From videogaming247.com:
[QUOTE]
“I haven’t done the work for NPD yet, but my guess is that 360 sales were flat or up a little, PS3 sales down a little, and Wii sales up more than 100%,” said Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter
“That would end up around 1.2 - 1.3 million 360s, around 700,000 PS3s and around 3 million (or more) Wiis.”
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: videogaming247.com
From destructoid.com:
[QUOTE]
GameStop will quit accepting trade-ins of original Xbox games, accessories and systems on February 9. The information comes from an internal memo sent out earlier this week. According to a few managers that we’ve talked to thus far, GameStop will continue selling Xbox stuff until the stocks are toast.
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: destructoid.com
From totalvideogames.com:
[QUOTE]
Microsoft has today confirmed that lifetime sales of the Xbox 360 across the EMEA region (that’s Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) have topped eight million units, and that Christmas 2008 was the most successful in the console’s history,
According to data from Chart Track, the Xbox 360 was the fastest growing console of 2008, doubling its quarterly performance over the same period in 2007, and extending its lead over the PlayStation 3 in the territory to one million units. However, despite a lead of six zeros the figure doesn’t seem particularly impressive, given the Xbox 360’s head-start over its Sony rival.
From Exobex on forums.xbox-scene.com:
[QUOTE]
If you liked X360SAM(info), now you can flash BenQ/LiteOn the same way!
This is a collection of batch files which allow you to “manage” flashing of BenQ and LiteOn firmwares in the same way that the batch files for X360SAM operate.
In other words, the batch files are the same as the ones for X360SAM and Samsung drives, except:-
1) they use FIRMTOOL instead of X360SAM
2) they use DOSFLASH 1.3 and DOSFLASH 1.7 instead of MTKFLASH
3) they’re for BenQ and LiteOn drives instead of Samsungs!
CHANGES SINCE LAST VERSION (apart from the LiteOn ones, obviously)
* BenQ files use DFLASH13.EXE instead of DOSFLASH.EXE
* If FIRMTOOL.EXE encounters a problem, the resulting BHACKED.BIN is deleted as it probably has the wrong key.
* If you run BENREMOD.BAT then change your mind, it exits cleanly.
[/QUOTE]
Download: n/a
From majornelson.com:
[QUOTE]
Last year was a great year to be an Xbox 360 gamer as is evident by the quality of titles that Xbox LIVE members were playing. After a few days of number crunching, here are the top games for 2008 based on Xbox Live connectivity.
Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 3
2 Call of Duty 4
3 GTA IV
4 Gears of War 2
5 Gears of War
6 CoD: World at War
7 Guitar Hero III
8 Battlefield: Bad Company Demo
9 Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo
10 Rock Band
Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)
1 Castle Crashers
2 Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
3 Braid
4 A Kingdom for Keflings
5 UNO
6 Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
7 Fable II Pub Games
8 Duke Nukem 3D
9 Bionic Commando: Rearmed
10 Worms
The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.
Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 2
2 Fable
3 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2
4 Counter-Strike
5 Fable: Lost Chapters
6 Doom 3
7 Conker: Live Reloaded
8 Splinter Cell Chaos
9 SW: KOTOR
10 SW: Republic Commando
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: majornelson.com
From engadget.com:
[QUOTE]
Eager to use your mouse / keyboard combo on your Xbox 360? Eager enough to drop $179.95 for the privilege? If so, then you should probably know that XIM’s ready and willing to oblige. The XIM 2 module, which is supposedly plug ‘n play in nature, is at long last available for ordering, though it’s not quite ready for shipment.
[/QUOTE]
Official Site: http://www.xim360.com
News-Source: engadget.com
From techcrunch.com:
[QUOTE]
Ballmer is a high-energy guy who can be entertaining to watch, but Microsoft just doesn’t have anything exciting to announce this year. When Ballmer takes the [CES] stage at the Venetian in Las Vegas on Wednesday night it is going to be hard for the audience to stay awake no matter how much he yells at them.
Here’s what Ballmer will “announce” at CES:
* Windows 7, the successor to Vista, will officially enter public beta (you can already read about it here).
* Windows Mobile will support Flash by the end of the first quarter. (This was demoed at an Adobe conference in November).
* Two new Halo titles will be released for the xBox in 2009 (something else we know already, whoopee).
* Home networking made easy!
From gamasutra.com:
[QUOTE]
In 2008, gamers collectively spent more time with their PlayStation 2 than any other console. That’s according to media research company Nielsen, whose “Top Tens” of 2008 calculated video game console usage.
Nielsen’s data, which actually covers the period from January through October, found that PS2 users accounted for 31.7 percent of the total time played from all nationwide gamers. The Xbox 360 was the year’s second-most popular console, with 17.2 percent of the time, followed by Wii at 13.4 percent.
Interestingly, Nielsen says that the first-gen Xbox currently sees more usage than the PlayStation 3, with 9.7 percent versus 7.3 percent, respectively.
From spong.com:
[QUOTE]
The Race for a New Game Machine [book] details how Sony, Toshiba and IBM formed the Cell partnership in 2001, each committing several hundred million dollars. It was agreed that IBM would be able to sell the Cell to third-parties. Everybody gathered at IBM’s Austin HQ.
Then, in 2002, Microsoft approached its old ally-cum-adversary, IBM, with a view to Big Blue creating a chip for a new game console.
This lead to what could be seen either as a comedy or a tragedy depending on your loyalty. Agreements meant that engineers within the IBM team could not share knowledge with Toshiba or Sony colleagues regarding their Xbox 360 chip design. This lead to work being hidden while simultaneously the Sony Cell was in test just below the room where the Xbox 360 internals were being put through their paces.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Shippy “felt ‘contaminated’ as he sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch out their architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlier work on PlayStation”.
[/QUOTE]
Full Story: spong.com
T3CH released a new SVN compile (rev16762) of XBMC for Xbox(info).
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:
* Due to the slowed down development in the Xbox branch, I will no longer release new SVN builds as often as I did before. So I will still build (the best) new XBMC SVN builds for Xbox but just on an irregular basis.
* Note that I removed the MediaStream skin due to its significant addition to the package.
* Check out the full changelog since the December 07th 2008 Svn Rev16491 build here
Keep in mind this is a SVN snapshot of the current development tree.