Next for Microsoft Xbox: winning casual gamers
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Microsoft Corp  has  cemented its reputation among hardcore gamers with the launch  of alien shoot-out &quot;Halo 3,&quot; but it is still struggling to  attract the mass market audience that has flocked to Nintendo  Co Ltd&#39;s (7974.OS) Wii console.
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Investor's Business Daily - Game makers are looking toward the simplicity of Pac-Man to gobble up big bucks. And now with the success of the Nintendo Wii, which can run many simple games, the casual game market is being taken more seriously. Casual games -- those that don&#39;t rely on top-of-the-line graphics and intense game-play to master -- have typically targeted middle-aged females. The perk for game makers is that simple games take less time and money to make, so far less is lost if the game flops. They&#39;re also easy to get to people via downloads.
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Microsoft Corp. on Monday will  announce the availability of software tools aimed at  encouraging independent and hobbyist video game makers to  create titles for its new Xbox 360 console.
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You need more than an Xbox 360 and a plasma-screen TV to exploit the latest video games for their full entertainment value. These days, you also need a friend.
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Microsoft opens Xbox development to the masses today, and plans summer workshops to teach middle-schoolers to make 360 games. In Game|Life.
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With the next-generation console battle about to heat up for the holidays, Microsoft Corp. is hoping that going wireless will help draw in consumers to its Xbox 360 system.
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Microsoft head honcho expected to use the spotlight at the Consumer Electronics Show to talk Xbox 2. The Consumer Electronics Association today announced the keynote speakers for the International Consumer
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Microsoft plans to announce a contest to develop the next great digital diversion for the companyâs Xbox 360.
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Some players spend too much time at the computer, but a new USB device freshens the atmosphere around your rig. Plus: Halo 3 button lets you mute whiney players. In Game|Life.
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Tycho:  Having played collectible card games since the original printing of Magic - taking my dishwasher's tips across the street to Dragon Tails to secure boosters for the coveted Arabian Nights - seeing Gabriel take up the pastime has warmed (but not thawed) my black heart.  It's always a portion of myself I've bridled in his presence, kept hidden, suppressed may be the word.  To have him take it up so freely makes me wonder which perversion of mine he'll take up next.    When he started talking about his "Firestarter" deck, whose dancing fires were stoked by a mysterious device known as "The Holon Engine," I began to worry.  The dangers of Netdecking are fairly substantial when it comes to friendly play, a corrosive force that turns friendly pick-up games into ostentatious displays of wealth on par with rap videos.  If you're playing in a competitive venue, building on prior art and making loads of precision purchases is probably your only recourse.  But if you're just playing at lunch, let me be clear:  you are consorting with devils.    I took time over the weekend to hit the level cap in Call of Duty 4, and then just to be sure that I understood what was going on I played for several more hours.  I'm not the most skilled player you will encounter, with a roughly equal number of kills and deaths, but I prefer to think of my work in an assassinative context - the removal of key players at key moments.  Please let me have this.  In the absence of the game's deeply integrated progression scheme, Infinity Ward would merely have created one of the best shooters available today.  It would have staunch proponents, and they would be right to praise it.  Is there a substance within cream that can rise to the top of itself?  This substance has been discovered.  As a distillation of the Infantry FPS, this is right down to it.  This is brutal, unrepentant, bathtub fucking hooch.  It is tight and smooth, it is lethal.  Unrelenting in its intensity, your first rounds - indeed, your first few levels - will be spent without the succor of CoD4's rich rewards for continued play.  But you'll see them on the killcam, every time you go down:  this one has increased health, of course that would help.  This one does more damage.  This one, after he's killed, pulls his sidearm and takes a few final shots.  This one's shots retain more of their damage after they pass through a wall.        You earn these for leveling up, with the experience you gain for every kill, for every round.  You also earn experience for Challenges, which are (collectively) "awesome things that you did."  I completed X-Ray challenges last night for killing people behind walls, which dished up bonus XP - this is displayed with exultant audio and video cues at the very moment of success.  Killing while crouched, killing while prone, taking down an enemy helicopter, this is all gravy.  There are challenges specific to your weapon, as well:  for kills and headshots with that firearm, you travel down an upgrade path unique to that weapon that reveals sights, camouflage patterns, and other tools to customize your equipment.    Watching videos of multiplayer play online, you'll get the impression that it looks better than it does.  It looks fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not completely photorealistic.  What it does have is an extremely reliable framerate and excellent level design, so that during the experience of play these fantastic visuals are transmuted into something sublime.  Here's what I mean:  if a friend is over, and they are watching you play, they'll be able to detect flaws here and there.  Level geometry isn't especially fanciful, and blown paper or leaves look a little strange.  But for the player, movement is just right, player models are just right, and the environments are right so that moment to moment everything gels.      As I said on Friday, to bring this thing into the house of Halo is pretty ballsy - but it'll carve out its proper due.  On the Playstation 3, what force could stand against it?  I have a high opinion of Haze, but I've never played it - that's based mostly on my gut.  Call of Duty 4 will fall hard on that system, like shrieking artillery.
