I don’t know what happened to 2009. I honestly don’t, it went by quickly for me. But there were games, and some of them were good. But for New Year’s Eve, here’s my take on Xbox 360 gaming in 2009.

I’ll be the first to admit that this round-up is a little thin. It’s been a busy year, and I didn’t get nearly as much gaming time in as I’d like. So, I can’t say much about many of the games that came out this year. I didn’t get to play Resident Evil 5, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age: Origins or Borderlands yet. I also didn’t get much time with either Assassin’s Creed II (which I’ll be playing in full very soon) or Call of Duty: Modern Combat 2. (MC2 looks and plays great, but I’m a Battlefield junkie, so I’m not the typical 360 player who is stuck on MC2 right now.)

Ok, that said, I actually did play some games this year! Here are the ones I feel that I can actually talk about:

Halo 3: ODST

ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Trooper) began as an expansion for Halo 3, called Halo 3: Recon, which was to be released as a budget, stand-alone expansion offering a short campaign played as a different sort of character. What emerged was a full-scale (and full-price) game.

In ODST, you play as regular soldiers during the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3. These soldiers don’t have the strength or agility of spartans like Master Chief, giving ODST a very different feel than what Halo has become, focusing more on strategy and stealth.

ODST also came with a complete Halo 3 multiplayer disc, featuring all of the Halo 3 DLC maps as well as 3 new ones, giving an expanded multiplayer experience to anyone already enjoying Halo 3′s multiplayer.

Fallout 3 DLC

Fallout 3 came out last year, but this year the game grew with five DLC expansions.

I didn’t play Operation: Anchorage, the first one, but I did play the other four: The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta.  The Pitt was a bit underwhelming, but Broken Steel turned things around with a nice extension to the main storyline. Point Lookout was my favourite of them all, with Mothership Zeta a close second.

Overall I think Fallout 3 did their game justice with the DLC expansions, and I recommend them to anyone who enjoyed the game enough to be considering them.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

I’m on Disc 3 of 3 of Star Ocean as I write this — I had rented the game back when it came out, and just got it for Christmas from my wife in order to finish it. Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a fun game, but  I have a few issues with it.

The usual cultural difference in terms of, let’s say, “artistic direction” that comes with any Japanese RPG is chief among these issues. When translated into English, the dialogue of Star Ocean is a little ridiculous. The characters are caricatures of either naivety or emoness (for lack of an actual word), and if I get the supposed moral of this story, that we’re all friends and we have to keep moving forward together, shoved in my face one more time I may need to buy a new TV, having thrown my controller through my current one. Some of the characters are almost intolerably annoying. If you’ve played this game, you know what I mean, kay?

All of that said, I can’t put my controller down. The story overall is decent, and the gameplay is fun. I like JRPGs for the play style and the gameplay. There’s a lot of running around for quests and whatnot, but there are moments in which that becomes a zen-like experience. If that’s not your thing, you can advance through the storyline more directly at a relatively quick pace.

I’m looking forward to Mass Effect 2 to bring me some believable dialogue, but Star Ocean is a great fix for the RPG junkie and generally an enjoyable game.

Battlefield 1943

As I mentioned, and have mentioned a number of times on this blog, I’m a big fan of DICE’s Battlefield series. I’ve been playing Battlefield: Bad Company since it’s release in 2008 and I’m eagerly awaiting Bad Company 2 next March. So when I heard that a “sequel” to the original Battlefield 1942 was in the works, naturally I was on board.

Battlefield 1943 takes place during World War 2, and focuses exclusively on multiplayer. The game has four multiplayer maps that mimic Pacific Rim battles of the era: Iwo Jima, Wake Island, Guadalcanal and Coral Sea. The first three of these maps focus on ground combat and play much like other Battlefield games. The Coral Sea map is exclusively used for aerial combat.

For a mere 1200 Microsoft Points, which works out to about $15, Battlefield 1943 has given me hours upon hours of fun and was well worth the money.

A short list, I know. As I mentioned, I have to catch up on quite a few games. Hopefully I’ll be tackling some of them before long, and I can add some new reviews… but with the games coming up next year, I’m not sure how I’ll fit it all in. I also just updated the Xbox 360 release calendar with what’s to come in 2010.

I hope everyone has a good time celebrating the countdown tonight, and I wish you all a safe and happy new year!

Enjoy.

Heh…

I found a sand castle in Battlefield 1943 today.  Spotted on the smaller island alongside Guadalcanal.  Apparently there’s one on Wake Island as well.

It’s Swedish. EA DICE is based in Stockholm, after all.

