Xbox Live Turns 5 Today. To Celebrate Microsoft sent me a swanky little pack of swag!

Also, if you want to read a great article about the 5 year experience, check out Ozymandias’s blog.

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Microsoft is setting its sites high for Halo 3, shooting to have a $155 million dollar debut of the game. To put some perspective on it, Halo 2 launched with over 2 million copies sold in 24 hours for around $125 million.
While one would think the 155 Million dollar number might be a little high, especially considering the 360 install base is about half of what the original Xbox was when Halo 2 launched, there’s a few things to consider.

1) The majority of Xbox 360 owners right now are the hardcore gamer, and are typically the gamer that will buy Halo 3.

2) The base price of Halo 3 is $10 higher than Halo 2 was.

3) There are a $69.99 version and a $129.99 version of the game. All signs right now point to some incredible sales numbers for the $129.99 version, known as the Legendary Edition.

When you add up some of these things, you can see Microsoft doesn’t even need to sell close to 2 million copies and easily achieve the $155 million dollar mark. Microsoft is already guaranteed AT LEAST 60 Million Dollars in sales from pre-orders alone. And that would be if and only if they preordered the original version.

So will Microsoft hit the $155 million dollar target? My guess is they break $160 million.
Variety.com - High ‘Halo 3′ hopes

technorati tags:halo3, microsoft, money, lots, of

According to ArsTechnia journalist, Ben Kuchera, there’s a strong indication that all Xbox 360’s will begin to have the HDMI port standard. The rumor goes back to E3 where Microsoft announced their special edition Halo Xbox 360 unit. The unit was a traditional premium model with a Halo paintjob and an HDMI port.

The rumor goes that once all existing inventory is cleared out, you’ll begin to see specially marked boxes of Xbox 360 units on the shelves showing that it comes with an HDMI port. On top of this, these new boxes will be using the cooler running 65NM processors as well as quieter DVD drives. Good news all around!

Update: This is now officially confirmed. All models will begin to have the HDMI port. The HDMI cable is not included in the package, but Microsoft will be offering an “official” HDMI Cable for $49.99 which will include the adapter to split the audio out via Optical. Systems that include the HDMI version will have the HDMI logo on the package. The HDMI models should hit Europe “in a few months.”

27,200 Microsoft Points. That’s how many I’ve purchased since 11/29/2006.

So doing some math at 80 points per dollar that comes out to be… $340.

I do have 43 purchased Live Arcade games. So that’s not bad. $340 isn’t even 6 “regular” games. Plus I’ve purchased a few songs and albums through the Zune Store on PC which shares the MS Point system with Xbox Live. I think I’ve maybe purchased 2 themes and 2 picture packs total.

But wow. 27,200 MS Points. That was more than I expected.

I’ve decided to start my behind the scenes E3 coverage today with some news.

As you may or may not know I’ll be attending the brand new E3 Business and Media Summit this year representing Evil Avatar.com. The ironic thing of this is the exclusive nature of the event this year, being invite only. While in the past the staff at EvAv.com had a bitch of a time getting official access.

The first event of the show will be Microsoft’s Press Conference on Tuesday July 10th. I just confirmed my registration for the event, and they decided to ask some odd questions. Confirming involved telling them my favorite game, favorite achievement, favorite band and my gamer zone. Odd. But the bottom line is I’m going.

Next up is Nintendo’s Press conference on Wednesday morning. The big 3 Press Conferences are Invite only (like the event) so I’ve been trying to gain access. Nintendo responded with a “We’ll do our best, but won’t know until closer to E3″. Um…ok…gee thanks.

And then last of the big 3 is Sony. Sony. Dear Sony. What the fuck are you doing? I’ve sent out no less than 5 Emails to 4 different people without even the courtesy of a fucking response. Either they don’t have their shit together, or they just don’t give to shits about EvilAvatar.com. Ah well.

The good news this years is James Young aka Fitbabits from EvAv will be coming as well. This should help us provide better coverage. I’m looking forward to finally meeting him, hell we’ve been working together for over 3 years now.

More as it becomes available…

The term gamer has become cool in the last couple of years. So much in fact that sites like MTV and NewsWeek have dedicated columns and writers used to bring gaming information to the general masses.

Stephen Totilo of MTV and N’Gai Croal of NewsWeek have decided to do an email exchange of sorts discussing the recent Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta. I’m not putting these guys down as gamers, they are both gamers in every sense of the word. But the entire transcription is somewhat of a bitch fest on how they aren’t exactly good at multiplayer games, and how they want Bungie, or whoever, to make them more easily accessible. A valid complaint I suppose. In fact, the tone of the articles really change with the final part of the series.

Of course the graphics issue comes up. N’Gai even references the Reuters Article I was quoted in. Yes…I’m gloating.

Anyway, before we go any further, do yourself a favor and read both articles. I’ll update this article when part 3 is finally released.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

OK…done? A bit long winded eh? That’s ok. There are a lot of good points there, and the articles themselves are a very fresh take on games journalism. So lets dissect shall we?

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As you recently saw I was lucky enough to get a Zune from Microsoft. Huzzah! But…I wasn’t lucky enough to have a working Zune Marketplace. This had something to do with some corrupt DRM files or some such. No idea how this happened. I tried following the Microsoft Knowledge Base article, but something didn’t quite match up. I call Zune support and they were very helpful and walked me through things.

