About Author: kfemmel

kfemmel
Description
Kevin is a big gamer who hopes to work in the game industry either as a member of the press, or overseeing social media for a publisher.

Posts by kfemmel

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Grab a refurbished Xbox 360 Slim with 250GB hard drive for $149

By
kfemmel
– May 7, 2012

Are you put off by the idea of paying $100 to get an Xbox 360 with only 4GB storage and a contract that charges you $15 per month, with early termination fees? Well, that isn’t the only significantly cheaper way to get Microsoft’s current home console.

Best Buy is selling refurbished 250GB Xbox 360 slims for $149. That’s half the price of a brand new 250GB 360 console. It doesn’t include any games. Worried about reliability? Check out the customer reviews on the listing to see how it’s working out for people.

That said, a majority of the Zunited users probably already own a 360, so this may be a good way to get some of your friends who still haven’t bought one to jump in.

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UPDATE: Microsoft considering $99 subsidized Xbox 360 with a contract?

By
kfemmel
– May 7, 2012

UPDATE: It’s rumor no more. The new bundle will go on sale through Microsoft stores. You will have to fork out the $99 initial purchase for the 4GB Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle, and thereafter do a monthly Xbox Live subscription of $14.99.

Just like any cellphone plan with carriers, there is a cancellation fee should you wish to cut-off the subscription, and depending on how deep you are into your two-year plan, you will have a corresponding amount due at cancellation. You can view the chart here.
Via Engadget

Yes. You read that headline correctly. Rumor has it that Microsoft may be preparing a subsidized Xbox 360 bundle, at least the Verge thinks so.

Rumors say Microsoft would sell a 4GB Xbox 360, with Kinect and two years of Xbox Live Gold for $99, but require users to pay $15 per month for two years. This is estimated to cost users roughly $460 over the two years which is about $40-$60 more than they would pay normally.

That also doesn’t take into account buying a hard drive or the fact that you can often find three month or twelve month Xbox Live Gold cards for significantly cheaper than their stock prices.

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Rumor: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 reveal coming May 2nd.

By
kfemmel
– April 19, 2012

Halo and Call of Duty may be heading for the biggest first person shooter showdown this holiday season, as it will be the first time the two series release new installments within the same month.

Are you looking for more details on this year’s Call of Duty game? Well, it will be made by Treyarch and has been speculated to be a sequel to 2010′s Black Ops. I’m not exactly reaching when I say it will probably release around the second week of November.

It turns out that we won’t have to wait much longer for details on the next Call of Duty game. This poster is supposedly making the rounds at retailers. The poster seems to be about a Call of Duty game by Treyarch. It’s easy to assume it will be Black Ops 2 since Activision already has a website for Black Ops 2 waiting.

Amazon listed Black Ops 2 a few months ago. You can see where this is all going.

On May 2nd, we should get more details on the next installment in the Call of Duty series. Will it release on election day like Halo 4? Will any self respecting gamer survive a seven day period where a brand new Halo and Call of Duty release? Let us know if you’re looking forward to the next COD game in the comments!

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Halo 4 releasing on election day, November 6th.

By
kfemmel
– April 19, 2012

One heck of a release date, Microsoft has confirmed that Halo 4 will be available in stores on November 6th, 2012. The release date was revealed with help of Conan O’Brien.

Conan O’Brien may be joking when he says he will be in Halo 4, but we can only hope he makes it in somehow.

Footage of Halo 4 is shown, demonstrating the battle rifle and how bad Andy Richter is at playing it. We can only wonder what silly gamertag Richter would come up with if he has an Xbox Live account.

Halo 4 will feature a brand new co-op multiplayer mode called Infinity.Fire Fight mode is gone, but Infinity sounds like it will be amazing.

Are you looking forward to Halo 4? Will your purchase depend on whether Conan O’Brien makes into the final game?

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Rumor: Next Xbox to have 16-core CPU?

By
kfemmel
– April 19, 2012

There are a lot of rumors about the next generation Xbox console. Some say it will ship with an ARM processor, others say it won’t play used games. Some of these will end up being true while others will go down in gaming infamy as being silly speculation.

One of the latest rumors is that the next generation Xbox will boast an impressive 16-core CPU. Some say this will be needed because the next generation version of Kinect will eat up those cores to perform tasks like finger tracking. It seems plausible that a processor with a lot of cores would help Kinect but this rumor is very far fetched.

16-core CPU’s are a rarity even in the PC community. AMD released the first 16-core CPU for businesses late last year. While I expect Microsoft to make the next generation Xbox more powerful than the Xbox 360 currently is, I think this is overkill.

If you can’t help but roll your eyes

Read the rest of this entry »

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R2-D2 Xbox 360 has a hidden message for Star Wars fans.

