Peon's Place

Please, don’t try this at home. Or better yet – please do!

Champion Jockey: G1 Jockey and Gallop Racer, one of the new games line up that’s came from Tecmo Koei for Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, will have everyone laughing. At you.

We’ve used our new Kinect at home briefly, due to time constraints with our end-of-the-year schedule coming to a complete state of fullness, but we have had fun nonetheless; mostly at how wacky we look playing the games. This one is no different.

If you think this game is just a joke, think again, and watch the video!

So – pass or try?

The country’s fastest growing and top-rated TV service is coming to more devices nationwide. Using the power of its AT&T U-verse^® IPTV platform, AT&T is quickly making content and features available across more screens and devices, and today announced two innovative ways to watch hit TV shows.

AT&T and Microsoft today announced the Oct. 15 launch of U-verse TV on Xbox 360 for U-verse customers, which lets you enjoy the U-verse TV experience on your existing Xbox 360 device, replacing the need for an extra receiver in your home. AT&T is the first TV provider in the U.S. to offer live TV service through an Xbox 360.

Read the rest of this entry » Live TV through your Xbox...

While I can’t say that I am *ducks behind his desk* crazy about *keeps hiding* Halo games, I am all of the sudden intrigued. As I have mentioned before, the new Xbox 360 slim is damn sexy.

And now comes, instead of the sleek black look, a shiny silver version! Limited edition consoles are sold in the Halo Reach bundle for $400, including the game and two controllers and a headset.It’s actually not too bad of a deal, $100 additional for a $60 game, a $40-ish controller, and a $10-20 headset, plus the sweet look of a redesigned new Xbox 360, still the 250gb size.

One of the most popular video games on any console is the Halo franchise. More people play Halo alone on the Xbox Live network than those that play all other games combined online on the PS3. With the massive number of fans and players for Halo titles, a new launch in the franchise is huge for Microsoft and the publisher of the game Bungie.

The console will have custom Halo: Reach wireless controllers. The console will be silver and have a Halo design theme. The bundle also included a standard edition copy of Halo: Reach, a token for the limited edition Halo: Reach Limited Edition Elite armor set, and a wires Halo: Reach headset.

There is another very cool feature to the Xbox 360 console included in the bundle other than the color and theme. The console will feature sound effects from the Halo universe. Inside the console are a 250GB HDD, 802.lln Wi-Fi, and all the features of the newly unveiled Xbox 360. The price for the bundle is $399.

The new Xbox 360 “slim” is super sweet looking, comes with a 250GB hard drive (more than any console currently), built-in WiFi, and is slimmer and sleeker than even the Playstation 3. This is likely a reason as to why Microsoft’s Xbox beat out every other at-home console last month.

Helped by new model sales, the Xbox 360 topped the Wii for the first time in months, pulling ahead of Nintendo’s console by roughly 30,000 units, and Sony’s PS3 by a comfortable 147,000-unit spread.

June 2010 video game hardware sales, with growth compared to June 2009:

• 452,000 — Xbox 360 (+88 percent)
• 423,000 — Wii (+17 percent)
• 305,000 — PlayStation 3 (+85 percent)

I almost hope my current Xbox 360 red-rings on me so that I have an excuse to purchase this new version.

I’ve written articles about the enhancements of Hulu and Netflix a few times in the past (view a list!), so here are some updates for you guys.

With the reveal of its premium Hulu Plus service last month, video streaming site Hulu announced that it would be branching out to devices other than computers, including televisions, Apple devices, and game consoles. Today, Hulu Plus has finally landed on the Playstation 3 — although it isn’t available to all PS3 owners just yet — according to the official Playstation blog.

Currently, Hulu Plus is only available to a select group of Playstation Plus subscribers — Sony’s $50-a-year premium service. Any Playstation Plus subscriber can download the app, but they’ll need to request an invitation to the Hulu Plus preview period to use it. Once accepted, users just need to pay Hulu Plus’s $9.99 monthly fee to access it. Once the preview period is over in a few months, the app will open up to all Playstation 3 users — by which point it should also be available on Sony’s Bravia TVs, Blu-Ray players, and other web-connected devices.

