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For at least a short while yesterday, this page on Xbox.com listed the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title “Texas Hold ‘Em” as coming out on August 23rd. It’s now back to Summer 2006, but whether it comes out 8/23 or not, we’ll have it sometime by the end of the summer, and once we get to August 23rd, that won’t be much longer anyway. I would bet on an August 23rd release though.

Recently, at a Developers Conference in England, Microsoft spoke about Xbox Live, and as always, had a nice set of new stats to present.

Xbox Live is now being used on 60% of all Xbox 360’s purchased. As you may know, the original Xbox’s attach rate for Live was only 10%.

Xbox Live Marketplace has been downloaded off 30 million times Xbox Live Arcade has delivered five million Arcade game downloaders as well. Xbox Live has handled two billion hours of gaming, it also handles just under one million voice and text messages per day. Xbox Live will hit six million users in 2007.

The conversion rate for Arcade titles (people who download the demo of a game and then go on to purchase the full version) is averaged at 21%, with games like Geometry Wars & Uno leading the way with ~50% conversion rates, and the lowest rate(s) being 10%. The PC demo market has a 1-2% conversion rate, so Xbox Live, even at it’s lowest, is still a huge success.

Microsoft also talked about Live Anywhere, and how they plan to have Halo 2 Vista and Shadowrun be the first two games that will actually use some “Live” features (with Shadowrun even allowing Xbox 360 and PC players to compete.) Just to clarify though, Halo 2 players on Windows Vista will not be able to play with Xbox/Xbox 360 players, as the Halo 2 Vista version is being created individually to use specific things like custom maps, and other things that would make cross-platform online play impossible.

Microsoft discussed how they will continue to open up Live more and more to developers, and encourage them to use the new features they announced a few months ago. For example, developers can now use their own servers for Live, like EA does for Burnout Revenge, which keeps track of every takedown and rivalry you’ve ever had with anyone on the Live service, as well as being able to save and share replays on Live for others to download.

Microsoft will be talking more about this kind of information in mid-August during their “GameFest” held in Seattle.

Now it’s onto the news I’ve been predicting and hoping would be announced for over a year. Yesterday, during a EA Summer Press Event, Valve Software’s Gabe Newell was on-hand for some major announcements.

He announced that Half-Life 2 will be coming to the Xbox 360, and it’ll come at the exact time the “Episode 2″ expansion pack hits the PC version of Half-Life 2. Episode One and Two will come along with the Xbox 360 version though, along with Team Fortress 2. Counter-Strike: Source was not announced to come with it, and EA even alerted IGN and clarified that CS:S was not confirmed to be coming with it.

Half-Life 2: Episode One and Episode Two are the first chapters of a planned trio of episodic add-ons to the original Half-Life 2, extending the game’s story. I would assume Episode 3 will be provided via Xbox Live.

Of particular interest is a single-player game called “Portal,” which will come bundled with Episode Two. Portal lets players use a special gun to create gateways similar to those used in Prey. A player could create a portal nearby, for instance, and then make a second portal on the other side of a chasm; walking through the first would transport him safely out the second. Unlike Prey, however, it seems players can dynamically create an unlimited number of portals on just about any surface available. The demo on display showed dozens of ways players could exploit this new technology both in terms of offensive and defensive strategies. Valve has yet to announce which games will use the new technology, but players can get taste of it when Episode Two ships.

This is great news, but the only thing that is odd is how they wouldn’t announce Counter-Strike: Source as being in the console release, and even made it clear they hadn’t announced it in any way. Maybe they’re planning on releasing CS and HL2 separately, like they did before, since they’ve now seen how popular CS was on the original Xbox. EA is the publisher for Valve now, and that is the exact kind of thing EA would do. Episode 2 for PC (as well as the Xbox 360 version of HL2) will be out this fall.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 8:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.