Gadgets and Video Games

If you’ve been downloading demos and premium themes at a furious pace in anticipation of an upcoming 250GB hard drive for Xbox 360, you may want to rethink your data footprint. Speaking to Joystiq yesterday at X10 , Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Product Manager Aaron Greenberg told us that the 250GB hard drive is likely to remain exclusive to limited-edition bundles. “We did it with the Modern Warfare bundle , which, as people know, was a huge success, completely sold out,” he reminded us. “We’re excited to bring it back with the limited edition Final Fantasy bundle .” Greenberg said that the limited nature of the bigger drive is “part of what makes it special.” Greenberg also mentioned that much of the Xbox 360’s functionality, like Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter, and even the Zune Video Marketplace , doesn’t require storing big files on the hard drive. “That said, we understand that game demos, a lot of the game add-on content does take up space.” “We’re always evaluating,” he said, “but for now we feel like the 120 is serving us very well as the standard offering, and then having the 250 as a limited edition is a good balance.” Keep some space in your browser cache free for our full interview with Greenberg.

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Greenberg: No plans for 250GB Xbox hard drive outside of bundles

Clearing up some confusion over how exactly gamers will get a hold of the Dead Rising 2 prologue, Case Zero , announced at yesterday’s X10 event, developer Blue Castle Games explained to Joystiq that the term “add-on” used by Microsoft was, well, dead wrong . “It’s not an add-on, because it’s set before [ Dead Rising 2 ] and you won’t need [either] retail game in order to play it,” the devs told us. As for pricing, they could only say that, “it won’t be free, but we’ll make it accessible for a lot of players.” When we asked about a possible Dead Rising 2 demo — whether it be single- or multiplayer — they replied, “We think the prologue is going to give gamers a good sense of how the game is going to play. We haven’t announced a release date for it yet, but it’s definitely before the retail game.” They added, “It’s not like it’s a chunk of the main game — it is unique content, so even if you want to look at it as a ‘demo,’ it’s not

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X10: Dead Rising 2 ‘Case Zero’ prologue is standalone, will be game’s ‘demo’

Speaking to Eurogamer , Microsoft Game Studios head Phil Spencer responded to criticism that Microsoft takes fewer risks than Sony in first-party development by referencing Project Natal — “if there isn’t risk in Natal then I don’t know what’s keeping me up at night.” “We’re trying to build a set of new games, new experiences that will have the same quality metrics of our past games,” he said, “but really entice both existing 360 customers and new people. It’s a huge challenge, a huge investment and it’s fraught with risk.” Much as he did in our interview , Spencer equated Natal integration with Live integration, suggesting that it will eventually be ubiquitous. “At the beginning of Live it was all about sports, racing and shooting games,” Spencer said

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Spencer: Project Natal launch ‘fraught with risk’ for Microsoft

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Over the course of this year’s CES , it was easy to get swept up in the fervor around 3D technology. Not Microsoft’s Xbox team lead Aaron Greenberg though — in speaking with G4TV , Greenberg said he thinks “there’s a lot of challenges about 3D in the living room.” To Greenberg, it’s not a question of technology (or lack thereof) that’s holding back 3D, it’s the home environment. “I don’t know about you, but when I play games or watch TV, I’ve got my phone, I’ve got all kinds of things going on. I get up, I get down, I’m looking outside at the weather and it’s ..

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Xbox’s Greenberg questions demand for at-home 3D

With the news that Project Natal would offload the image processing to the Xbox console – as opposed to handling those duties in hardware on the device itself – and consume as much as 1 0 to 15 percent of the console’s overall “computing resources,” we became concerned that the potential for “supplemental” input in core games would be blunted. When asked what percentage of the Project Natal-enabled games in development would be Natal-exclusive as opposed to Natal-enhanced titles, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg told Joystiq, “Our focus is on most if not all them will fall into that category of completely unique, brand-new experiences for Natal.” “We’re going to manage the portfolio very carefully and our focus is going to be on bringing completely brand new original experiences to the market when we launch Natal,” Greenberg said. “We’re not looking at just adding little Natal components to games, we’re looking at how do we actually bring an entirely new category of controller-free games and entertainment to the market so I think that’s where we will continue to focus.” But that doesn’t mean that other developers aren’t able to supplement their game’s input with Natal controls. After the release this holiday, “developers will have that out there at their fingertips if they want to enable those features,” Greenberg told us. “But I can’t speak to what that means from a game development standpoint.

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Project Natal focus on ‘brand-new experiences’ not ‘little Natal components’

Three years after being unveiled at CES, Microsoft’s Mediaroom software is finally coming to Xbox 360 (in the form of Mediaroom 2.0 ) “later this year” thanks to AT&T’s U-verse service. But, that’s all the details we had .

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Details, limitations of Xbox 360 Mediaroom 2.0 IPTV support

On Major Nelson’s weekly podcast — with a host left laughing and teary-eyed due to the Xbox head’s dental-related lisp — Aaron Greenberg did some NPD boasting before ruminating on the first half of 2010. After pointing out Mass Effect 2 , Splinter Cell Conviction , and Alan Wake , he confirmed Crackdown 2 as part of Microsoft’s list of “triple-A, exclusive” titles heading to the Xbox 360 during “the first half of the year.” “Those are just the exclusives, that doesn’t include Final Fantasy … there’s no way we had a first half of the year like that last year,” Greenberg added.

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Greenberg: Crackdown 2 coming first half of 2010

GoG.com is having its biggest sale ever . Many of the good old games still hold up, even as we stand on the precipice of a new decade. The site’s entire catalog (excluding December releases) of 171 games is discounted 25 to 40 percent — and don’t forget, you can still pick up two Tex Murphy games for free . The sale ends January 3, but don’t dawdle. Once your brain is filled with the fat globules of your holiday bird of choice, it may be hard to remember the special is going on

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GoG holiday sale includes Freespace, MDK and much, much more

Last week’s digital issue of MCV featured an advertisement for an accessory bundle mentioning the “PSP-4000.” The listing has since been described as being nothing more than a mistake. Negative Gamer contacted A4G, which placed the ad, and the company’s license manager said the mention of a new iteration for Sony’s handheld was a “mistake on [their] part.” The spokesperson was unaware of a new model. Rumors of the UMD-enabled PSP-4000’s existence have been floating around for a few months

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PSP-4000 in advertisement deemed a ‘mistake’