Here’s what you do:

1. 1. Click the Windows Button, and type in userinit in the search box.
2. 2. Click Organize->Folder and Search Options->View and then Uncheck Hide Protected Operating System Files
3. 3. Go to C:->Program Data->Microsoft->Windows->DRM and rename the folder to something else. You MAY have a Program Data->DRM Folder. This needs to be renamed also. This was where my problem was.
4. 4. Go to this link: http://go.microsoft.com/flink?linkid=34506 and click Upgrade.
5. 5. Restart the Zune Software or Windows Media Player 11.

You should be good to go now. The plus side of this is this should fix any connection issues you might be having with your XBox 360 as well. Good luck!

I know…this blog looks like it’s turning into the Halo blog. But damn…can you blame me?

I arrived home yesterday to find a nice surprise on my doorstep, one of those new swanky Halo 3 Zunes.

The packaging is all decked out Halo style, and the Zune itself is packed nicely in it’s little box. I haven’t seen a packaging set-up this nice since my iPod. The Zune itself comes with a pair of headphones, case, usb cable and install CD. This special edition one comes preloaded with tons of Halo content including: 10 Halo related videos including Episodes of Red vs. Blue, all 3 Halo soundtracks, and over 100 Halo related images and concept art. In fact, it looks like some of the concept art might give away some clues as to what is going to happen in Halo 3.

The Zune software and marketplace seems solid. One really great thing is for those of us with an XBox Live account, you can simply sign in with this account and associate your Gamertag to your Zunetag (sorry..no Achievement points…yet). You can then use any MS Points from XBox Live to purchase songs and download alblums.

Of course the defining feature of Zune is the ability to transfer songs wirelessly between Zunes. Unfortuantely I wasn’t able to test that out as I don’t know anyone WITH a Zune. There are rumors that the newest firmware will allow you to hit up the Zune marketplace wirelessly from various hotspots which would make it a much more attractive feature.

Build quality is solid and the screen is gorgeous. The headphones out of the box lack some punch, but paired with a set of quality headphones that audio quality is noticeably better than an iPod, and just about equal with my Creative Zen Vision:M. The software works well, and one nice feature is the ability to transcode your videos on sync to the size and format needed for the Zune.

Any Halo fan looking for a new music/all-in-one player should look no further than the H3 Zune. The Limited Edition Halo 3 Zune goes on sale exclusively at Gamestop/EB Games on June 15th for $249.99.

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Synergy is one of those buzz words I was never fond of. In fact, at my previous place of employment, it was thrown around more than a midget at a cannon factory. But today, I’m going to use the word, as it’s simply the best word I can think of as to Microsoft and their ability to synergize their brands and platforms together.
multiplayer beta of Halo 3 will ship with copies of Crackdown. Suddenly the interest in Crackdown becomes 10 fold greater. Most figured this was Microsoft’s admission that Crackdown was a poor game, when in fact just the opposite is true. The game was released to critical success, and gamers enjoyed it thoroughly…for a few weeks. You see, Crackdown just didn’t have the longevity to make it all the way from its late February release all the way until Mid-May when the Halo 3 beta would actually hit. More on this later.

So time goes on and the Halo 3 hypo-meter is dies off a bit. Suddenly we start to see bits and pieces of information on Halo 2 for Windows Vista. Penned for an early May release most people write it off. While not significant, this gets the Halo name out there again. Slowly but surely the Halo buzz begins to build, and message boards begin talking about Halo 3 again.

Now as we approach the actual beta period, people need to dig out those copies of Crackdown again. What better way to do that than to release some premium content. So gamers dig out Crackdown again, start playing it and realizing that it’s still fun. Along with a free download that adds a lot of missing features, a fresh content pack becomes available and quite a few of these gamers will decide to drop the 10 dollars on it. This holds them over for a week or so until….the Halo 3 beta.

So the MP beta lasts 3 weeks or so. People realize how fun Halo still is, and they still have that itch for more things Halo. What better way to solve that than to go back and play some Halo 2…or better yet the newer, shinier Halo 2 for Windows Vista which hits shelves a week into the beta. Shortly after this happen, E3 is going to come around where I assume the single player portion of the game will slowly be unveiled. The hype train continues to roll carrying it through most of the summer.

I’m not sure what Microsoft will do for the August-November time period, but I assume they won’t let Halo be far from gamer’s minds. And lets forgot tie-ins like the recently announced limited edition Halo Zune. If this doesn’t help get the word out on Microsoft’s music player….nothing will.

The point of all this is, what sometimes seems like minor coincidences turns out to be carefully planned marketing strategies. These strategies sometimes don’t reveal themselves for months, even years later when the entire spectrum of it can be realized. Microsoft is continuously creating an amazing extended marketing campaign that Synergizes multiple brands and platforms…and they are all riding on the Master Chief.

Times are changing, trends are shifting, and fanboys are crying. For Microsoft, things are starting to take a turn for the worst. With recent announcements like the XBox 360 Elite with a larger hard drive, a product consumers have been begging for for quite some time, one would think all would be well in the land of Redmond. But Microsoft shot themselves in the proverbial corporate foot with this. Pricing the system at $479.99, much higher than anyone expected; especially considering the lack of HD-DVD or built in wireless, the internet simply let out a collective meh over the whole thing. On top of that, the hard drive itself costs an astounding $179.99. That’s well over the magic number of .50 per/GB for this 120GB drive. In fact, the backlash from this announcement alone was so bad, that Microsoft needed to defend its pricing of the peripheral.

And that was just the start of the trend for Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »