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It looks like this is not free, but a free trial: https://majornelson.com/2018/1...

Easier to browse the list here or here.

It's not just a pipe dream, the Xbox One already works with most cable boxes and just recently got support for an OTA tuner. DVR capability is said to be coming this year. Plex works reasonably well with the Xbone and the PS4 (I haven't tried either one, but some friends have), but it wants a subscription (natch). The consoles also have video apps, web browsers, and the whole ball of wax. Microsoft is really pushing hard to make the Xbone the center of your entertainment 'experience'.

That's true enough. Unfortunately I can't find any conclusive statement anywhere, so it would have to be tested to tell for sure. Side note, the Xbox One controller drivers make any game that supports an Xbox 360 controller work with an Xbox One controller.

The XBox 360 has a 3.5mm jack on the controller, for headsets to plug into.

You mean 2.5mm. The original Xbox had one of these too, but you had to use a doodad that connected through the memory card port in the controller. Kind of like how they forced you to purchase a remote control in order to watch DVDs. Also the original headset for the 360 was designed in such a way that it utilized a connector that prevented its use with anything other than a first party (or similarly designed third party) Xbox 360 controller.

The PS3 did not.

The PS3 instead supported standard USB headsets and Bluetooth headsets which are just as prevalent (if not more so, combined) than 2.5mm headsets. Also, this is in stark contrast to the Xbox 360's wireless headset, which used a proprietary RF interface. The only time, to my knowledge, that the Xbox 360 supported a USB microphone was in Rock Band and its sequels.

Then there's the storage drives. For the PS3 it was a 2.5" SATA drive hidden behind a little door, and could be easily removed and replaced. The Xbox 360 utilized 2.5" SATA drives as well, but hidden inside a proprietary case with a proprietary connector that was only to be replaced with other Microsoft manufactured drives. The 360 S *also* used 2.5" SATA drives, but in a different casing that made it entirely incompatible with the original 360 drives (both of which are sold at an exorbitant markup versus standard SATA drives), and to transfer data between drives you had to have a proprietary cable.

Then there was the proprietary Wifi adapter for the 360, and Xbox Live, which is necessary to play games online, be involved in party chats, use the web browser, and watch videos through other services you may already be paying for (including YouTube, Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Comcast's Xfinity among many others) which went from $45 per year to $60 per year (or from $8/mo to $10/mo).

So let's not get all high and mighty about which console manufacturer is better than the other. They all do it. That's what console gaming has become. And if you don't like it, your option is to either wait for Steam Machines or build yourself a PC, because that's the alternative.

To advertise Nintendo products? Same as the original?

I dunno, it seems strange not to make any attempt at keeping it going online. I'm assuming it had some readers to keep it going as a pure-print magazine for the past decade, during which it would have made sense to bring it online.

After all, Sony has the PlayStation blog and Microsoft has... uh... whatever this is, I guess. (Does Major Nelson's blog count?)

Nintendo has, well, nothing. Sure, there's nintendo.com, but that compares more to us.playstation.com (playstation.com redirects me to jp.playstation.com for some reason) and xbox.com. They have no real "community" site, which something like Nintendo Power could fill. It seems strange to not even attempt an online version.

MW2 is just behind Black Ops on XBL: http://majornelson.com/2011/05/25/live-activity-for-week-of-may-16/

Still, that shows a trend of not dropping the previous game for the new one. Halo:Reach is 3rd, but Halo 3 (the previous Halo game, for non-xbox ppl), is 14th. MW2 at 2nd is showing HUGE support by comparison.

The blog linked in the summary actually points to:

http://majornelson.com/2011/04/14/kinect-support-for-netflix/

As its information source, if you'd like to skip all the blog slashvertisements and go to the source, the actual source info is at:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/Netflix/Home

The problem with multi-player is that it depends on an online server today which will shut down in time. Consider Super Mario Bros. a game made what? Nearly 30 years ago? It is still as playable today as is was in the 80s. Now consider Halo 2 made in 2004 which is now crippled in 2010 because Xbox live for the Xbox has been discontinued.

That's because the Xbox is holding back the Xbox360. There's a point in time when backwards compatibility is just holding back development and you have to cut free (see Windows Vista). It's sad, but you knew the day was coming - people were complaining they wanted stuff on Xbox Live that Microsoft could not deliver because of the Xbox. Eventually you were looking at supporting 1,000-odd users of Halo 2 (the other 9 games on the list weren't even totalling Halo 2's total), and holding back features for millions of other users.

Hell, you can still play Halo 2 online if you wanted to - the PC version is still supported. (It's not been updated the past couple of weeks because of stuff like E3 and SDCC).

But yes, I think there's been too much emphasis on PvP multiplayer and not enough on co-op or vs. computer play (it's changing again though). Some of us get home so burned out from the day, we want to plop in front of the couch and mindlessly shoot aliens. It's cathartic. We don't want to do team games, we don't want to get on and get pwned. We just want to get out and shoot. Alas, I know only since Halo ODST did this happen ("Firefight" mode), and it's starting to happen in other games as well. I just wish games like Halo 3 had it.

Some of my best Starcraft games was with my friend battling the computer. When we got down to the end, we ended up toying with the computer opponent - something you can't do in real life, but amusing.

I'm so glad I kept all my games (including my pile of shame), I have a good stockpile to keep me going until this crap blows over.

Yes, Shareware was the same sort of concept, except in that case you downloaded a third of the game, and then had a choice of a physical or digital copy. What they're proposing here is they sell you 1/3rd of the game on physical medium, and then tie the rest with DRM to a console that could possibly fail and an account that could possibly be inaccessible in the future when they shut down support for "legacy hardware".

I'm just glad I can still get to world 8 on my copy of Super Mario Bros 3, and the second castle in Symphony of the Night isn't going anywhere either.

The masses say HALO 3 is awesome. This week it was #1 on xbox. I don't think that it has fallen further than #3 since release. Even when it falls, to slot 2 or 3, it comes back. This game has legs. I have provided evidence that Halo is a good game (Major Nelson posts xbox usage stats here) If you can provide evidence that Halo sucks, I'm all ears, but until then, you are a troll.

They're also begging for relinquish all your rights photos of the event via their official Xbox 360 blog with the aim of developing further their commercial [*cough* Silverlight required] Photosynth 'technology'

[edit] oh no, their 'aim' is to 'capture the event for us all to enjoy' - my mistake.

You've listed 3 purely single player games. All of which have a finite experience. Some have a lot of content, but all eventually end.

So while maybe people may still be talking about those games, people will still be PLAYING Gears of War 2 in the next year.

Proof: Major Nelson blog updates the current played games each week, here is a recent one. Gears of War has reliably been in the top 5, and still is since it's release 2 years ago. It will likely be replaced by Gears of War 2.

There are already labels for violent content in videogames. See: ESRB

Consoles already have content-lockout systems. The Xbox 360 has a setting where if a game or content beyond a certain rating threshold is played, then you must input a code to access it. Obviously, the idea is for an adult to set this code to keep their young children out. I believe this was present in the PS2 as well, and is probably present in other systems. The 360 even locks out downloadable content that is beyond that threshold Link

What's new about this law? That it's a waste of time and money? There's nothing new about that as far as American politics are concerned.

No kidding. http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2007/08/10/halo -3-rss-reader.aspx

Major Nelson has links to videos of the new content on his site. Believe me, they are worth watching. The new equipment and Keys to the City videos are incredible - they're really giving people a sandbox to just have fun!

"the difference being MS never advertised full compatibility whereas Sony did so unless this list improves fast, full backwards compatibility as promised feels like a big fat lie from Sony - at least with the European console."

-- not quite... --

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2005/05 /20/rumours_of_xbox_360_nonbackwards_compatibility _explained.html
http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2005/05/19/no-y ou-do-not-need-to-recompile-your-xbox-games.aspx

"Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360. You will NOT need to purchase a new 'version' -- your original games will work on Xbox 360."

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/06/01/xbox-bc-not-a-pr iority-says-moore/
here they claim that they underpromised and overdelivered and are going to slow down their BC push.

