Xbox Live Demonstration

[Acert93]

http://xboxyde.com/news_2152_en.html

Xboxyde.com really has done an excellent job of capturing lon, hi rez footage footage. This demo is presented by J. Allard and is a 17 minute survey of Xbox Live for the 360. The interface looks excellent, the features are solid, and the Arcade looks decent. I have long felt offering a decent array of card/arcade games could appeal to a lot of casual gamers and be a "perk" for parents, especially moms. I know my mom has always been a solitare addict.

Not for everyone of course, but interesting none the less. Good demo.

Ps- As an online nut Live is exciting to me. Having voice and "buddy" lists across all the games is a big perk. I like Xfire on the PC (which sadly has had its own run of problems and publishers making it difficult to support) on steroids. I cannot wait to see what Nintendo and Sony have planned for online.

 

[slider]

I've never seen Live! up close this current gen (I know, I know). Apart from the no doubt extra features has there been any strategic sea-change?

From the clip the OS/system looked very co-odinated and coherent. Although, I'm embarrassed to admit, he did buzz through the menu structures a lot leaving me confused at some points. There's no replacement for hands-on I guess.

 

[wco81]

Are the card/arcade games free?

I don't care what Sony and Nintendo do, as long as they keep it free. I believe Nintendo has confirmed they will keep it free.

I will enter IP addresses manually with a controller if I have to, as long as I'm not paying for some glorified matchmaking service and buddy list.

 

[doob]

Are the card/arcade games free?

I don't care what Sony and Nintendo do, as long as they keep it free. I believe Nintendo has confirmed they will keep it free.

I will enter IP addresses manually with a controller if I have to, as long as I'm not paying for some glorified matchmaking service and buddy list.

If Nintendo pulls that out, im jumping over their side.

 

[Acert93]

Are the card/arcade games free?

I don't care what Sony and Nintendo do, as long as they keep it free. I believe Nintendo has confirmed they will keep it free.

I will enter IP addresses manually with a controller if I have to, as long as I'm not paying for some glorified matchmaking service and buddy list.

1. Iwata said that free was NOT their goal a couple months back. I believe Kaplan had made a statement about it being a possibility and the day after Iwata seemed to shoot it down.

Has there been a change?

2. A number of Xbox 360 arcade games are free; they also plan to offer some "pay to use" stuff. I also think some of the stuff is "first 3 levels free, pay for the rest" type paradigm.

 

[wco81]

Here's the only thing I could find after the short search:

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/thelegendofzelda/news.html?sid=6120151

Maybe I confused the free DS online setup with the Revolution one.

But I thought Fils-Aime said it would be free from Day One. That is, the online gameplay, not the downloads, which they obviously will charge for.

I also distinctly recall them reaching a deal with GameSpy to provide the servers. Of course, a number of PC and PS2 games use GameSpy for a free matchmaking services.

I think the model is, GameSpy gets a royalty for the frontend used in games which connect to their servers.

 

[Sis]

I've never seen Live! up close this current gen (I know, I know). Apart from the no doubt extra features has there been any strategic sea-change?

From the clip the OS/system looked very co-odinated and coherent. Although, I'm embarrassed to admit, he did buzz through the menu structures a lot leaving me confused at some points. There's no replacement for hands-on I guess.

The biggest change in my mind is that the dashboard is always available, everywhere. This is very cool, especially for games that have lame-ass implementations of Live (pretty much any EA game).

(Some minor features is the ability to have custom soundtracks in any game, gamer cards, and game zones. But the "always available" dashboard has wide-impact, both for the player and the developer.)

.Sis

Quick Edit: I should add that I think MS is placing huge value in the Xbox Live Arcade this time around. I don't know many details other than Arcade is available out of the box and there's a bunch of games available come launch day.

 

[MoeStooge]

SmashTV will be awesome. My old roommate and I played that after classes many, many times in college. I am so happy to see that on the list of arcade games. Hopefully, it works over Xbox live too.

 

[zRifle1z]

.....Quick Edit: I should add that I think MS is placing huge value in the Xbox Live Arcade this time around. I don't know many details other than Arcade is available out of the box and there's a bunch of games available come launch day.

Great point. I think MS has shown a lot of developers how much money was made on the side through XBOX Arcade, and premium content downloads. I enjoyed a lot of the side scroller games on Arcade, but just hated having to go through all the motions to get to the service. So I stopped playing them. That has all changed now

 

[zRifle1z]

http://xboxyde.com/news_2152_en.html

Xboxyde.com really has done an excellent job of capturing lon, hi rez footage footage. This demo is presented by J. Allard and is a 17 minute survey of Xbox Live for the 360. The interface looks excellent, the features are solid, and the Arcade looks decent. I have long felt offering a decent array of card/arcade games could appeal to a lot of casual gamers and be a "perk" for parents, especially moms. I know my mom has always been a solitare addict.

Not for everyone of course, but interesting none the less. Good demo.

Ps- As an online nut Live is exciting to me. Having voice and "buddy" lists across all the games is a big perk. I like Xfire on the PC (which sadly has had its own run of problems and publishers making it difficult to support) on steroids. I cannot wait to see what Nintendo and Sony have planned for online.

Thanks for the heads up on the video. Not only does Arcade sound fun, I was shocked to here him say game demos can be downloaded from E3 showings as well. I would love to play a demo from a game shown at E3 if I were not able to attend.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Arcade game won't be free. I've heard of pricing (still in discussion) ranging from $5 to $20. I think it was in an interview with Allard/Bach, and they were saying how you could develop an Arcade game for only $100,000, opening it up to smaller devs. I think it's an excellent system if all games are vetted by MS to ensure quality. It provides cheap software for those casuals, and the big ticket AAA titles (whatever happened to AA and A titles? Will we ever see AAAA titles?) for the 'serious' gamer.

 

[pipo]

I consider myself a very serious gamer, but I can't wait for those arcade games too. FWIW.

I think they're doing one hell of a job with it and I love the new dashboard concept and layout.

I'm not trying to start a war here, but I really think Sony has a lot of work to do to come even close to the X360 level of online integration. We'll see next week.