|
Week of May 27, 2007
Game developers debate Xbox achievements
>> From joystiq.com:
[QUOTE]
Love them or hate them, those Xbox 360 achievements have become a staple of the system. The little blips of joy are so annoying and addicting for some that we're shocked the PS3 and/or Wii didn't implement them. There's an interesting thread going on over at the International Game Developers Association forums started by Raphael Van Lierop (Relic, 3D Realms) where he believes the achievements have taken gamers off course.
Lierop writes, "I have many friends who LOVE achievements. They love the bragging rights, they love being able to compare achievements they obtained to other people ... Personally, I dislike them...a lot. I find they are changing the way we play games, and the focus of the games we play, and make. I feel that games should be crafted to have enough intrinsic reward, that a secondary external reward system should not be required... was it really necessary for us to go back to the old 'High Score' system from the days of arcade games? I would have hoped that the gameplay and immersiveness of the 'next gen' gaming experience would have been enough reward, and that we wouldn't have had to fall back on cheap gimmicks."
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: joystiq.com | gamesetwatch.com | igda.org
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
Europe Investigates Microsoft Xbox 360 Scratching Disk Problem
>> From theinquirer.net:
[QUOTE]
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER for Consumers has asked Microsoft to explain why Xbox 360s have so many faulty hard drives [note: obviously they mean disc drives here].
According to this Dutch web site, Commissioner Meglena Kuneva wants answers from Microsoft. Fast.
There are, apparently, 1,000 complaints from The Netherlands alone. She wants and expects Microsoft to respond to worldwide complaints about the problem.
There's a radio interview with the Commissioner, here - much of this is in English. She wants Microsoft to respond in a week. She mentions this in her blog, which can be found by clicking on her EU page.
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: theinquirer.net
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
Pachter: Take-Two Could Delay GTA IV
>> From next-gen.biz:
[QUOTE]
Take-Two's new management might "throw in the towel" on fiscal 2007, pushing Grand Theft Auto IV back a few weeks to make for a more solid fiscal 2008, stated Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter in a note to investors today.
Currently, GTA IV is slated to release simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 16, just before the end of the fiscal year.
There's also the Halo 3 factor that Take-Two could take into consideration. "We believe that a two-week delay would provide a reasonable gap between the launch of Halo 3 and the launch of GTA IV, and would actually help sales of both games," wrote Pachter.
Pachter even said that there would be advantages to launching the $90 collector's edition GTA IV SKU on the originally planned date. "...A delay of the 'normal' SKU for GTA IV by two or three weeks could allow Take-Two to maximize revenues from the $89.99 Collector's Edition of the game by shipping that SKU on October 17, and to increase overall profitability," he said.
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: next-gen.biz
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
Titan unveils the XFan, another cooler for the Xbox 360
>> Titan unveiled another external cooler addon for the Xbox 360:
[QUOTE]
Titan Computer Co., Ltd, a leader in the design and manufacture of computer cooling solutions, today unveiled the XFan that is especially designed for the Xbox 360. Titan XFan is a powerful silent cooler, which helps reduce the internal operating temperature of the Xbox 360 and prevent potential crashing.
While playing games for long periods of time, you can feel very hot air from the X360 box, but after attaching the XFan, you can physically feel how much cooler the air is when it comes out the back of your console. The XFan indeed provides great cooling performance and ensures the Xbox 360 without the overheating problem.
Features:
* Special design for the Xbox 360
* Two powerful silent fans with four bright LEDs
* Easy installation
* Without sacrificing the USB port by adding a USB port to the XFan
* USB power, no extra power adapter required
Product Available: Middle of June, 2007
[/QUOTE]
Official Site: www.titan-cd.com
News-Source: xbox360fanboy.com
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
360 Flash Dump Tool v0.2
>> Robinsod released a new version of the 360 Flash Dump Tool(info) - a developers tool that will allow you to decrypt and extract various parts of a XBox360 flash dump.
What's new/fixed:
* Decrypts CF & CG (thanks again tmbinc)
* The .cab file extracted from CE now contains 2 files, Hypervisor.bin and xboxkrnl.exe
* Exported sections now include version number in the name
Todo:
* Apply CG patch to CE and extract patched Kernel & Hypervisor
* Patch pairing data in CF and re encrypt
Official Site: n/a, by Robinsod on xboxhacker.net
Download: here
Thanks to HoRnEyDvL from Team XOS for news/link.