Read the rest of this entry » Hulu Plus available only ...

Say goodbye to your pricey cable TV! Between Hulu and Netflix, I really see no reason to keep Cable/Satellite TV around any longer.

Announced earlier today after months of speculation, Hulu Plus has finally become official. For $9.99 per month, subscribers will be able to watch their favorite shows — including those from seasons past — on a multitude of internet-connected devices.

Mobile devices are a go, with iOS devices including the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, and iPod touch (3rd generation) being the main attraction at this point in time. The best part as far as mobile is concerned is that streaming will work on both Wi-Fi and 3G networks. Several internet-connected HDTVs and Blu-ray players from Samsung already have support for the streaming service, and later on in the year, both Sony and Vizio will introduce support in some of their sets ad Blu-ray players. The PlayStation 3 will support the service “soon”, while the Xbox 360 will play nice come 2011.

Hulu Plus will officially launch is July, but if you’re lucky you might just be able snag a preview invite.

I’m pretty sure my sister and her boyfriend both have Xbox Live Gold accounts. I’m already on their AT&T family plan for my iPhone, I may as well pass them some more money to include me on this, too! While Netflix streaming is awesome for my large plasma TV at home, it wasn’t enough to keep me on a Gold membership once I expired this past September; most of the games I purchased at release date were single-player only, so there was no need for the online gaming aspect of Xbox Live.

At $49.99 per year, a subscription to Xbox Live Gold isn’t all that bad of a deal — unless you compare it to the newly announced Xbox Live Gold Family Pack. Starting in November, $99.99 a year will give up to four users access to all of the perks that the single user membership offers. You know, great stuff like multiplayer gaming, a Zune Pass, Netflix streaming, video chat and 3,500 live sporting events from ESPN.

An Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack includes:

• Up to four individual Xbox LIVE Gold memberships for the price of two – (US) $99.99.
• Family Center – a single, easy to use, destination for Family Settings and account management, accessible on the Xbox dashboard and on Xbox.com.
• The primary account member has the ability to purchase and dispense Microsoft Points to other Xbox LIVE Gold Family Pack members.
• Activity monitoring reports viewable on Xbox.com to help encourage discussions about safer more balanced gaming and entertainment habits.
• Simplified billing that applies all purchase charges to the primary account holder’s billing account and the ability to authorize purchases, helping to manage the family’s entertainment budget.
• Exclusive family content and discounts.

The industry-leading, built-in Xbox 360 Family Settings are also being taken to the next level this November. It’s Microsoft’s goal to provide parents and caregivers with tools and resources to manage their children’s gaming and entertainment experiences, and these features are available to all Xbox LIVE members:

• Family Programming that removes all mature games, movies, and content from the dashboard, based on ESRB, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings and the TV Parental Guidelines system. Family Programming is password protected, and easy to turn on and off for each member. (Compatible with international ratings systems.)
• Title exceptions – the ability to allow your family members to play specific games above the console’s designated ESRB rating if you deem appropriate. (Compatible with international ratings systems.)
• Intelligent default settings for child, teen, and adult profiles. Xbox will automatically assign default privacy and activity settings for each member that can later be individually customized.
• Family Settings are displayed prominently in the MyXbox channel. Current tools include the Family Timer, which allows you to control the amount of time – either daily or weekly – your children may use the console.

Whether you want to play your favorite games, stream movies and music from Zune, or watch the latest sporting event together via ESPN on Xbox LIVE, Xbox 360 brings the best family-friendly entertainment straight to your living room.

