Microsoft is getting into the holiday spirit in the most traditional of ways: breaking out the Christmas/Hanukkah goodies and selling them off. Today, you’ll be able to download three new songs for Lips that will allow you to re-enact your dreams of being a Christmas crooner from the 50’s. First up is Andy Williams’ version of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” a song you are guaranteed to hear in every other store you enter from now until December 25th. Next up is Elvis’ “Blue Christmas,” which you are legally obliged to sing only while wearing sparkling white spandex. Finally there’s “The Dreidel Song” as performed by Sister Hazel, which always makes me think of Arnold Schwarzeneggar for some reason.

It looks like the first batch of downloadable Avatar clothing has hit Xbox Live, and it’s adorably seasonal. Right now, you can pick up a bunch of ski and snowboard apparel so that they can keep warm this winter. Frankly though, it still seems just plain stupid to shell out real cash for some virtual clothing for your virtual avatar which has no real…what’s that? It’s free!? Oh…in that case, my little avatar needs him some gloves. And maybe a hat.

Not one to just sit around and be outdone by Netflix as it gains customers through Xbox 360, and their recently revealed Rokum– Blockbuster has stepped into the “battle of the boxes” ring.

Yesterday, Blockbuster started selling their MeidaPoint box which, like the aforementioned services, will send movies through your internet connection straight onto your television screen. Unlike Netflix, this new service from Blockbuster does not charge a monthly subscription, but instead will cost the buyer an initial $99 for the box plus between $1.99 and $3.99 to rent a “DVD”. The box comes with 25 pre-paid movies (thus the $99 price tag) and holds up to 5 full length movies, which must be viewed within 24-hours of downloading.

Netflix’s box also costs $99, plus your monthly subscription; however, the biggest selling point for Netflix is that you can rent up to 10,000 movies through their box, unlike Blockbuster’s 2500 “of the best, biggest and most current movies available”. The difference between the two that may sway you one way or the other though,  has to do with the quality and speed differences of the services.

Blockbuster’s MediaPoint box does “progressive playback” instead of streaming, which means that it is downloaded onto the box. With Netflicks streaming service, the video quality is not independent of your broadband’s connection therefore quality may be decreased if your internet connection is slow.

So, on the one hand you can get more movies via Netflix, but better quality through Blockbuster. The choice will mostly boil down to having a fast internet connection. Depending on who your service provider is and where you live, that could be the deciding factor for you. However, if you already own an Xbox 360–both of these products would be a waste of money for you now that you can get Netflix through your console.

Any way you look at it though, it appears as if the days of driving to the video store and trying to find something to watch are eventually going to become a thing of the past. That in itself is a good thing. Convenience and product availability is what matters in the long run, and the old fashioned video store just can not keep up any longer.

Seeing is believing and this video review of Gears of War 2 will make one out of you. Video host Katharine Fletcher illustrates her take on the follow up to the original Gears of War with gameplay footage.

‘VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM’ is the noise my Lancer makes.
‘BOOM’ is the noise my grenades make.
‘OMFG! DIE LOCUST SCUM! WE’RE BEING FLANKED! WHERE’S THE BLOODY AMMO? COVER ME! GRENADE! ARGGGHHH! HELL YEAH!!’ is the noise my mouth makes.
These are all happy noises. I like this game.

via ChannelFlip

Microsoft has cornered the market on the coveted second season of Internet hit, “The Guild.” The opening episode will premier simultaneously on Xbox 360 Live Marketplace, MSN and Zune. Season two is ushering in more gaming oriented fare including “The Jace Hall Show,” “Red vs. Blue” and first-season episodes of “Guild.” Read the full article on Reuters for the business end of the details.

In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, “The Guild” is a series of video shorts. It’s a spoof on a fictional raiding guild for an EverQuest or World of Warcraft type MMO. If a picture paints a thousand words, how many is a video worth?

BringIt is setting up a service with a secure site where gamers can compete for cash online 24/7. Any game platform with Internet connectivity can get in on the action.

“BringIt is going to transform the videogame landscape by allowing individuals to compete online for bragging rights and real money through skill-based gaming,” said BringIt CEO and founder Woody Levin. “Gamers have shown great interest and support for competitive gaming, so we are pleased to offer BringIt as a player-driven service that quickly connects gamers, allowing them to play legally for cash while getting a more intense competitive rush.”

Some of the titles in the service during the beta period are Madden NFL 2009, Gears of War 2, FIFA 2009, Halo 3, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, Rock Band 2, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart. BringIt will accept PayPal and major credit cards for bets between $1 and $100,000. Read more about the terms and conditions from the press release after the break.

I should think that mixing videogames and betting will seriously up the danger factor for gamers with addictive personalities. It should also make BringIt a lot of money.
Read the full article »

World of Warcraft players certainly don’t mind that 7-Eleven has been dabbling in the field of selling videogames. Thanks to the apparent disregard for street dates, WoW players were able to secure early copies (albeit not early access) of Wrath of the Lich King. The retail chain has announced that its recent sales of games like WoW, Halo, and Madden isn’t a temporary holiday cash-in — they’re planning on permanently adding videogames to their inventory (via Joystiq).