By
kfemmel
– April 7, 2012

Not only does the special R2-D2 edition Xbox 360 come with Star Wars Kinect (a game that is getting panned by many reviews) and with some cool R2-D2 sounds, it comes with a hidden message for Star Wars fans.

As you can see in this photo, the inside of the DVD tray in the R2-D2 Xbox 360 says, “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

If that isn’t cool to you I don’t know if you can find joy in anything. The Star Wars Kinect Xbox 360 system bundle retails for $449.99 and is in stores now. Let us know in the comments section if you’re picking up one of the bundles.

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Microsoft isn’t nominated for worst company in America, but Xbox affiliates are.

By
kfemmel
– March 27, 2012

Microsoft avoids being nominated for worst company in America.

The consumerist started a tournament (in theme of March Madness) where readers vote to decide who the worst company in America is. They had a selection of 32 well known companies like Wells Fargo, Apple, and Paypal.

Sony, known for the recently released PS Vita and their home console that competes with the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3, did get nominated.

Studies show that a lot of Xbox gamers spend their time watching Netflix on their 360′s instead of playing games, but despite that, Netflix still got nominated.

The biggest gaming-related name comes from one of the largest supporters of the Xbox brand,

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Xbox Live Arcade achievement/gamer score policy changing April 1st.

By
kfemmel
– March 13, 2012

Prepare for more achievements/gamer score in your XBLA games!

No, it won’t be an April Fools’ joke. Microsoft has confirmed that starting April 1st all Xbox Live Arcade games will have their mandatory cap of 20 achievements/200 gamer score raised. The limits are being raised to 30 achievements instead of 20, and 400 gamer score instead of 200.

This may have been hinted at with games like Gotham City Impostors having 1,000 gamer score already, and with Resident Evil 4 HD being put onto games on demand with more gamer score than normal arcade games.

Between April 1st and May 31st developers will be able to choose between the old and new achievement/gamer score regulations for their games, but after June 1st the new rules will be mandatory.

This can be taken as nothing but good news. Achievement serve as a great way to extend a game’s value when used in the right ways. There are some circles of the gaming community who dislike them, but I personally enjoy them. I go out of my way to get the achievements that I find most satisfying, like Mass Effect 2′s achievement “No Man Left Behind”.

For more details, check out Major Nelson’s blog.

Do these changes please you? Does this mean you’re going to spend even more time hunting for achievements? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

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Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Nemesis Mode Exclusive to Xbox 360

By
kfemmel
– March 8, 2012

The highly anticipated spin-off of the Resident Evil series, Operation Raccoon City will arrive in stores on March 20th. Developed by the same people behind many of Sony’s Socom games, it is a departure for the series. Players will have to work together as a team to survive an endless amount of zombies, while trying to defeat famous characters from Resident Evil lore.

Nemesis mode is exclusive to the Xbox 360 version. In Nemesis mode, two teams compete to find the control unit for a Nemesis and when they do, they can unleash the pure havoc that Nemesis is known to bring to anyone standing in its path.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Fable: Heroes revealed, boggles minds.

By
kfemmel
– March 4, 2012

A shocking twist in the long road of taking the Fable franchise to places fans never really asked for, Microsoft has decided that making a quasi-on rails wasn’t enough and is set to reveal a Fable with a dramatically different art style and game play that is different as well.

Xbox.com is listing the game for Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft’s product description for Fable Heroes:

Fable Heroes is a fresh spin on the beloved Fable franchise in which up to 4 players play both cooperatively and competitively in this hack-and-slash adventure. Work together as heroes of Albion to defeat familiar foes and new enemies while collecting as many gold coins as possible to unlock upgrades, characters, and items in both this game and Fable: The Journey for Kinect for Xbox 360.

The gaming community around the internet is reacting to this in a wide variety of ways. The game itself looks to mesh the simplicity of Fable’s renowned combat with some sort of Mario Party four player twist.

This reveal brings up the question, why couldn’t Microsoft simply make this a new IP? Nintendo is praised for being able to insert Mario and his universe of interesting characters into various genres like RPGs (Paper Mario), racing games (Mario Kart), and match three puzzle games (Dr. Mario) among others. But, even with that in mind, don’t out that Fable: The Journey and Fable: Heroes could be awesome in their own ways.

However, Microsoft’s reliance on Halo, Forza, Fable seems to be getting to a lot of gamers over this past year. There is nothing wrong with making new installments in those acclaimed series, but with this Fable spin off being so different, you have wonder why they couldn’t have made a new IP designed around being a party game like this appears to be.

The game is apparently going to be fully revealed in at the Game Developer’s Conference and it is being developed by Lionhead themselves. What are your thoughts on this? Shocked? Happy? Did I under estimate the demand for a Fable/Mario Party mash up and have your dreams just come true? Well, let us know in the comments and enjoy these screenshots!

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