Microsoft’s Kinect, the controller-free, gesture-based gaming platform that finally saw an official unveiling at E3 this week continues to surprise us, but not always necessarily in good ways. For instance, we think it’s awesome that the non-peripheral peripheral can tell when a child is playing and adjust gameplay to be easier. However, we’re quite nonplussed with the discovery that Kinect apparently doesn’t work well at all if you’re sitting down. Being a couch potato suddenly became difficult, and we certainly didn’t see that coming.

Gaming is a social media, and though Web-based play means that while your gaming buddies may not always be in the same room, any platform should be able to accommodate family-style play. This is what makes the child feature of Kinect so cool: People of varying ages can step up to the Kinect, which can automatically change gameplay on the fly to an easier level for youngsters without someone paging through menu screens to make the adjustments manually. And it’s not just theoretical: the folks at Kotaku got a confirmation of just such a feature from the developers of one of the first Kinect games Joy Ride.

But with Kinect, that’s not necessarily so. Bloggers that have been demo-ing Kinect and talking to game developers all week at E3 have found that you can’t really use the system – which aside from being a gaming tool is supposed to allow for gesture control of media like television content and movies – unless you’re standing up. Playing video games (and especially watching movies and TV) and firmly planting oneself on the couch go hand in hand, so we’re hoping Microsoft is working feverishly on a fix for this gaming gaffe.

Even if you do not know the difference between Super Mario and Grand Theft Auto, the Kinect system unveiled this week in Los Angeles, is the kind of technology to sit up and take notice of. Nintendo’s Wii console changed the rules of gaming when it introduced a wireless controller, selling 70 million, and now Microsoft is going one better and throwing out the controller.

Instead Xbox players will be able to use every part of their body to play, with motion tracking, facial and voice recognition, and a depth-detecting camera. But the system, which Microsoft says will be on sale in December and also be available for PCs, could do much more than revolutionize game playing. Microsoft’s Michael Herrmann says: “The potential of this technology is enormous. When you enter the game it will recognise your face and voice, it really personalizes the whole gaming experience to a level that none of us have seen before. People are going to have their own Minority Report moment in their own lounge room. People will see the motion capture technology in films like Lord of The Rings happening inside their homes. The only limitation on the development of content is developers’ imaginations. You can become the superhero if the game is about a superhero, it’s a totally immersive experience. Or people could simply be sitting in their armchair using the camera and chatting to a friend overseas via Xbox Live, it could be literally flicking through a menu of films. It could be leaping around playing an action game.”

When Microsoft unveiled the new slimline Xbox 360 at its press conference on Monday, it neglected to mention one small detail. The new model of the console is incapable of getting the “Red Ring of Death,” the 3-red bar indicator on the front of the console that signaled hardware failure. The absolute impossibility of the Red Ring isn’t by virtue of the console being failure-proof–that has yet to be determined. It’s because the new console has no red ring LEDs at all. According to a spec sheet obtained by gaming blog Joystiq, the new console has only green LEDs in the ring on its front. How the new console will indicate failure is unclear. When contacted by GameSpot, Microsoft representatives said they would “have an official response shortly” but declined to confirm or deny the report outright.

The new Xbox 360 is already shipping to stores, and will bear the same retail price as the Xbox 360 elite, which has been discontinued and discounted $50. It will have a 250GB hard drive and comes with built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n wi-fi connectivity. Its chassis has ample venting to cool its CPU and GPU, which are both made with a 45nm production process–meaning they will run cooler to begin with. As a result, the console requires a smaller fan for its cooling system, which Microsoft promises will be “whisper quiet.”

There’s a growing movement in video games — motion control. And Microsoft’s latest twist: Its new system for the Xbox 360, dubbed Kinect (Project Natal) and being unveiled this week, requires no controller at all. Nintendo started the wave with simplified, wireless, movement-sensing Wii controllers in late 2006. Since then, consumers have bought more than 28 million Wiis. (In comparison, sales of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are about 20 million and 12.3 million, respectively.)

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo game convention beginning today, both Sony and Microsoft will reveal new details about their motion control systems, due later this year.