“This is not just a holiday promotion for us,” explained 7-Eleven category manager for gaming and electronics, “but a brand new product line-up that will be available year-round. We may not be a total entertainment destination … yet, but we’re hoping to expand our selection beyond the high-dollar, hot-selling games to include options for all budgets, like value-priced video games as well as DVD movies. For consumers wanting convenient one-stop shopping for at-home entertainment along with groceries and gas or who just want to avoid big-store shopping inconveniences, their local 7-Eleven store is open and ready.”

In addition to Wrath of the Lich King, 7-Eleven is planning on selling the Guitar Hero World Tour band kit, Fallout 3, Quantum of Solace, Gears of War 2, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009, and Call of Duty: World at War. They’ll also begin selling subscription cards for around 20 games and services ranging from Xbox Live to City of Heroes to Runescape.

Picking up a game at 7-Eleven seems to be more of a convenience rather than an alternative, at least at this point. Unless you’ve got one closer to home than any other retailer, will gamers really opt to go there instead of GameStop, Best Buy, or Walmart? But if they decided to throw in a free Slurpee with the purchase of any full-priced game, that might just give them the edge that makes it the premiere destination for picking up big-name games. It would for me, at least.

Microsoft has given Fallout 3 the honor of being the first title to offer DLC on Games for Windows LIVE Marketplace. In case you missed the initial announcement, Games for Windows LIVE Marketplace is exactly what it sounds like… an Xbox LIVE Marketplace for the PC. It will even allow you to use your 360 controller hooked up to your gaming rig.

According to Videogamer.com, Bethesda Softworks’ Pete Hines, vice president of public relations and marketing, had this to say about Games for Windows:

“Games for Windows LIVE helps us expand the Fallout 3 universe and bring the full experience directly to gamers. Through the Marketplace we now have a no-nonsense way to deliver updates and great downloadable content. It’s really a complete package, and a great fit for Fallout 3.”

Other Games for Windows friendly titles are Battlestations: Pacific, Grand Theft Auto IV, Quantum of Solace, Red Faction: Guerrilla and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II.

In the weeks leading up to today’s release of the New Xbox Experience, reports circulated on the impact of installing games to the hard drive. While most games a modest decrease in load times, Halo 3, strangely, was performing worse than it did when running off the DVD. Installing to the hard drive requires that you insert the disc of the game you want to play into the DVD drive for the purpose of verifying you actually own the game. The game disc, however, isn’t spinning like usual, so even if loading times weren’t impacted, you wouldn’t have to hear that noisy disc drive while you played.

As it turns out, those reports weren’t erroneous. Bungie is advising people to not install Halo 3 to their hard drive, as internal tests have shown that doing so can increase load times. Because of that, there’s the concern that increasing load times will negatively impact multiplayer games. Longer load times slow down the process of actually getting into games, which means people will begin quitting, which results in more waiting or in lame, unbalanced games.

The technical explanation of what’s causing this is fairly complicated. The full explanation can be found here, but essentially the reason is that Halo 3 already makes use of the hard drive in order to speed up load times by temporarily caching data. Even though the game is now located on the hard drive, it doesn’t know that, so it does the same process but is unable to simultaneously read the data from the hard drive and write to the drive.

The most important detail of this story is whether or not we’ll see a fix — and, unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like one is coming. Bungie engineer Mat Noguchi explains, “While anything is possible, it would be a significant undertaking to try and retroactively patch/update Halo 3 to be optimized to take advantage of the HDD install features of NXE. The risks of doing that and the resources required has to be carefully considered against what could really be a rather insignificant change to the player experience.” While he says that Bungie will be monitoring the situation, with Halo 3: Recon and other projects underway, you can’t really blame Bungie for not diverting their time to rectify this problem.

Talk about a case of bad timing. On the eve of the big launch for the New Xbox Experience — which, remember, marks “a new dawn in home entertainment” — we’ve learned that Netflix streaming won’t have quite as many films available as we had been hoping. Joystiq learned earlier this evening that a number of films — including both Ghostbusters and Bad Boys — are now unavailable to be streamed to the Xbox 360. The common link between the suddenly unavailable flicks is that they are all from Columbia Pictures, which is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The films haven’t disappeared from Netflix altogether; they are still available to be played on PCs and on TVs through other devices, making this seem like a petty move on Sony’s part to try and take the wind out of Microsoft’s sails.

As it turns out, it seems like this is simply a matter of licensing. Given that Sony BMG music is available through the Zune Marketplace and other Sony Pictures Entertainment movies are still available for streaming through Netflix to the 360, this might not be the proverbial middle finger that some assume it is.

MTV Multiplayer contacted Netflix and received a reply from their VP of corporate communications, Steve Swasey. He confirmed that these movies “are still available to be watched on subscribers’ computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they?ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly.” While he wouldn’t comment on whether the timing is pure coincidence or if Sony put in a request to put this in motion, but he did say:

As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content licensed for all of our partner devices. We’re doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal. Today, titles regularly come in and out of license and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have on license at any given point in time.

We contacted Microsoft to see what their take was on the situation and, as you’d expect, they declined to provide any comment, saying that it wasn’t their comment to make.

What this all seems to comes down to are the intricacies of the licensing process to distribute streamable video.

What would be interesting to find out is what take those involved in the affected movies have on the situation. If this really is a simple petty quarrel between Sony and Microsoft, you can bet the cast and crews would be none too pleased. Should it really be a licensing problem, it’s nothing short of one hell of a big coincidence. Without any proof, we can’t go around pointing any fingers just yet. But if Sony happens to release PlayStation Home to the masses tomorrow, we might just have our answer.