they will cancel your account.

Worst yet is if someone is soliciting minors because you shared your account information, not only do you get your account banned, but you get that 2AM knock on the door from the feds wanting to know what you were up to, and oh yeah, try to prove that it was not you.

As we get into the holiday season, and people have even more time to play video games, Major Nelson’s caution and commentary is well timed. Avoid temptation, play the game honestly, it is much more fun.

The light has dawned, and the aftermath of a midnight launch of Halo 3 is hitting the headlines. In general, this looks like a hugely successful launch for the Halo 3 game, and the Xbox 360. The end of month reports on console sales will probably see Wii and Xbox 360 get closer, while the gap between second and third place will get bigger. Here is the news roundup, this is so heavily reported by just about everyone with an interest is reporting on this puppy.

News.com has three articles on this one, NY’s ‘Halo 3′ launch was no riot, but it was close, D-Day for ‘Halo 3‘–full coverage, and Review: ‘Halo 3′ an amazing package.

Gaming Mags and sites are best found using this google search.

In all it looks like it was a great launch night, and we think there are going to be a lot of people who are out sick today, from school, work, and other places that people need to be today. We bet the bungie people are down at the exotic car sales places looking for something interesting. With 2.1 million preorders, this should be a lot of money in Bungies pocket.

The question is, now that the Halo franchise is done, what will bungie want to do next in terms of game development? That is the more interesting question. What comes next.

Halo 3 players who were lucky enough to pick up a copy before the official in store date might not be banned from Xbox Live after all. Now if you are a Microsoft employee, well then you are still out of luck and are going to be banned.

The rumors about banning and not being banned are all over the place, and with no known official notice on either the Xbox Live site or the Halo3 web sites on bans, not being banned, who will be banned for getting the game early, it is everyone’s best guess on this one.

Earlier today, a Microsoft rep told Pro-G that gamers who played Halo 3 early would have their LIVE accounts banned. The rep also confirmed that Microsoft was able to ban accounts based on information collected by the console which showed when the game was played. However, Pro-G has since been contacted by another MS rep, who said the ban only applies to Microsoft employees. Source: Pro-G

So all you happy UK halo 3 boffins, enjoy yourselves, unless of course you work for Microsoft, but even that is just ending up being rumor and various reps saying various things, so no one really knows for sure.

You can see the hoopla here at EuroGamer, and Xbox360 fanboy, so there is a lot of confusion on the issue right now. The official release date is 25 September, if you can keep it off line for Halo, then you are probably cool to play, build your skills, and work out how the game is played off line, then when the game officially releases, go on line, and have a great time.