-credit: jackson98

since my xbox broke, i would really like to finally finish my copies of mercenaries, jet set radio future, xmen legends, TES: morrowwind, and mechassualt. not to mention the fact that unless i buy a new xbox, i'll never be able to play "top" games i always "wanted to get around to playing" like panzer dragoon orta, otogi and chronicles of riddick. [they DEFINITELY promised that the "top" games would work]. i own a xbox360 and my original xbox no longer works, so outside of buying an used xbox, what options do i have left?

the xbox360's 10-20% BC is really not cutting it for a gamer like me. i dont mind playing the older titles. 72% BC out of the gate, with room for much improvement is not a "shame", as you put it; it actually looks like sony may be better at keeping the BC promise than MS.

Major Nelson has an interview with a designer for Shadow Run, which will be a cross platform game. He said they were surprised that the people on the console had more of an advantage than the people on PCs. But now they've tweaked it so that if you jump on a PC or a 360 you won't be able to tell if your playing against someone on a PC or 360.

Possibly during that time- but not anymore: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/11/28/xbox -live-security.aspx

As Major Nelson (and other from Microsoft) have said many times, blocking people from getting content based on their location is not their (MS) idea. It's the content providers.

Microsoft would love to sell more movies to people all around the world, but the distributors in the other countries generally have an exclusive agreement. So, they had to start blocking the Silver accounts with fake locations.

MajorNelson.com already does something like this, although it's just for 360 games that are played while connected to Live!

http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/10/14/Xbox -Live-Activity-for-week-of-10-9.aspx

I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Nintendo offered something similar once their platforms launch, which makes me wonder what the point of this all is...

As an earlier poster noted, this is probably aimed more at helping companies produce in-game ads for future titles, rather than really tracking what people play. Although, IMHO, in-game ads for real products add a level of realism to the games, as long as they're realistically place - i.e. something on a television in the background, billboards with real products as you drive through cities, etc...

What I don't need is Mr. Kool-Aid busting through the wall of my safehouse in GTA 4, though. "Oh YEAH!"

Major Nelson (aka Larry Hryb) is the Xbox Live Director of Programming. He's also the main community liason for Xbox and runs a personal blog and does weekly podcasts. He's a really great, genuine guy (I've met him on a couple of occasions), and he really is interested in trying to give gamers what they want. Think of him as the human face of the Borg, kinda like 7 of 9 but not as curvacious.

"Major Nelson" is moniker of Larry Hryb, he's the Xbox Live Director of Programming for MS.

What makes him so special is that whenever there is any confusion over some kind executive double-speak "The Major" is quick to ask the right people within MS and blog about what's really going on in plain English without any of the BS. Basically he puts all the hype and confusion into laymen terms. His blog is probably one of the best and most straight-forward sources of info for what's REALLY going on with Xbox stuff. The thing that makes it so special is that it's his PERSONAL blog, not part of his job description. The guy just loves working for the Xbox division and puts in the extra effort to make sure people get things straight. Of course he also announces up-coming Xbox Live stuff too but my guess is that's not what the article is talking about.

And since "Major Nelson" isn't his real name I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it really is referencing I Dream of Jeanie

According to this, it's the 10th most played game on Xbox 360, so it can't be doing that badly.

Odd how the lists i've seen MajorNelson publish such as this one for the week of 9/4 show COD2 as being third behind Madden and Saints Row: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/09/Xbox -Live-Activity-for-week-of-September-4-2006.aspx The week before that was also Madden topping it: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/02/Top- Xbox-Live-Games-for-week-of-8-28.aspx But I guess Activision is working off of old information even though their Press Release is from today and their game has not been the top game on Live for almost 3 weeks now. Sadly, no 360 game can hold the title of "Top Live" game period as Halo 2 has held that position since its release. Hopefully Gears of War will have a good shot though.

Odd how the lists i've seen MajorNelson publish such as this one for the week of 9/4 show COD2 as being third behind Madden and Saints Row: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/09/Xbox -Live-Activity-for-week-of-September-4-2006.aspx The week before that was also Madden topping it: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/02/Top- Xbox-Live-Games-for-week-of-8-28.aspx But I guess Activision is working off of old information even though their Press Release is from today and their game has not been the top game on Live for almost 3 weeks now. Sadly, no 360 game can hold the title of "Top Live" game period as Halo 2 has held that position since its release. Hopefully Gears of War will have a good shot though.

Ok, I admit I have never coded a game. But I do have a bit of experience coding business apps (vb, c#, php, etc). Now how is it that the text included in the game doesn't have a size property? In almost every language (that I've seen) when text is output to the screen you have an option for the size in which the text is shown, which leads me to believe it's not the code required or the patch size.

It likely comes down to simple finances. Capcom has a product, which is selling very well (http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/09/09/Xbo x-Live-Activity-for-week-of-September-4-2006.aspx) so why would they want to shell out money to their coders to produce a patch when they can work on developing their next product (like maybe getting Lost Planet out the door)?

Keep in mind, anyone who has bought the game, and can't read it, only has 2 options:
1) put up with the problem (like I do)
2) Sell it for a fraction of the price as most places won't allow exchanges once the case is open.
Either way, Capcom's grabbed the cash from the original sale, so what do they care?

Bottom Line, Capcom has put time/money ahead of Customer Satisfaction, sadly I'm not surprised.

Here are some links you'll find useful:

Backwards compatible title list:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibil itygameslist.htm
Launch titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/14/xbox-360-lau nch-day-titles/
Arcade titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/15/xbox-live-ma rketplace-launch-content/

The list of backwards compatible games will grow over time, so if you're not already signed up for Xbox Live (even Silver, which is free), you should do so. Enjoy your 360!

Here are some links you'll find useful:

Backwards compatible title list:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibil itygameslist.htm
Launch titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/14/xbox-360-lau nch-day-titles/
Arcade titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/15/xbox-live-ma rketplace-launch-content/

The list of backwards compatible games will grow over time, so if you're not already signed up for Xbox Live (even Silver, which is free), you should do so. Enjoy your 360!

According to Major Nelson ( http://majornelson.com/ ) the Oblivion horse armor sold ridiculously well.

Even Major Nelson was telling people not to buy it- that it was a ripoff. I'm not an Oblivion fan, but if I were, I am sure that I would have downloaded the armor. The reason I would have downloaded it is that the system makes it so damn easy to buy stuff, that people think, "Yeah, sure, why not?"

I think the micropayment thing is going well. I've spent (pissed away) about $100 on different things like XBLA games, and even a few themes. Stupid? Yes...profitable? Yes...

http://www.majornelson.com/2006/04/09/show-170-the -one-about-accessories/#comments

Exact figures about how well it sold weren't stated, but the tone leads me to believe that it sold way more than he thought it should have.

Xbox Live! has, roughly, 1 million subscribers. There's been a pretty steady state number of subscribers since people would run out of interesting games on Live!, leaving a drought before the next set of interesting titles. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag became boring after a while.

Might want to check some of your facts next time before you post. Live hasn't had a pretty steady state of subscribers. Back in July it was above 2 million subscribers. And looking at a random list of the 25 most played Xbox Live games, the categories of play you list don't even exist in roughly half of them. It's been growing since it launched.

And I think you are confusing your Nintendo numbers, too. Last week their UK office said they think worldwide they have gotten about half a million users. Your million number is presumably an earlier example of number of total connections. This number is now up to three million, which is actually pretty pitiful compared to Live. It's hard to pick a specific number to compare fairly, but Halo 2 alone saw more than 300 million games in less than a year of release, and each of those of course has quite a few connections involved (I'd guess an average of six, but I have nothing other than experience to support that). And each day sees more than 300,000 unique players.

But like others have mentioned already, the numbers shouldn't really be compared anyway. The DS online service is shockingly limited compared to even the original version of Live. Nintendo still hasn't even talked about unified friends lists, has it? There doesn't seem to be any real ability to stop players using hacks to screw over Animal Crossing, etc. players who put their friend code online. Anti-cheat protection is one of the things Xbox Live is most popular for. And the DS only offers a handful of online titles, right? It's certainly a nice first step on Nintendo's part, but beyond offering some basic form of online play the two services have nothing in common.

As far as i know, the geometry wars leaderboards still aren't fixed.

Link to Major Nelson's Blog

http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs- ps3-part-1-of-4/

When I read this I was dumbfounded. Then I thought about it for a sec. The PS3 is all caught up in tech spec numbers. Whats most important part of a console ? The graphics card. Xbox360 wins. Sony may have the FP's. But who cares. IT's about how your game looks.