There’s quite a bit of talk going on about the new Silverlight-powered ads that are coming to the Xbox 360 Dashboard.  Xbox PR guy Major Nelson produced a blog post meant to calm everyone down by saying that the ads would be placed “organically” in the dashboard and would not interfere with the Xbox Live experience.

I’m not sure how that’ll work — I don’t care for clutter, so the only place to put them without being annoyingly distracting is in the middle of the content, which would be annoyingly annoying.  But let’s talk about that, shall we?

Ads for Gold Subscribers

The major complaint most people, including myself, has is that the ads will be shown to Xbox Live Gold subscribers, who are paying for subscriptions.  The obvious alternative is to show ads only to Silver subscribers, who aren’t paying (and can’t play online).

Here’s the math.  Microsoft claims that there are over 17 million Xbox Live subscribers, over 10 million of whom have Gold accounts, which are required to play online games.  Each of those Gold subscribers pay $49.99 U.S. a year for access to the service, if they purchase one year at a time — and nearly double that if they pay monthly.

If I’m capable of basic math, that’s in the neighbourhood of half-a-billion dollars that Microsoft is collecting from Xbox Live subscribers, if we assume a $50/year average.  That’s not counting money earned from Microsoft points purchased for downloads on the service, or for the games and console themselves.  Y’know… those things game makers used to profit from.

More profit is good profit

So, Microsoft, in its wisdom, has decided that $500 million is not enough money to supplement the money it already makes off of the actual console and its games and the things you can download off of the service.  Now, it wants to open up that 17-million user base as an advertising market.  As a business, that’s hard not to pass up.  After all, when you have millions gathered in one place, virtual or otherwise, it’s hard not to sell them something.

On the other hand, the online services for the PS3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and most PC games, most of which are not ad-supported, are all free.

Now before people start jumping up and down with the obvious retaliations, let me say two things:

• I’m no Xbox fanboy — I play on other platforms as well and I’m obviously OK with openly criticizing Microsoft.  But that said, I like Xbox Live better than any other online service that I’ve used.  The PS3 is less usable, I find, and the voice chat is nowhere near as good.  That’s an essential for online games, especially Battlefield titles, which I adore.  The Wii is not a great platform for most online games that I like, and doesn’t have much of a social networking aspect.  So, despite the fact that Xbox Live seems to be the only one charging for its service, I’m genuinely OK with paying for it.  It’s a premium service, so I pay a premium price.  More on that later.
• No, I’m not surprised that Microsoft is trying to make more money.  Of course, they’re a business.  I run a business, too. The mandate of a business is to make money for those that invest in it, and Microsoft certainly does what it can to fulfill that mandate.  However, annoying your customers is not a good long-term plan for making money, especially when you don’t have a monopoly.

So what?  Cable TV has ads.

Yes, it does.  What a brilliant observation.  And for that reason, TiVo and other DVR (or PVR) systems are becoming more and more popular. Many people now opt buy television programs on DVD rather than watch them when they are originally broadcast. Others download them from the Internet, often illegally, advertisement-free.  In other words, ads annoy people and when a viable alternative to watching them exists, people tend to choose it.

Yes, advertisements on cable television are something that we’ve all gotten used to.  That doesn’t mean that they don’t suck.  But, if the advertising money wasn’t there, cable TV would cost more.  After all, it costs money to produce the shows, and as consumers we’re only paying for general access to the service.

But that’s not the case with Xbox Live.  To play Xbox Live, you must have first purchased an Xbox 360 console, which currently ranges from $199.99 to $399.99 depending on the model you choose.  You also need to purchase games, which usually cost $59.99 when they’re new.  So, after you’ve spent at least $260 on a new console and game, you need to pay another $50/year, at least, to play online after the first free month expires.

For some of us, we’ve also invested time and/or money replacing our dead consoles (red ring!).  I’ve spent both, since my third Xbox 360 failed after my extended warranty was up, leaving me to buy a new console.

No sense in fighting it.

I’ve seen this response, too.  If you read the comments on Major Nelson’s blog post above, some people want to point out that advertising is everywhere anyways, and that there’s no use/sense/point in protesting these.  It won’t change anything.

But here’s what they’re forgetting: we’re the consumers.  We are the people on which the entirety of the business depends on.  Whether or not Microsoft “gets away” with this is our decision.  If we pay for a service full of ads, they’ll keep them there.  Maybe even add more down the road, testing that boundary.

If we all migrate to the PS3 or other platforms, well, that will be the end of it.

They will get away with it.

That’s my prediction.  We’re all going to make a fuss about it, like I’m doing here.  Microsoft will add the advertisements anyways, and enough people will be indifferent to it, or like the games enough, that they will put up with the ads and Microsoft will make its extra cash.

After all, we’ve made an investment in the console by purchasing it.  The alternative, if you don’t already own a PS3, is to spend more money — assuming you still want to play games.

