Google has announced that at the end of this year it is to cease running its Second Life copy – Lively. Lively, a virtual world with user-generated avatars and content, rather cleverly allowed you to import content from other Google applications – pictures from Picasa, video etc. But that hasn’t stopped it from the chop because Google wants to “prioritize resources and focus more on core search, ads and apps business.” And that got us thinking – about how much I hate most user-generated content in gaming. Here’s five reasons why you shouldn’t make content for their games:
Tagged ‘New Xbox Experience’
Saucer of milk for the Sony table! Just before Xbox 360’s much-hyped New Xbox Experience launched with its shiny new Netflix streaming service, a load of films were suddenly withdrawn from the list of available titles. The films in question, including Superbad and Bad Boys, were from Columbia Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Just a quick reminder that today is the day when your Xbox 360′s dashboard gets a major overhaul. Wave goodbye to the blades, thumb bandits – the New Xbox Experience (aka NXE) is here!
An open beta of Home, Sony’s rival to the Xbox New Experience (and Nintendo’s Miis), will be available in the “coming weeks”, available to all PS3 owners. In an official post on Sony’s Home forum, Home’s community manager “TedTheDog” has said that the plan is to ramp up numbers in the current closed beta rapidly to “load test” the system, including adding European language testers. Once load testing is complete, Sony will move to an open beta.
Don Mattrick, Microsoft Xbox’s new Senior Vice President has claimed that he “invented avatars”. In an interview conducted at E3, but only just released, Mattrick goes on to pinpoint the moment when humanoid, controllable figures with faces in 3D were first used.
A lot of things get pirated in this broadband era: music, games, movies, books, software… Now we can add a new item to that list. Xbox 360 Dashboard updates. Right now a download that will give your console the New Xbox Experience (NXE) overhaul is spreading across Torrent networks.
When the New Xbox Experience (Microsoft’s fancy name for its avatars/dashboard combo) launches on November 19, owners of cut-price Xbox 360s without any hard drive storage are in for some money-saving news.