Irrational's creative director Ken Levine has expressed concern over integrating motion control into more traditional gameplay mechanics.

Following the E3 announcement that BioShock Infinite will support PlayStation Move, Levine spoke to OXM about ensuring the safety of tried and tested methods, even when adding new control schemes.

"Any experience that sits in the realm of motion play needs to be kept separate from the main experience," he explained. "It needs to be firewalled off so that if this experiment isn't for you, or doesn't turn out to be all that great, you just ignore it. Any new experience we add, we need to be able to protect this experience."

But he was also adamant about the need to evolve. "If we don't experiment, we don't progress."

Levine also spoke about Bioware's planned use of Kinect in it's epic space RPG. "I like the stuff they're doing with Mass Effect 3, in terms of making some of the interface aspects a little less thorny - more the squad commands than the conversation, as that's a bit of a challenge on the controller."

He did admit that, personally, he's a fan of more traditional methods. "I'm a hardcore gamer - I do most of my gaming on mouse and keyboard. I'm always open to new things, but I'm a really conservative guy at heart. I'll try it out slowly, but I'll be doing so very conservatively."

Bioshock Infinite is due for release in 2012.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...motion-control ...

For the first time in months the 3DS is the best-selling hardware format in Japan, with sales receiving a considerable boost from the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D.

3DS sales for the week were up by more than a third to 40,649, well ahead of the PSP on 31,747 - despite an increase for Sony's portable this week as well.

There has been some controversy over the performance of Ocarina of Time 3D though, with website Andriasang reporting that it may have been supply constrained, with retailers reporting a low first shipment.

As a result sales of the game were almost identical to the other major release of the week: Level-5's Danbōru Senki on PSP - part of a cross-media franchise that includes toys and an anime.

Although independent chart compiler Media Create puts Ocarina of Time 3D in second place with 164,110 unit sales to 166,187, the chart from rival Enterbrain reverses the two positions.

In either case Nintendo will hope that this week sees a turning point for the 3DS's fortunes in Japan, with three titles in the top 10 and new releases generally now charting higher and for longer than during the post-launch period.

The other major new release this week is visual novel sequel Steins;Gate Hiyoku Renri no Darling on Xbox 360, from specialist publisher 5pb. A total of three new titles in the romance-themed franchise were released this week, with the sequel itself selling 31,666 units at number four.

A double pack containing the original game sold 11,041 units at number five and a budget-priced re-release of the first game sold 3,914 units at number 16.

Last Week This Week Title Format
New Entry 1 Danboru Senki PSP
New Entry 2 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D 3DS
1 3 Yakuza Of The End PS3
New Entry 4 Steins;Gate: Hiyoku Renri no Darling 360
New Entry 5 Steins;Gate Double Pack 360
2 6 Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D 3DS
4 7 Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 Professional DS
3 8 Battle & Get! Pokemon Typing DS DS
7 9 Wii Party Wii
5 10 One Piece Unlimited Cruise SP 3DS
Platform This Week Last Week
3DS 40,649 24,649
PSP 31,741 26,681
PlayStation 3 16,081 17,104
Wii 6,678 6,357
Nintendo DSi XL 5,464 5,283
Nintendo DSi 5,322 5,232
Xbox 360 2,875 2,370
PlayStation 2 1,346 1,291
Nintendo DS Lite 109 146
PSPgo 55 69

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...l-psp-in-japan ...

Dennis Durkin, COO and CFO of Microsoft's interactive entertainment business, has extended something of an olive branch to Sony over the issue of hacking, maintaining that he sees no advantage in crowing over his rival's security problems.

Although couched in terms of a larger statement on the security of Xbox LIVE as part of an interview with IndustryGamers, Durkin's comments seem to reflect a consolidated industry position on the threat posed by malicious hacking outfits.

"It's bad for the industry that this has happened to Sony," Durkin told our sister site. "It's very, very bad. It's very damaging. So we don't wish that upon anybody and you've seen we've been actually pretty quiet on the subject because we don't want to appear to even be looking to be taking advantage of somebody else's situation like that. That's just not in our DNA.

"Over time, all of the bets Microsoft is making are about cloud bets. We want customers to feel confident about the quality of service they're getting, the reliability they're getting, the security of the data that they have and the security of the private information that they have.

"As a company, you can look back 8, 9 years ago, when Bill Gates wrote his Trustworthy Computing Memo that basically said, 'We need to change the way we architect our products and it has to be designed into the way we architect our products and services.' So it's in our DNA, across the company. This is not just an IEB thing.

We don't want to appear to even be looking to be taking advantage of somebody else's situation like that. That's just not in our DNA.
Dennis Durkin, Microsoft.
"So this has really been a multi-year effort for us as a company and it'll continue to be one because this future, which we think is very much about services and very much cloud based - whether it be entertainment consumption or productivity - in order to do that, you have to have a secure environment. So we're going to continue to do that and we don't want to see any of our competitors hurt along the way. We think that's bad for consumers."

It's likely that benevolence was not the only reasoning behind Microsoft's placidity on the issue, as the two platform rivals have a long history of public sniping. By putting its head above the virtual parapets to deride Sony's security, for example, Microsoft would likely have become a target itself. In his closing comments to IndustryGamers, Durkin was keen to stress the importance which Microsoft places on the security of its customer data.