Organic. Also, subtle. (OK, that one probably wasn’t fair.)

For now.

But in the next generation, will we forget about it?  Will Microsoft have muddied the Xbox brand with enough to make us buy a PlayStation 4 in the next generation?  Or will Major Nelson be right about the ads “enhancing” the service somehow?

It’s my opinion that jamming more ads in our faces — no matter how much you try to camouflage them, no matter how “organically” they are implemented, no matter how “enhancing” they’re meant to be — is only going to dilute the quality of the service.  Content is king.  When you try to make the ads the content, the content sucks. When the content sucks, nobody wants to buy it.

I said I’m happy paying for Xbox Live because it’s a premium service.  The things that make it that way are its cleanliness, its functionality (I see some complaining of Dashboard issues, but it works great for me), and its features.  It’s not bothersome to use.

But ads are a bother.  So much so that if another one of the consoles is able to fix up its system well enough to make it a better alternative to Xbox Live (Sony, I’m talking to you), these ads may make me an easy convert.

So listen up, Microsoft

I’m a Gold subscriber.  I’ve defended the Xbox 360 against its competition here.  I’ve recommended to friends that they choose the Xbox 360 over the PS3, and they’ve listened.  This blog is practically a free advertisement for the console and its many fine games.  I had my first Xbox 360 console fail three times. That’s frustrating, but I didn’t give up on it. When my warranty was up, I bought another console.  An Elite model, mind you.  I’ve praised the speed of the repair/replacement service when I had to send my fried Premium console in.  I buy downloadable content.  Microsoft, I’m one of your better customers.

I don’t want more ads on my Xbox Live Dashboard.  I want to play games.  That’s all I want to do.  Don’t sell me cars.  Don’t sell me clothes.  Don’t sell me food.  Don’t sell me anything that isn’t video games, and don’t be pushy about that, either.

Instead, you can make more money by making more games, expanding existing games, and generally producing actual content to sell me. That’s the stuff I like you for.  That’s the stuff I invite you to sell to me.  That’s the stuff I’m paying for.  And that’s the stuff I and other bloggers post happy things about, which helps you sell more games.  (You should have your Marketing and PR department pay your ad sales department to not sell ad space.)

Don’t sell my eyes to other people.  They’re not looking at your ads, and they’re not for sale.

I’m not paying you to look at ads, that’s stupid.

A bug — or, rather, an oversight — over at Xbox HQ is causing some Xbox 360 owners to lose their Gamertags.

The issue surrounds the Windows Live ID that is a required part of your Gold account sign up.  If you have previously linked your Xbox Live account to a Windows Live ID — such as a Hotmail address — and that ID has expired (because, for instance, you never check your Hotmail account), you could find yourself in trouble.

As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, the issue doesn’t prevent you from connecting as a Silver user, or downloading Live Marketplace content — but only from upgrading your account to Gold status.  That means that if you’re looking to play online, you’ll need a new Gamertag (or to wait it out until the problem is resolved).

Microsoft had little to say beyond “we’re looking into it”.  If you’re having trouble upgrading your Xbox Live membership to Gold status, error code 8015d080 will let you know that there’s an issue.  Supposedly, not too many are affected yet, since certain requirements are needed for the problem to occur — but it’s a good idea to log into that old Hotmail account, just to be safe.

When you turn on your Xbox 360 today, you’ll be prompted with a familiar update message.  Once you complete that update, though, things will change forever.  You’ll see a second update screen that’s unlike the regular, clunky grey panels the Xbox 360 used to have.  You’ll then be shown a new intro video.

Microsoft today pushed out the new Xbox Live Experience to the 25 million Xbox 360 owners worldwide.  The changes effect on all aspects of the Xbox 360 user interface, and add a few new features, such as player avatars and improved party features.

It’s early yet, so I still haven’t gotten used to where everything is now, but so far I’m impressed.  There will be a learning curve, but I’m finding some aspects of the UI are easier to get to.  You also have access to more features when you press the Xbox Guide Button in-game.  Almost all of the Marketplace and Media features seem to be in there.

The avatar creation is noticably a duplication (uh, we’ll say “tribute”?) of the Mii creation on the Nintendo Wii.  Many of the hairstyles and eye designs look almost identical, and even the sound effects in the avatar editor are very Nintendo-esque.

You can change your gamer picture to match your avatar, or leave it the same.  There are even some subtle nuances of the UI, such as the ability to move your avatar’s head while browsing menus, that are a nice touch.

Like I said, I’m still not used to the changes, but it’s certainly visually appealing and at least a few menu options are obviously improved.  Let’s see how things go when I can use more of the features.

What do you think of the New Xbox Live Experience?