July 2007 - Posts
Microsoft Game Studios is certainly doing well when it comes to producing great games for the Xbox 360 and Games For Windows platforms. Mass Effect is the upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive RPG title due for release in November this year by Microsoft Game Studios and Bioware and it has been nominated Best of E3 2007 in the Best in Show, Best Console and Best RPG title categories.
Visit the official “Mass Effect” website (http://www.masseffect.bioware.com/) to download the recently released extended E3 Director’s Cut video, as well as catch up on the latest information on the game’s evil villain, Saren.
Cross posted from http://xboxbloggers.net/CraigN/.
Lionhead Studios celebrated their 10th anniversary and released a new episode in the behind the scenes tour of the Fable 2. The video highlights the innovative one-button combat system and introduces the team behind the highly-anticipated sequel to the best-selling Xbox exclusive Fable.
“This is a very exciting time for us,” said Peter Molyneux, managing director of Lionhead Studios “Ten years in this industry is no small feat. We have a great team that is committed to pushing the limits of what we can do with today’s technology; ten years and counting.”
The new episode is posted on the Lionhead website (http://www.lionhead.com/) as well as on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
Cross posted from http://xboxbloggers.net/CraigN/.
It looks like Microsoft has been busy lately as not only do we have a new beta of Visual Studio 2008, but we now have a Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate 1 sporting stability improvements not to mention almost 2000 bug fixes. In addition they have dropped a Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh that includes the same core improvements featured in Silverlight 1.0 RC1. There are some breaking changes which are listed here but nothing that looks too serious.
In addition you might want to grab the July ASP.NET Futures CTP release as well as the August Expression Blend Preview. I've copied the links for easy reference.
Here's the runtime itself:
Some tools for building Silverlight applications:
Its been a few months since I blogged about the Nickelback tour to South Africa. The organizer, Kusasa, never did get around to a press release and the concert wasn't rescheduled for early in 2007 as was claimed last year.
So I finally got on the phone to the organizers them and apparently the band is going to be gracing fans with their presence either at the end of November or the first week of December 2007. A year after their planned tour dates is an awfully long time to keep fans waiting.
Technorati tags:
Nickelback,
Kusasa
So if you are like me and you are really excited about the recent release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (the product formerly known by the code-name Orcas) with a Go-Live license and you have been actively using ASP.NET AJAX with the awesome AJAX Control Toolkit, then you will be excited to know that the team has updated build 10618 to include support for VS2008 Beta 2. The major changes include improved designer support which I'm sure will appeal to all. Its all in the blog post here.
So go download it from the release page and put it to the test.
Local cartoonist Mike Scott obviously spent too many hours watching the annoying Fish Eagle optometrist advertisement at Ster Kinekor cinemas in Sandton City to be inspired to draw a Bru & Boegie cartoon about it.
A while back I ordered myself a copy of TMNT for the Xbox 360 console. What was I thinking at the time, I'm not sure, but if I remember correctly it was quite cheap and would add to my collection so it was worth it. It sat unopened on my desk for weeks until finally this weekend my girlfriend hinted at having a go at it. So I popped it in my console for a bit of fun multi-player action and realized to my horror that it only has a single player mode. It could really do with a co-operative multi-player mode, so my girlfriend and I ended up sharing a controller and signing in and out of our respective profiles after completing a level at a time.
In short this is an action adventure platform game based on the 2007 movie release of TMNT which features the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the classic 1987 TV cartoon series which got renamed the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
The game flows well and is simple enough to master. The graphics and sound are reasonable although nothing to write home about but I didn't really expect too much more. I would have liked to have seen videos between levels instead of comic book like cut however they at least don't force you to read subtitles like some cheap games do.
The game features 16 levels where you generally run, jump and swing around collecting silver and gold turtle shell coins. The controls are quick to master and there aren't many fancy key combinations that need to be learnt so its perfect for the kiddies. You only play as one member of the family but depending on if you impress your family with acrobatic and combat moves, you can call upon your family to switch out the current player, do family throws and even combine forces in combat. The levels are scored based on time to complete, fighting, how many coins were collected as well as how effectively the family was utilized.
I suppose I should have played this game offline as I was messaged by a few of my Xbox LIVE friends asking if I am now a GSW which stands for Gamerscore Whore. Yes the achievements are pretty easy to achieve and the game should take a couple of hours to complete from an achievements perspective, however completing each of the 16 levels unlocks a new challenge map.
I have found this game to be loads of fun and I recommend it for anyone who likes a good platform action adventure game that isn't too technical.
Cross posted from http://xboxbloggers.net/CraigN/.
This morning I attended the First Tuesday breakfast session on IPTV. Rishaal from Accenture presented a global view of IPTV and whatnot and it was really boring. Next up was Jonathan Newman, head of strategy at MultiChoice. He effectively left the audience believing that IPTV would not be possible in South Africa until Telkom reduced the cost of broadband bandwidth as the current practice of Internet usage capping would lead to prohibitive costs for the consumer.
However he failed to clarify to the audience that IPTV over broadband will not affect your Internet usage cap as it will be a local-loop service and not a public Internet based offering. I also found his references to Telkom as the incumbent operator quite amusing considering that his company is the incumbent Pay TV operator in the country.
What really got me worked up though was a private discussion with him afterward where I questioned his statement that MultiChoice welcomes competition and enquired why numerous attempts from the community to establish a working relationship with MultiChoice for delivery of the DStv Electronic Program Guide (EPG) have failed. I was informed that MultiChoice doesn't plan on making the EPG content available as they see Microsoft Windows Media Center and TiVo-like devices as competition with their very own PVR decoder hardware.
In addition we were informed that MultiChoice plans to offer a hybrid solution similar to BT Vision whereby select content is available through a Video-on-Demand (VoD) system. From what I could gather the system would involve requesting content to be trickle delivered over satellite after requesting and I assume paying for the content through mobile technologies, presumably SMS. Naturally such a solution would be only applicable to those with a PVR decoder as a hard disk would need to be used to store the content while it is delivered. So much for on-demand, it might be faster to drive to a video store and rent a DVD, HD DVD or Blu-ray disc from the local video store.
Speaking on the topic of High Definition TV (HDTV), apparently we shouldn't expect HDTV channels from MultiChoice anytime soon. But we can expect DStv Broadband later in the year which will be delivered as a Web TV solution over the Internet - just in case we really do want to deplete our monthly Internet cap. Personally I think I'll wait for the Telkom Media IPTV offering next year and switch from MultiChoice without hesitation.
For this event to have been really worthwhile I would have liked to have heard from Telkom Media and some of the other players like SABC and E-TV.
On Friday the 22nd of June 2007 a group of us in Johannesburg had the pleasure of spending the evening at Primi Piatti in Rosebank with Jon Foster-Pedley and Eddie Obeng from Pentacle Business School. The topic for the evening was innovation and thankfully it wasn't Death by PowerPoint but rather a group discussion led by the two brilliant business minds.
One important thing I took away from the evening was that business is changing and we can't sit on our laurels and rely on the business models and processes of the past to take us into the future. We need to actively embrace the change and turn those ideas into innovations.
I've uploaded some short videos of one of Eddie Obeng's sessions here and here.
The extremely entertaining local comedian John Vlismas was present to lighten up the crowd and round off the evening. You can see a video of some of his comedy here.