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
Microsoft Data Centers - getting bigger and better
>> From on10.net (FYI: MS owned blog):
[QUOTE]
I sit down with Michael Manos the senior director of Data Center Services here at Microsoft. Microsoft is building some massive facilities in various places around the world. It houses everything from Live to Hotmail. Can you imagine a building 1.3 miles big? And its full of thousands and thousands of servers. He talks about effeciency for environmental reasons and how Microsoft is going green.
[/QUOTE]
News-Source and Steam/Download video interview from on10.net
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
Video of XCM XFPS Pro in Action
>> Team XTender released a video of the new XFPS Pro in action. The new 'Pro' version comes with 2 extra wheels with 16 levels of adjustment for X and Y sensitivity to adapt to every mice on the market.
Official Site: www.teamxtender.com
Buy Now ($88): divineo.com | divineo.cn
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
Lite-On IT Lands OEM Orders for Xbox 360 DVD-Drive
>> From digitimes.com:
[QUOTE]
Lite-On IT has reportedly secured OEM orders for DVD-ROM drives to be built into Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles, with monthly shipments of 0.8-1 million units to begin in the third quarter of 2007, according to industry sources in Taiwan.
Lite-On IT took over BenQ's optical disc drive business unit in mid-2006 but did not take over the OEM manufacturing rights for Xbox 360 because it was required to obtain new certification from Microsoft, the sources pointed out.
Although Lite-On IT will succeed BenQ as the secondary OEM maker of the built-in DVD-ROM drive, the company stands a chance of displacing TSST to take the primary status.
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: digitimes.com
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
ZsnexBox v3.2
>> Nes6502 released a new version of ZsnexBox(info), a port of the Zsnes Super Nintendo emulator to Xbox1 on our forums.
What's new/fixed:
* Added a game guide/faq viewer. Start a game and exit to the in game menu. Select "Load Game Guide". Place guides (text format) in the "guides" directory. The best place to get game guides is www.gamefaqs.com. Navigation through the guide is: Dpad up = 1 line up ; Dpad down = 1 line down ; Dpad left = go back a page ; Dpad right = go forward a page ; L or R trigger = analog scrolling ; Left analog stick = move text left or right.
I have also included a game guide and an interesting interview with the original author of ZSNES.
* Added a bookmark system for the guides. I figure it would be a pain to have to find the spot you need every time you open the guide (some guides are hundreds of pages long). So the emulator will always remember/save the last place you were at in each guide.
* Added option to change the bookmark path in the Path.ini (make sure you delete your old Path.ini or add the new line in the correct spot)
* Added option to change the number of lines displayed, font color, and font size for the guides. This is more intended for HD users since they will have bigger screens than non HD users. I chose a default font size where you can see the entire guide without scrolling left/right.
* Added a "Force PAL 50 Video" option. If you are a PAL user, you can force the display refresh rate to 50 (useful for PAL games if your Xbox is set to Pal 60 I would imagine). This option is only valid for PAL users. I have no way to test this feature. If it somehow causes harm to your TV/Xbox/life, don't blame me. ZsnexBox comes with no warrenty. But if it does work, please post your results in this thread.
Official Site: n/a, by Nes6502 on forums.xbox-scene.com
Download: n/a (built with XDK)
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
iXtreme firmware 1.0 for TS-H943 Xbox 360
>> A new firmware replacement for the TS-H943 xbox360 drive
Features
(v1.0) Defeats all current and some future Xbox Live detection attempts
(v1.0) Boots ONLY Stealth Xtreme Xbox 360 backups
(v1.0) Boots ONLY Stealth Xtreme Xbox 1 backups
(v1.0) Boots all Xbox 360 originals
(v1.0) Boots all Xbox 1 originals on Xbox 360
Use on Xbox Live at own risk!!
Thanks to everyone on #FW, Xboxhacker.net , Xbox-Scene.com, Maxconsole.com and Xbins.Org for their support. Keep up the good work everyone.
If you prefer to use Xbox Boot Maker,grab the updated definitions here
Note: Hitachi version is in progress. No eta.
