Marc Whitten's Letter to the Xbox Live Community on the "New" New Xbox Experience

With the arrival of the latest major Dashboard update to your Xbox 360 comes a few words from Xbox Live's CVP Marc Whitten. 

Dear Xbox LIVE Members,

Today, we’re launching a new Xbox 360 experience that connects you with your favorite entertainment and games like never before and makes finding and enjoying entertainment as simple as it should be.

It’s a vision we shared at E3 and I’d like to thank you for all of your valuable feedback along this incredible ride and share a little more about what we have in store this holiday – from Beacons, cloud storage and Facebook sharing, to our latest entertainment offerings.

Building upon our great lineup of partners, we’ve teamed up with nearly 40 of the world’s leading TV & entertainment providers to bring you an array of live and on-demand TV, movies, games, sports and music experiences. The first wave of new partners rolls out today with experiences like EPIX and TODAY (MSNBC) in the US, LOVEFiLM in the UK, Sky Go in Germany, Premium Play by (MediaSet) in Italy and Telefonica España – Movistar Imagenio in Spain. And we’ll continue to roll out more entertainment content to Xbox LIVE in the coming months.

Beyond entertainment, you’ll find a number of features designed to make your Xbox experience more personal, social and effortless. The dashboard has an entirely new look and feel and a completely reimagined interface that makes your entertainment accessible through simple voice commands. Now, using voice search with Bing on Xbox, you can find and play the programming you want across multiple entertainment providers without having to search for a remote control. In the mood for ‘The Office?’ Just say “Xbox, Bing, ‘The Office,’” and Xbox will display all episodes available from various entertainment apps across the console.

We’re also bringing you Beacons and Facebook sharing, further integrating social into your Xbox experience. Before jumping into an episode of ‘The Office,’ you can activate a Beacon to let your friends know that you want to play, say, “Gears of War 3.” Then, sit back and relax with the Dunder Mifflin crew. The Beacon will let you know when a LIVE friend is available for a round of Horde in Gears. After the game, use Facebook Sharing to tout your achievements and showcase your in-game accomplishments through direct posts.

While we’re proud of our capability to connect you remotely to the global community of more than 35 million Xbox LIVE members, sometimes there’s nothing like being with your friends and family. And so we’ve added cloud storage so you can access game saves and your LIVE profile, including achievements, from your friends’ consoles as well.

Lastly, with the ever-expanding library of content available, we realize Xbox is enjoyed by all members of the family. Rest assured that our parental controls have improved in parallel with this new content. Parents can manage their child’s console activity, sharing on social networking sites as well as regulate access to games, movies, television, and music. Additionally, the update brings enhanced navigation to Xbox 360 Family Settings to better integrate with Kinect.

We strive to continually innovate and bring meaningful experiences to each and every member of the Xbox LIVE community. Currently, our community is already enjoying 2.1 billion hours of entertainment each month. We imagine this number will only continue to grow as you discover enhanced entertainment on Xbox this holiday that is instantly searchable, easily discoverable and enjoyable in extraordinary new ways. We hope you enjoy this new chapter in the evolution of Xbox and continue to push us to write the next.

See you on LIVE,

Marc Whitten

Gamertag – Notwen

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Thor Coming to Pinball FX2!

As part of the Marvel Vengence & Virtue DLC coming to Zen Studios' excellent Pinball FX2, Thor will be battling the usual gods, demons, and pinballs.  At least the pinballs will be electrified by the God of Thunder's super powers!

Check out the video below.

Paranormal Table Available for FREE!

If you didn't already know, Zen Studios is putting their amazing Paranormal table up on the Xbox Live Marketplace for free this week only! I've spent about an hour with it and it may be my new favorite table.  Check out the video below for a closer look.

