Platform Nation’s Playapalooza ’08 announced

The greater gaming community is what we are and should be about here at The Xbox Domain as Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play Charity has been going strong for several years now and its no better time than now to help the cause. Announced by Platform Nation is a 50 hour gaming marathon with all donated proceeds being giving to the Child’s play cause. The Live feed of the event can be viewed on Ustream.tv can be found here on August 14th. It will also be featured on the front page of Ustream.tv.

Seattle, WA – August 5, 2008 – Platform Nation has announced a unique charity drive, dubbed Playapalooza ’08, to take place August 14th, 2008. Playapalooza—a 50-hour gaming marathon—will be conducted in support of nationally recognized children’s charity, Child’s Play, which provides video games to hospitalized children throughout the world.

Participants in Platform Nation’s Playapalooza ’08 will play a series of games in timed 30-minute increments, with the gameplay streamed live on Ustream.tv. Each segment will feature text overlays with information about the games and their donors. Games to be featured in the event have been donated from a number of prominent publishers throughout the industry. The event will last for 50 consecutive hours of play and feature as many as 100 games.

At the close of the event, all donated games will be collected and the proceeds given to Child’s Play during a public event at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington.

Platform Nations announces charity gaming marathon [Platform Nation]

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-

And we’re back

(Image Source)

Its been nearly a week since the last post here at The Xbox Domain and a lot has happened since then, so here is a quick recap of what we’ve missed. There’s more to say for sure, but you’ll here about that at a later time. Hopefully you’ll like it. Until then, here’s a quick and dirty recap.

• The Tecmo and Itagaki saga has continued with a gag order being placed.
• The leaky ship that is Microsoft has bursted once again. Our friends at 360Sync have it covered.
• Two more Xbox Original titles (Guilty Gear X2 #Reload/The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning) have been released.
• Two more XBLA titles ( Sea Life Safari/Elements of Destruction) have been released.
• A Endwar beta video got leaked. (Oops!)
• Microsoft has joined the E for All Expo.

There’s more, but the show most go on so “they” say.

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-

LIVE Activity for week of 5/26 sees the mighty fall ever so slightly

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Call of Duty 4
2 Halo 3
3 GTA IV
4 Guitar Hero III
5 Gears of War
6 Rock Band
7 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2
8 FIFA 08
9 Forza Motorsport 2
10 GRID Demo

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
1 Penny Arcade Episode 1
2 Buku Sudoku
3 Warlords
4 UNO
5 DOOM
6 Assault Heroes 2
7 N+
8 Brain Challenge
9 Worms
10 Ikaruga

The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.

Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)
1 Halo 2
2 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2
3 Fable
4 Counter-Strike
5 Ninja Gaiden Black
6 Battlefield 2: MC
7 Splinter Cell Chaos
8 Gauntlet Seven Sorrows
9 Call of Duty 3
10 Conker: Live Reloaded

It was bound to happen, but this soon? The grand ole game that is GTA IV has fallen from its perch atop the top ten of Xbox Live games. In reality though, it hasn’t fallen to far, making it a good candidate for the “what have you done for me lately?” clause. As you may have noticed, Gears of War is still in the top ten after what, an eon now. Does GTA have the same staying power in its future?

[Via Major Nelson]

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-

Ryu Hayabusa strikes the Xbox Offices

If you ever thought you’d try to double cross Ryu Hayabusa then think again, as you’ll see in the above video from the Gamerscore Blog. It wouldn’t be product placement that causes your demise. Would it? 😉

Xbox Office-Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu is Lazy [Gamerscore Blog]

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-

Breaking terms of use one account at a time

With this service called Xbox Live, you may have heard of it, there is this thing called “Terms of use”. In other words a contract between you and Microsoft, so that all can be peaches and cream while you use their service. Now, if you read down to brief #4 on of the terms of use policies for Xbox Live you’ll read this:

4. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR SERVICE ACCOUNT
You are responsible for all activity under your Service account. You are responsible for keeping confidential any password for your Service account. We may allow you to have additional persons use your Service account and/or have additional member accounts associated to your Service account. We refer to these as “associated accounts.” We may limit who may use your Service account or any associated accounts. You must tell us right away about anyone using your account without your consent, or any security breach that relates to the Service.

Surely, allowing someone to use your account is breaking the terms of use. You’ve (should have) heard it from Major Nelson also, numerous times. Do not give out your account information! Don’t do it! Then comes along this site. Haloboosting? Now how would someone be using a concept titled Haloboosting? Well, it’s painfully obvious. Their taking account information from willing suitors how want thier Halo rank boosted up to 50. Okay, thats just breaking the terms of use, no biggie is what I’m sure whoever is doing this was thinking. No, no,  no, they didn’t stop there. Their taking money to do such, after they and the payee break the terms of use policies.

Chances are that you and I know that this is wrong and should be stopped. Not only is this wrong though, but it also impacts other users of Xbox Live when they run into one of these crooks in the guise of “boosting” someones rank. It’s a real shame anyone would do such a thing and it’s down right despicable for anyone to partake in this activity by paying someone to do it. Logically this needs to be stopped and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

[Via Digg]

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-

Halo 3 double EXP weekend goes sniping

Time to put down your copy of GTA IV, right? I know your still playing it. It’s okay. For that other game Halo 3, yeah, remember that one? Master Chief and his Arbiter friends are dying for you to get back into thier good graces by no other than a nice helping of sniper rounds. Yes, that’s right. Team Snipers is the meal of choice this weekend for teh Halo 3. So, pop in that disc again and gain your double EXP.

We all know how popular Team Snipers is whenever it makes it’s appearance well known all of a sudden during “regular” playlist, usually followed by some lightningly quick vetos. Atleast this time, you have some incentive to play it by choice. So why doesn’t this have it’s own playlist permanently so that some of us don’t have to be forced to play it Shishka? Anyhoo (ahhh, worstword EVER), time to get to the sniping.

[Via Bungie]

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-

The 4-Step Plan for speeding things up for your dead 360

Did your system just get the fabled Red Lights of Doom? Well, thank your lucky stars for this blog post which has some good advice for those wanting their systems back in reasonable time.

I won’t dwell on the details, which are boring. The long and the short of it is that Xbox customer support people are stupid at the main number, and useful at the escalated number. I have now discovered what I need to do in order to get future Xbox problems dealt with, and I thought this information would be useful to share with you.

1. Call 1–800–4–MY–XBOX.

2. Get a reference number for your problem as quickly as possible. You may need to say “I already did that” when they try to make you do the troubleshooting script, just to expedite the process.

3. Hang up and call the escalated support number, 866–506–3826.

4. Talk to someone who knows what they’re doing.

How did I come upon this process? Well, I tried calling the main number first. I talked to a complete and utter moron, who told me to call back and tell the voice system my problem was with Xbox Live (despite that my problem is independent of whether I even have an internet connection). I immediately tried the elevated support number next, but you need an extension or reference number for an existing problem to get past the initial voice recording.

Anyone have a feeling that Microsoft will be changing the escalated support number like… right now?

[Via Consumerist]

-Michael “Thrills Killa” Pacheco-

A GTA IV remix trailers delight

With the release of Grand Theft Auto IV inching its way ever closer (see countdown timer), the overload of information on the game just won’t stop. So, in spite of all of this, here’s a remixed trailer that gives a rather different feel than the official releases titled “Requiem”. One more video won’t hurt. I swear. No, really. I do. 🙂

[Thanks eezarthegreat]

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-