"[Xbox Live] is obviously very important to our consumers," Durkin argues. "It's part of the value proposition of why consumers buy our gaming consoles... So they want that to be on just like you want your phone to be on. And so we have that obligation and we've been diligently, not only in terms of our processes, which we leverage heavily from the company, but just in terms of our people resource and all that so we do everything we can to protect our consumers' data.

"Like in society, you can't always protect everything. There are people who are going to want to disrupt things and you can't always perfectly protect against every scenario, but we're going to make sure we do everything to we can to be sure we're as secure as we possibly can be. And thankfully - I'm grateful to be part of a company like Microsoft, who has such deep investments across its whole ecosystem that we leverage. Because it's an industry challenge and it's something that we all have to get better at."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...urity-breaches ...

The folks over at Microsoft Advertising are quite fond of their latest brainchild, so much so that they're calling the Kinect-enabled advertising platform "irresistibly interactive." NUAds -- which snaked the NU in NUI -- feeds off our need for interactivity, allowing advertisers to lure us in by enabling points of gesture and voice control. Think the latest Snuggie spot is super cool? Just say "Xbox, Tweet," and all your friends will know it. Want to know more about Mariah Carey's latest fragrance? Say "Xbox, More," and the info is all yours. Wondering where you can pick up a box of Nad's edible hair remover? Say "Xbox, Near Me," and you'll get a text with the location of the closest Nad's retailer. Want to vote on the hottest new Bratz doll? Give your girl a thumbs up. So Microsoft may have engaged a host of more respectable partners, namely Adidas, NBC, and Coca Cola, for its demo of the voice and gesture-enabled advertising platform yesterday, and NUAds does indeed serve up promotions in an entirely new way, but will it really change how we view the boob tube for good?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/22/m...s-powers-of-k/ ...

Wired has a fascinating (if a little long) read up about how Microsoft's Kinect hardware is changing the robotics industry. For a long time, robotics has been held back, not by technology that defines how robots move, but by a lack of understanding of their environments -- a robot that can't "see" or recognize its surroundings won't have any idea where to go. Most solutions to this problem were too expensive or unwieldy to use in a lot of robotics applications.

But the Kinect has made that much easier, providing what's basically a sub-$500 kit that can recognize humans, their movements and almost any other objects around the room. And while Kinect hacks first began as a push by unofficial open source engineers, Microsoft has more or less made that kind of stuff official, both by providing developer kits for programmers and by supporting community mods.

So let it be known: Just a few years from now, when Skynet is chasing you down after capturing your loved ones to work in the slave camps, it'll be thanks to Kinect that those robots can see and hunt you while moving across the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/21/ki...e-environment/ ...

Once again, Amazon is offering an all-video game Gold Box, which is a kind of treasure chest that makes you progressively poorer as you rifle through it. The Deal of the Day starts the offers off on a good note: a $100 credit with purchase of the 4GB Xbox 360 Kinect bundle.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=cs_top_nav_gb27 ...

As rumoured earlier this month, Microsoft is about to give marketers a new set of tools to create Kinect-friendly interactive advertisements.

According to The New York Times, the features, dubbed NUads, are due to be formally unveiled today at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Should you feel the need, you'll be able to post messages about an ad to your Twitter feed by bellowing "Xbox Tweet" at your Kinect unit.

If you want to find out more about a product being thrust in your face, shout "Xbox More" and you'll duly receive an email filled with product info.

If it's a TV show being promoted, you can yell "Xbox Schedule" and you'll receive a text message reminding you when the programme airs. Or if it's a specific product, saying "Xbox Near Me" will give you a map showing the nearest store to your location that the item is being sold.

Finally, advertisers will be able to ask users to vote in polls by asking you to wave your hands in front of the Kinect camera to select, say, your favorite pizza topping.

You'll apparently be seeing all this stuff on your 360 from Spring 2012.

"When you have highly interactive people and a passive medium, they are interacting with their phone or their laptop while watching TV," explained Microsoft ad boss Mark Kroese. NUads, he argued, "create a natural way for the user to engage with the TV."

Potential clients seem impressed. Saatchi & Saatchi communications director commented, "The new ad units really epitomized the level of engagement that everyone is working towards. You can text, you can tweet, you can vote. That's phenomenal."

First person to post a link to that Bill Hicks bit wins a cookie.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ct-advertising ...

cOz released a new version of Dash Launch build for JTAG 360s.

What's new/fixed:
- resolving 'localhost' when the router forwards it to the internet or there is no network at all... bad idea game devs... fixed (Yars', maybe others)
- button handler now more reliably removes Y and A mishandling when held on miniblade exits
- added new note to readme regarding update prompts and avatar data missing
- hopefully extracted new games are now working fine, instead of GOD only
- potential bug corrected in 12611/12625 patch sets
- add 13146 compatibility
- all patch sets updated to fully remove xex bound checks (ie: default.xex on root of USB causing E71)
- "remotenxe" option added to ini(thx adihash!)
- windows button on remote always boots to NXE/media center now(thx adihash!)
- added "guide" and "power" path options to set boot time default override
- changed kxam.patch, first .long must be the kernel version the patches match
- added a check to kxam.patch data to abort on invalid address
- added "nohud" option
- added installer check to verify at least the 1BL segment of patches before installing, will re-ask and warn of possible corruption/brick

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/...AZguetibKU.php ...