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The charity that wants video game karts in every hospital
In many ways, Jonathan Watson is like other 11-year-olds. He does his homework, dreams of becoming a doctor and plays video games when he can. Depending on the day, his favorite is either Minecraft or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Unlike most kids his age, though, Jonathan is at the hospital every three weeks for blood transfusions -- a procedure that can take up to six hours at a time. When I visited him at Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he wasn't slaying dragons or building a pixelated fortress; he was replaying the opening levels of Rayman Legends on a kart that had just been wheeled in. The kart was donated by a local Eagle Scout who raised funds through the Gamers Outreach Foundation (GO), a nationwide charity that puts medical-grade gaming equipment in hospitals around the country. The "GO Kart" Jonathan was using included everything needed to play video games: a modest Samsung television, an Xbox 360 (though any console will fit) and a pair of gamepads. The kit itself is hardly revolutionary, but anyone who's schlepped their gear to a LAN party can appreciate the simplicity of this rolling, self-contained setup. At Mott and 19 other hospitals around the country, they're the most popular "toy" available. And when you're a kid with a medical condition like Watson's, it's easy to see why.
Live from Microsoft's E3 2010 keynote!
After last night's Kinect-ic event, what on earth could Microsoft have in store for its big E3 2010 press conference? A slimmer Xbox 360? Valhalla motherboards? Hulu integration? Surely there's gonna be a new game or two in store. Stay tuned -- doors open at 10:00AM PT / 1:00PM ET and the magic starts shortly after!
NPD: Xbox 360 wins US sales war in a downbeat February
The cosmos must clearly have approved of Microsoft's actions over this past month, as today we're hearing the Xbox 360 broke out of its competitive sales funk to claim the title of "month's best-selling console" ... for the first time in two years. Redmond's own Aaron Greenberg describes it as the best February in the console's history, with 422,000 units sold outshining the consistently popular Wii (397,900) and the resurgent PS3 (360,100 consoles shifted, which was a 30 percent improvement year-on-year). In spite of the happy campers in Redmond and Tokyo, the overall numbers for the games industry were down 15 percent on 2009's revenues, indicating our collective gaming appetite is starting to dry up. Good thing we've got all those motion-sensing accessories coming up to reignite our fire.
Project Natal to focus on custom-made 'experiences,' will tolerate conventional games too
Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg has opened up to our buddies over at Joystiq about the future direction of Project Natal, and the big takeaway from their chat is that Redmond intends to use the new hardware primarily for "brand new experiences" designed specifically for it. Essentially, this means the majority of Natal-enabled games will be Wii-like in their focus and promotion of motion as the control scheme, but before you dive into a vortex of panic, there were also reassurances that "developers will have that out there at their fingertips if they want to enable those features." We now know that 10 to 15 percent of the Xbox 360's processing power will be sucked down by Natal, which may or may not be a reason for this shift away from what was expected -- layering Natal on top of games as an alternative control scheme -- to this shpiel about "unique" experiences. Either way, so long as we get to play Burnout on this thing, we could care less what others do with it.
CE-Oh no he didn't! Part LXIV: Microsoft's Greenberg says Xbox will outsell PS3 for 'entire generation'
Didn't think Microsoft exec Aaron Greenberg could top himself after saying that Hulu on 360 was like "asking out a really hot chick on a date?" Well, think again, 'cause Greenberg recently sat down with GameInformer for a fairly wide ranging interview, and he took the opportunity to toss a few bombs in Sony's direction. The biggest of those is that he's "confident" that the Xbox 360 will "not only outsell PS3 for the full calendar year, but for this entire generation" -- adding that it's "similar to a game of baseball, it is not about just winning one inning, but instead being able to win the game by consistently delivering across all nine innings." Greenberg also went on to say that Sony's expected good showing in the September sales numbers is merely a "short term bump," and that "it is not a real concern to us." Hit up the link below for the complete interview, which also includes talk of the Zune HD, Xbox Live, and Microsoft's plans for the holiday season.[Via PC World]
Xbox's Aaron Greenberg: Hulu on 360 like "asking out a really hot chick on a date"
Hey, our main dudes over at Joystiq sat down with Xbox's Aaron Greenberg recently, and there are some great bits of info in the interview. Aaron says the big Xbox price cut has been planned for months, so it's "just a coincidence" that it happened right on top of the PS3 Slim -- and he also says he's an avid Joystiq reader, so if Redmond had wanted to get the jump on Sony, they'd have been prepared. Other nuggets: the $99 WiFi adapter isn't coming down in price, the Netflix relationship is going well, and getting Hulu or Amazon Unbox on the 360 is like "asking out a really hot chick on a date, they don't all say yes." Yeah, it's a pretty great interview -- hit the read link for the whole thing.