This is what pissed me off about what Sony is doing. They should have gone DUAL GRAPHICS CARD instead of trying some new vector chip like the PS2. The graphics card is what matters. Nothing else. The GPU(general) is not that important but for game logic.

Who is running the Sony PS3 development ?

I see disaster for them .

Here are some links you'll find useful:

Backwards compatible title list:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibil itygameslist.htm
Launch titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/14/xbox-360-lau nch-day-titles/
Arcade titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/15/xbox-live-ma rketplace-launch-content/

The list of backwards compatible games will grow over time, so if you're not already signed up for Xbox Live (even Silver, which is free), you should do so. Enjoy your 360!

Here are some links you'll find useful:

Backwards compatible title list:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibil itygameslist.htm
Launch titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/14/xbox-360-lau nch-day-titles/
Arcade titles:
http://www.majornelson.com/2005/11/15/xbox-live-ma rketplace-launch-content/

The list of backwards compatible games will grow over time, so if you're not already signed up for Xbox Live (even Silver, which is free), you should do so. Enjoy your 360!

Wrong. Xbox 360 Core *will* include an ethernet cable:

http://www.majornelson.com/2005/08/17/xbox-360-det ails-and-prices

not to mention that Major Nelson has confirmed it on his blog.

Mike

think the main design flaw in the Xbox 360 is the games. They aren't designed for Japanese gamers

They've got every single major Japaneese developer on board (http://www.majornelson.com/2005/07/25/tokyo-xbox- summit/); if they can't produce games "designed for Japanese gamers", nobody can.

Wow, your an ass...
I'm not a big enough XBox fanboy to know who Major Nelson was either. However after looking it up your "confirmation" is still ridiculous. Someone who works on XBox Live grabbed a PR dude and the PR dude said "Our goal is to have every Xbox game work on Xbox 360". The blog was written to dispel rumors that you would have to "purchase a new 'version'" of your original games for them to work on the 360. It was also written 2.5 months ago when MS first announced backwards compatibility was going to make it into the 360 for sure.

First of all, it's been known for a while that the plan is to have all Xbox games eventually playable on the 360. Here's confirmation of that. It's likely that a few of the more obscure cases may end up not working (the same is true for the PS2 and the GBA), but the plan is to make the emulator complete. So IGN's little "let's spread fear that Panzer Dragoon Orta won't be playable, based on no facts!" rant is silly.

Another problem is that the authors of this article apparently doesn't understand console emulation, which is why their estimated playable titles number ("let's speculate that number is somewhere between five and 20") is so ridiculous. Generally you create the emulator to be fairly full featured and then test a whole bunch of games on it. Then you improve the emulation for certain games that you are targetting. As compatibility for these games (like Halo 2) gets better, those improvements will automatically apply to a huge number of other titles as well. It's not like you have to do the same amount of work for every game to get it functional - a huge portion of games end up compatible for 'free'. Because of this there's simply no way you can guess how many titles will work at launch. The only way I could see the number being that low is if MS' emulation testers don't have enough time to check enough games. It would be nice if the 360 has some kind of secret feature to force an emulation attempt, but I rather doubt that.

Last I heard MS had excellent developers working on the emulator (including some MAME and VirtualPC devs) so I expect good things. We admittedly don't know much yet. But this article is just all silly guesses with an implication that there is actually solid information behind much of it. That's BS.

In defense of the one-billion comment, J Allard was saying the game industry in general would reach one-billion, not just the Xbox 360.

As for crack smoking, here's a quote from Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment regarding the power of the Playstation 3:

"Users will be able to store their content in an online storage server called the 'Cell Storage.' And the Cell processor, when it's not being used, can refine the content's quality. We call it the 'aging' process. For example, users can 'age' their Standard Definition (SD) video and up-convert it to High Definition (HD) video."

via Gamespot

More crack smoking from MS, claiming the Xbox 360 has 6x the bandwidth of the PS3 (carefully skewing numbers to favor the 360).

The only sound coverage of the new consoles so far has been this piece at Ars and hopefully, the piece Anand has been working on.

It just ain't fun anymore.

OK, this isn't really a reply to the parent, but getting something at the top of the thread.

NO, THERE WILL BE NO NEED TO RECOMPILE XBOX GAMES.

So this article is completely and totally garbage.

Thank you. That is all.