EA announced this morning price drops on a number of games, including the Xbox 360 versions of a few recent releases. The discounts include:
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for Xbox 360 - Was: $49.99 New: $29.99
Fight Night Round 3 for Xbox 360 - Was: $59.99 New: $29.99
Madden NFL 07 for Xbox 360 - Was: $59.99 New: $49.99
Madden NFL 07: Hall of Fame Edition for X360 - Was: $59.99 New: $49.99
NHL 07 for Xbox 360 - Was: $59.99 New: $49.99
The Godfather: The Game for Xbox 360 - Was: $59.99 New: $39.99
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II for Xbox 360 - Was: $49.99 New: $29.99
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 for Xbox 360 - Was: $59.99 New: $49.99
FIFA Soccer 07 for Xbox 360 - 59.99 New: $49.99
NCAA Football 07 for Xbox 360 - Was: $49.99 New: $39.99
Well, Fight Night was one of my favorite early titles, so I might get that. Used, it could be under twenty bucks now! Also, I think I will have to give Godfather and Madden a look; even if both were dissapointments, used versions might be low enough to justify it.
(via Joystiq and Kotaku)
A whole lot of Windows Vista beta testers are miffed to find out that Vista’s Media Center stopped working properly on December 31. The problem: The MPEG 2 decoder used in Release Candidate 1 was only licensed through the end of the year, so, when the date came, poof! No more Live TV. Microsoft fixed the issue in RC2 (presumably by licensing the decoder through the actual end of the beta period), but many have not been able to upgrade to RC2, due to various availability and upgrade path issues.
For now, the best bet is to downgrade to Windows XP Media Center Edition, or, if you never had that version, find a way to upgrade to RC2 (you can find it on Bit Torrent, and the product keys should work). Installing a third-party MPEG2 decoder won’t help. Otherwise, hold your breath and live without fully using Media Center for four more weeks (yes, I know it won’t be easy) and pick up Vista Home Premium when you can.
(via Digg)
NPD Group has released sales figures for the holiday shopping season, and for the period of November 19 through December 23, Microsoft’s Zune debuted to the market with 2.8 percent of all sales in the MP3 market. Apple’s iPod won the holiday season with 57.3%, up 42% from the year before. Overall, sales of consumer technology products rose 6.5% to $8.75 billion.
So, are these numbers good or bad? Well, while the Zune isn’t a flop, it also didn’t beat the iPod straight out of the gate. The fact is, though: No one expected that to happen, and if it had, it would have been the shock of the year. This is a long-term game, and even Apple still hasn’t seen how high it can go. However, The Zune now has a year to gain mindshare and improve the product, and next year will be the first real test of how it performs in the market. I’d hesitate to make any predictions now, but if Microsoft doesn’t capture close to ten percent of the market next time around, then they might have a problem.
Version 1.5 of Windows Live OneCare has been Released To Manufacturing, ensuring that the first Vista-compatible version of Microsoft’s security suite will be ready in time for the Vista launch, just 24 days, 15 hours, 23 minutes and 31 seconds away. It will be available to download and buy by the end of the month, and if you already have a OneCare subscription, you will be updated automatically and for free when it is available.
I’ve been running OneCare 1.5 as part of the perpetual beta, and trust me, all the changes have only served to make a really good product even better. I’m not sure what significant changes are in the new version, besides Vista support, but little things have been improved as the product continues to improve and, in my opinion, remain the best consumer security product on the market.
(via LiveSide)
Kandarp reports that he received a voicemail in Windows Live Mail, and, instead of requiring you to download it as an attachment, Live Mail had a cool new Windows Media Player powered audio control. Google added a similar feature when they started accepting voicemail through Google Talk, powered by the Google Video player, and I could see this becoming a standard webmail feature. People just don’t like downloading attachments.
The only question I have: Can it (or will it in the future) be used to listen to all sorts of audio attachments? That would be very convenient.
I just tested it out by emailing my wife’s Windows Live Mail account a 4.5 megabyte MP3, and it worked perfectly, streaming the song faster that I could have downloaded it. God, I love the Windows Live Mail team. Perfectly implemented feature, and even Gmail doesn’t do it yet.
UPDATE: Whoops. As Pharod points out in the comments below, Gmail did add this functionality at some point. I’d noticed the voicemail player feature, which didn’t play audio attachments at the time, but it looks like they added it eventually.
OneStat has the usage stats of Internet Explorer and Firefox (and other browsers), and while they are a few months stale, they are well divided into 9 countries, so I thought I’d share them. Take a look:
I promised it, and here it is: A screencast of me using Windows Live for TV last night. In it, you’ll see me navigating the WL4TV interface for Spaces, chatting with Harrison Hoffman of the LiveSide blog, and looking at Dare Obasanjo and Maryam Scoble’s Windows Live Spaces.
I’ve cut out some boring long waiting portions, as well as speeded up some others. Pretty cool stuff, although I wish the frame rate were better. Part of it is due to the performance of the plugin, but at least some of it can be blamed on the poor screencasting software. For crying out loud, someone find me a realiable screencasting program!