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The word "gaming" is making its way onto the whiteboards of advertising conference rooms on a regular basis these days. As a proponent of this industry's viability as a communication platform for brands, I think that's great progress. We've collectively woken up to the fact that pimple-faced teenagers are not the only ones playing games (for those of you not in the know, these guys aren't even the typical game consumers anymore, nor have they been for quite a few years now).
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Hoping to spur interest among video game enthusiasts, creative types and students, Microsoft Corp. said it plans to offer a consumer version of the professional software tools used to create video games for its Xbox 360 console.
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The gaming industry is set to court the swelling ranks of casual gamers who favor the ease-of-gameplay offered by platforms like the Wii and Nintendo DS, along with the varied selection and lower prices offered through downloadable games.
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With Halo 3 being released tomorrow, some are wondering what the future of the video game console war looks like.  Don Reisinger thinks the Xbox 360 will take the day.
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The much-anticipated game goes on sale Tuesday. Can it help lead the Xbox 360 to victory?
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Is competition to keep up with the next-gen Joneses slowly running the video-game industry into the ground?  In Game|Life.
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Tycho:  Having already purchased two fifths of The Orange Box over the last few years, the level of value I have derived from it is "fantastic" but not "supernatural."  For Gabriel, who never finished the second Half-Life and never purchased the first episode, the aforementioned Box represents an intimidating and possibly even brutal level of content for one's holiday dollar.  It's hard enough trying to keep up with all the games that are coming out, but when you start putting more than one game on the disc the difficulty is compounded.   We're lucky, then, than the best thing on there can be completed in only a couple hours.     I've tried to make my rounds through the disc, but I kept coming back to Portal until I'd completed it.  I expect every part of this strange collection to be full of virtue, in the way that Valve's anomalous position in the games industry allows: self-funded development in their sky-high Bellevue commune until each product sings.  But Portal is strange, even for them.  Risky on every axis, we may now say that the "first person puzzle comedy" has now been proven out as a genre.  The gameplay is strong, but Portal's unique combination of hilarity and menace elevates it, resulting in a few perfect, indelible hours of gameplay.          My TeamFortress 2 experience so far on the console has been fairly uneven.  Coming from the PC beta, where I sometimes battled with stability concerns but the games played smooth, I'm now grappling with the reverse.  I love the play experience, as I've already expressed, and I'm rarely of the opinion that having more players automatically improves a game - so the differential between the PC and 360 platforms isn't as important to me as it might be to others.  No, the problem with TF2 on the 360 (and likely the PS3, as well) is that peer to peer hosting just ain't cutting it.  There are games that seem to manage it better, but with Vista PCs authenticating into the service now peer to peer games should be an option.  This needs fixed overnight.     I'll try to complete the second Episode over the weekend, interleaved with finishing the writing on my own game, which has become more difficult since completing Portal.  I'm starting to think that Precipice needs a greater concentration of synthesized ladies.      I would be abdicating my duty if I neglected to mention the EA thing, which is really the EA/BioWare/Pandemic thing.  I was under the impression that BioWare and Pandemic had merged precisely to give themselves leverage over monolithic publishers like Electronic Arts, but who knows.  The biggest fallout in the short term is that, beyond the first Mass Effect, a multiplatform release is almost certain.  Of course, I wholly endorse that kind of thing, but I imagine that Microsoft might hold a different opinion.  After spending years promoting the series, enduring delays, and now having spent months beating the shit out of it in test, it's fair to say that MS was investing in a larger trilogy - one that gamers would associate exclusively with their brand.