Video: ScreenTeam's Gears of War: Mad World Uprising

I've been watching the parody work of Chad and Angie (seen above) for quite sometime and find them to be very entertaining. As their videos are mostly in relation to videogames in some way they tend to fit right in at home for any gamer who happens to come across them. The quality of the editing and blue/green screen keying continue to get better and better hitting the high at the moment known as "Gears of War: Mad World Uprising". The Gears of War inspired paraody can be bought on Amazon here, but it's the accompanying video that makes the whole thing work. For what I assume is on a hairstring budget, they've done a marvelous job.

(Via Screenteam Show)

Video: "Ghost Rider" Table Coming to Pinball FX2

The pleasant folks over at Zen Studios have sent word today that Ghost Rider is coming to Pinball FX2 on XBLA and, while that's been known for some time, they included a spiffy little trailer to go along with the reminder.

Here's what Zen has to say about it:

Motorcycle stuntman Johnny Blaze is cursed, doomed to live life as the Ghost Rider, a brutal spirit that exists only to mete out vengeance against evildoers. Get ready for duels with sinister villains summoned to the stage by Lucifer, all leading up to a final battle against the renegade angel, Zadkiel. Hell's demons are about to learn what it means to mess with the Spirit of Vengeance.

Check it out! I must have watched it 8 times since they mailed it to me yesterday.

Review: Sorcerer's Lair for Pinball FX2

 

In the name of full disclosure, Pinball FX2 is currently my second favorite game on Xbox Live Arcade at the moment (second only to Burnout Crash… for now).  This admission puts me in the convenient position to be both easily excited but difficult to impress.  Is it not true that the hardest people to impress are the biggest fans?

So I can say this with my unique perspective: Sorcerer’s Lair is amazing.  Game. Set. Match. You can stop reading.  Lucky PS3 pinballers have had this table for quite a while. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of exclusive tables so I’m glad to see Zen Studios sharing their purple gloomy citadel table with Xbox Fans. 

 

One of my favorite bits of this new table is is the use of mini-games (without flippers) when you gain access to the secret areas.  It really changes things up for you.  Also, there are a few new effects that add some eye candy to the mix like a spectrally charged pinball.  Truth be told, if you liked the other Pinball FX2 tables, you’ll love this one.

 

However, there one issue that made me want to throw my controller.  It is far too easy to lose a ball down the left return.  On multiple occasions I would lose a ball between the center flippers only to have it saved.  When the saved ball fired back into the bumpers, it immediately went down the left return and it was game over without me even touching the ball.  I hope they can fix that tiny flaw.

 

If you can over look that one annoyance, I recommend you pick up Sorcerer’s Lair on Xbox Live Marketplace for 240 MSP.

Video: Orcs Must Die! Developer Diary

 The world of third person action tower defense games is heating up to a further state of awesomeness by way of Robot Entertainment. With the release of Orcs Must Die! right around the corner it would only make since for the dev team to give a glimpse into the digital only title via a Developer Diary.

Orcs Must die is due for release for Xbox LIVE Arcade October 5th, 2011 and PC on October 12th, 2011.

Xbox to receive a wireless headset "do-over"

This site in it's Xbox only incarnation was no stranger to the Xbox 360's wireless headset. Unfortunately, all is not "lovedubby" when it comes to Microsoft's Wireless Headset for it's Xbox 360. Claims of high pitched noises, nonfunctional charging, inability to sync, or just plainly bad audio quality have been rampant for years since it's release. Was or is there a fix for these issues? Of course there is. Be prepared to shell out some more money to fix your issues if you have any by buying another headset.

This time out the headset is to have bluetooth functionality as well so that you can actually use it on something other than an Xbox 360. What a novel idea, huh? There are two modes of operation that allow you to switch between bluetooth and Xbox mode with a press of a button. But will this be better than the headset already on the market? We'll see.

Also announced with the new headset is a new media remote for Xbox 360. Have you been asking for one of those? You haven't? Neither was I. The guys and gals at Logitech I'm sure are shaking in their boots now. Fans of the Harmony Xbox 360 remote of yesteryear are likely to be the only customers for this remote if their OG remote has found some sort of violent death over the years. 

Images of the new Headset and Media remote can be found here.

[Via Major Nelson]