Microsoft exec predicts Sony will be forced to cut PS3 prices
After a couple weeks in which the 360 posted better sales numbers than the PS3 and it was revealed that Sony inadvertently funded Microsoft's next-gen development efforts, you'd think Microsoft execs would be getting a little cocky, but it sounds instead like they're expecting a renewed offensive from Sony based on price. That's direct from the 360's director of product management Aaron Greenberg, who told Edge that MS "absolutely expects" a PS3 price cut in the next few months, and that the team is "frankly surprised it's taken this long." Of course, we've been hearing tons of PS3 pricing speculation from all corners lately with no change to that $399 MSRP, so we'll see how it goes.[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
Why exact change is an MS Point no-no
It's happened to all of us. There's a game on Xbox Live Arcade that you want for the ever attractive price of 400 MS Points. You don't have any points, so you decide to buy some. But what's this? You can only purchase them in multiples of 500, leaving you with useless leftover points. This begs the question, why can't you buy the exact amount you need? 1UP's Patrick Klepek asked just this question of Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg. While we've always assumed that spare change is produced in order to entice users to spend more money so they can spend more Microsoft Points, Greenberg has a different answer. "The reason why we do that, the core reason, is around credit card transaction fees," says Greenberg, adding, "If we do this in bulk, we don't have to burden the consumer with the transaction fees, or ourselves or publishers." He conceded that it's annoying to end up with odd leftover points, but added that Microsoft isn't planning on changing the system anytime soon.So there you have it folks, you're spending extra money so you can save money. Simple, right?[Via Joystiq]
Microsoft defends Pac-Man CE pricing
During the Gamerscore Blog's Lunchtime Conversation, Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg defended the pricing for Pac-Man Championship Edition. Greenberg went on to say that Pac-Man CE is not a simple port of the old game, but is almost a sequel in it's own right with new gameplay, artwork, music and HD implementation added. So, he feels that the 800 Microsoft points that the game costs is more than reasonable for what you're getting.And if you're a regular Fancast listener, you'll know that we were all impressed by the new Championship Edition and most of us were happy to plop down our Microsoft points. We also agree that it's more of a sequel than anything else, but it's ultimately up to you if you think 800 points is worth a new (and extremely fun) Pac-Man experience. So, is the pricing overkill or is it in line with other Arcade offerings?
Major Xbox announcement coming tomorrow? [update 2]
Update 2: The announcement has been made. Click here for full details. We hope your weren't expecting too much.Word on the street (that is, Gamertag Radio) is that a major Xbox announcement is dropping tomorrow, set to coincide with the final round of the Pac-Man World Championship. Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg dropped the hint via an instant message session with GTR's Godfree. What the hell is this announcement about? We have no idea, only Greenberg's cryptic words, "we have a secret unveil for gamers around the world that I think will go down in video game history."What in the world could it possibly be? Does it have anything to do with Ignition, Microsoft's new music initiative? We've contacted Microsoft to see if we can dig anything up, and we'll let you know as soon as we hear anything.In the meantime, start speculating! What could it be?Update 1: We've learned from Aaron Greenberg that the announcement will take place tomorrow between 12:30 and 1:30 pm Eastern Time. And, before this gets out of hand, we've heard rumblings that this announcement won't be huge, but that it should be relatively cool nonetheless.
GDC 07: a quick chat with Aaron Greenberg
After the Microsoft blogger's breakfast (which will be written up shortly) we caught up with Xbox Live's Aaron Greenberg (also known as BIGVIP) for a quick chat. Unfortunately, we lacked the presence of mind to shoot a candid photo, so we present you with this handsome stock photo instead. We can tell you, however, that he was wearing this shirt. Along with Spencer from Siliconera, we had a chance to ask Greenberg a few questions. When asked about specific Arcade releases, in this case Ikaruga, Raiden IV, and Every Extend Extra Extreme. Greenberg said that it's rare for the team to concentrate on distant games. According to Greenberg, in the world of "internet time" he mainly focuses on games coming out within the next 6 to 8 weeks. In other words, don't expect Ikaruga anytime soon. He did mention that the XBLA games on display here at GDC -- Minigolf Adventures, Boom Boom Rocket, Jetpack Refuelled, etc -- will be released within a few months. We should get some hands on time with these games later this week.We asked about the possibility of seeing some RPGs on Xbox Live Arcade, and Greenberg said there was no reason we couldn't see them, citing Castlevania as an example of a deeper Arcade experience, though perhaps not a traditional RPG. When asked about the possibility of Final DOOM hitting the Arcade -- its ESRB entry was recently discovered -- he noted that Id is definitely interested. Talking about DOOM's surprise launch last year during X06, Greenberg said that their were more surprise launches involving famous franchises in the future. So, RPGs heading to Live Arcade ... surprise launches ... famous franchises. Anyone care to make some wild speculation?
Aaron Greenberg, hip-hop, and street cred
File this one under bizarre: Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg, Xbox Live Marketing Manager, appeared on Eminem's SIRIUS radio station, Shade 45. As you would imagine, Shade 45 is nothing but straight up hip-hop. While the juxtaposition of a Microsoft exec and a hip-hop station is too delicious to comprehend, we have it on good authority that Aaron Greenberg is all about hip-hop, son. Who'd a thunk it? Of course, somewhat more shocking is the gesture Greenberg is flashing in the above image (posing with Shade 45 hosts, Lord Sear and Rude Jude). Do with that what you will.Anybody catch Greenberg when he was on?