Official Site: n/a (by commodore4eva)
Download: n/a (May be illegal under EULA/DMCA)
News-Source: xbins.org
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
XBMC recruiting developers for Linux port
UnleashX V0.39.0528 Build 584
>> A new version of UnleashX(info) (dashboard replacmenet for your original xbox)
What's new/fixed:
* Fixed: Problem displaying Zipped skins properly.
* Fixed: Black color in images are rendered as transparent.
* Fixed: Dash lockup when scrolling up in Game Manager.
* Fixed: MP3 files are now playable directly from USB FAT32 devices.
* Changed z-buffer bit depth to 16-bit from 32-bit to decrease memory footprint.
* Added: "Compress Texture" in video settings. Default is Off/No/False.
Settings this to true enables the Dash to use Texture compression for big images, decreasing the memory requirement to display those in exchange for a lesser quality image. You can set this to "Yes" if you are using a skin with lots of videos/images
* Added: "Browse Folder" in Music manager. You can now select folders containing MP3 and WMA files and the dash will queue them
* Added: WMA playback support for ISO9660 disc/USB FAT32 devices. Note: Files are copied to a temp folder. File streaming in XACT appears to be broken so I can't play from the media source directly.
Note: Live Update server will only work with V0.39.0515A Build 583
Download: n/a (built with XDK)
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
360 Flash Dump Tool V0.1
>> This tool will allow you to decrypt and extract various parts of a XBox360 flash dump. The flash is devided into 2 major parts
1) The Cx sections (CB,CD,CE & 0,1 or 2 CF & CG sections).
CB, CPU bootup
CD, unpacker for CE
CE, contains the HV and Kernel in a .cab archive
CF&CG are upgrade patches
The tool will extract and decrypt sections CB, CD, CE. Additionally it will extract the .cab file in section CE. This can be opened with winrar and the content (xboxkrnl.img) extracted. The first 256K of xboxkrnl.img is the Hypervisor, the remainder is the 2.0.1888 Kernel.
2) The Flash File System.
The tool expects a dump to contain the data (512 bytes) followed by the ECC (16 bytes). The ECC bytes are used to locate FS entries & identify the version.
The tool consists of the exe and CxKey.txt. CxKey.txt is delivered with 32 '0's and they should be replaced with the key obtained from the 1BL. After all the fuss about AACS keys recently it seems risky to put the key in the exe Wink The Cx sections extracted from a dump will only decrypt correctly if the correct hex digits are inserted in the CxKey.txt file
To do to it
Add support for CF & CG sections
Patch and re-encrypt pairing data in CB and CF
News-Source: xboxhacker.net
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
XboxMediaCenter (XBMC) 2007-05-27 SVN rev9113 build - T3CH
>> T3CH released a new SVN compile (rev9113) of XboxMediaCenter(info) for Xbox1.
This T3CH-compile is a complete snapshot of what is in SVN at the time the build was compiled, with just a few small additions.
Special Notes and Noteworthy/XML/Script changes:
* added: Waveform visualisation - simple example.
* added: Support for skin color themes - done by placing an xml file in /colors folder. /colors/defaults.xml is the default color theme (if available). PM3 updated by Jezz_X to use the new xml layout.
* fixed: Weird looking images with certain widths
* 2 small additional extras are included with this build, PM3 Red Theme & PM3 Blue Theme both created by Jezz_X; change Skin color under Settings/Appearance.
* I'm including the XBMC Win32 PC environment.exe that is meant for skinners & python developers, read more about the concept here. It was built using Microsoft DirectX Summer 2004 SDK.
* I've tweaked the win32 run_me_first.bat so it runs and then unmounts the virtual drives when you exit.
For the full changelog (all added/fixed/changed/updated stuff) since the 2007-05-20 SVN Rev9030 build click here.
Keep in mind this is a SVN snapshot of the current development tree. It's not an official (stable) point release. Use only if you know what you are doing.
Official XBMC Site: www.xboxmediacenter.com (manual and FAQ)
Official T3CH Site: http://t3ch.yi.se (release RSS feed)
Download Binaries: n/a (built with XDK) | Download SourceCode: here
Discuss this news item on our forums: forums.xbox-scene.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
