Avne Lite

Xbox 360 players spend 1 billion hours each month using Xbox Live, Microsoft revealed today. Microsoft currently has over 25 million Xbox Live members worldwide. And according to the company, those folks are averaging over 40 hours of use each month. Although that figure also includes playing games on the service, the tech giant said that 42 percent of its Xbox Live Gold members watch one hour of television or movies per day on Xbox Live. Over the past year, the amount of time people spend watching television and movies on the service has increased by 157 percent, Microsoft said. All told, over 18 million people have either used Facebook, accessed Twitter, watched content on Xbox Live, or accessed one of the other entertainment services offered. At its peak, Xbox Live has been used by 2.4 million people at the same time. continue reading

Final Fantasy XIII is multiplatform throughout the world, except for in Square Enix's home territory of Japan. There, the game's producers and directors went out of their way to assure players that the game would be PS3 only, and it has remained just that thus far. A year after the PS3 version's 12/17/2009 release, the relatively small Japanese Xbox 360 userbase may at long last be getting their hands on the game. Some early leaks indicate that the upcoming issue of Japan's Dengeki PlayStation magazine will be confirming a Japanese release for the 360 version. The magazine mentions English voice overs, a new "easy mode" and a bonus booklet that includes artwork and unseen event scene images. In Japan, Square Enix often releases international versions of its games, continue reading

Microsoft Corp. will continue to offer the Xbox 360 for the next five years, expanding the lifespan of the console to 10 years, said Chris Lewis, vice president for interactive entertainment business in Europe. The company is trying to lengthen the Xbox 360’s shelf life with new features and services, such as the motion-sensing Kinect device, in a bid to wring more profit from the machine. Consoles are typically unprofitable in their first few years because the cost of materials takes time to drop. The Kinect accessory goes on sale in November. “Kinect really gives us, I think, a very genuine additional five years,” Lewis said in an interview today at the Gamescom computer-games fair in Cologne, Germany. “What Kinect does is broaden us out to users that we weren’t addressing in the past.” Microsoft’s decision marks a change in strategy from the first Xbox generation, when Microsoft released a new model after just four years. Continue reading

Recent rumors have suggested that the Xbox 360 version of Square Enix's wildly anticipated Final Fantasy XIV has been canceled. It hasn't, according to the game's producer. In an interview with video game publication VG247, Square Enix's Hiromichi Tanaka said that though the Xbox 360 version of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game hasn't been nixed, the company has decided to "pause" its development until some issues with Xbox Live are sorted out. Full article; Cnet news