Are you an Xbox Live Silver Member and have never had a gold account?
If your thinking about going gold then send me a message on Xbox live (to the top right of this blog) and I can send you an offer for a free 400 Microsoft points when you go to gold.
A new online service for Call of Duty will give players a massive cache of statistics about their performance in the popular war games and offer social networking features in an attempt to build a community around the critically acclaimed series.
The service, called Call of Duty Elite, will launch this summer and be accessible through the web, game consoles and smartphones, Activision said Tuesday morning. Starting with the current, Cold War-themed Call of Duty: Black Ops and the upcoming Modern Warfare 3, the free Elite service will let players review extensive log files from recent matches to hone their skills. It will also offer standard social networking options like creating an online profile, finding friends to play with, sharing videos online and competing in contests for big-money prizes. A premium version will offer more frills.
Elite is an ambitious strategy to keep players locked into the world’s most popular shooter as social and mobile games suck up bigger and bigger chunks of gamers’ attention.
“In an always-on world, the competition for our players’ time has exploded,” says Jamie Berger, vice president of Activision’s digital business. “Online interactivity and community is critical for us to face that world. It’s what sets apart games with growing audiences from really great games struggling to find an audience.”
Call of Duty is a cash cow for Activision.The NPD research group said in February that Black Ops, the latest Call of Duty edition for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, had become the best-selling videogame in U.S. history, ousting Nintendo’s Wii Play. Activision says more than 30 million people have played a Call of Duty game online this year, with the average player spending a whopping 170 hours per year playing the first- and third-person shooters in the series.
The downside is that Call of Duty is based largely on an aging model for videogame sales: selling customers a $60 box in a retail store every year. Activision has made moves to extend players’ engagement with the games by offering new downloadable game levels at regular intervals, but no single, persistent service married a player to the Call of Duty brand. While World of Warcraft fans aren’t just going to up and leave and play another massively multiplayer world, Call of Duty players could easily decide to switch to a different shooter.
The point of Elite, then, is to attempt to turn millions of casual Call of Duty players into a strong community. The tighter-knit the group, the less chance players will bail.
“This is the Holy Grail for gaming companies — a non-MMO with a subscription model,” says analyst Bill Harris, who blogs at Dubious Quality, in an e-mail to Wired.com. Harris says it is quite likely that Activision’s chief rival, Electronic Arts, will launch a similar service for sports games like Madden NFL in the near future.
For Call of Duty, in-depth statistics about gameplay is the major hook. Players might know their kill-death ratio — a rough measure of skill, the number of times they bite the dust versus the number of times they killed another player — for the last match played. But what’s their kill-death ratio across every Black Ops game they’ve ever played? And how does that compare to their friends’ ratings?
Activision knows. The company’s been tracking every little bit of data about Black Ops since the game launched in November. One of the main functions of Elite will be to show gamers that data in an easily digestible form, and then compare it to everyone they know.
Activision already tracks every little bit of data about Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Players will be able to dump their Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Steam or Facebook friends lists into Elite and build a network of everyone they know that also plays Call of Duty. They’ll be able to post videos of great matches and moments to YouTube, then tag friends in those videos. And Activision will run tournaments and contests, pitting players against each other for the chance to win prizes.
Elite will keep records of gamers’ last few matches played, showing a map with every major conflict point diagrammed — who died, where, what weapon they got hit with, etc. Gamers can examine scraps of data to their hearts’ content. (See the gallery above for examples of Elite’s features.)
What Activision’s banking on is that the ability to see these stats, which it likens to “the back of a baseball card,” will give players even more reason to get home and keep playing to improve their results.
“Gamification,” the act of applying game mechanics to a mundane task, like Foursquare awarding virtual achievement badges for going out to dinner, is gaining traction in the smartphone era. Call of Duty Elite is, in some sense, gamifying gaming.
“Napoleon said that ‘a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon,’” says Dubious Quality analyst Harris. “This is just the marketing version of that truth.” Gamers have proven they will play long and hard for a JPEG of a colored ribbon.
Although the basic Elite service is free, Activision will also offer a premium subscription service with even more features, in hopes of turning a sizable portion of the 20 million people who play Call of Duty every month into a perpetual revenue stream, the same way it rakes in millions off World of Warcraft.
Activision has built an entire studio, called Beachhead, to design and run Elite and provide 24-hour customer service. But the company is playing coy about most everything related to Elite’s premium option. It hasn’t said how much it will cost or what specifically will be included. You’ll be able to join informal “groups” of players with shared interests, but building a formal “clan” of players will be premium only. The bigger contests with major prizes will be restricted to premium members. Elite subscribers will get every future Call of Duty map pack for no extra cost, which is sure to lure in the hard-core fans that already spend extra money to have everything.
Chacko Sonny, studio chief of Beachhead, says Activision expects a lot of buy-in.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of people who say, ‘Hey, you get all these extra features and the [downloadable content]? This makes sense to me. It’s something I do, it’s how I identify myself. Like a golfer, or a cyclist or whatever. It’s worth it to spend my money.’”
Speaking of sports, Activision isn’t the only publisher looking to create a deeper relationship with its customers. Last month at a marketing conference in San Francisco, EA Sports President Peter Moore talked up a “complete social experience,” an upcoming service that would let players create an online profile and track their performance across EA’s range of sports games, from Tiger Woods to Madden. The company has also reportedly sent out surveys to players asking them what sort of extra services they would want in exchange for a recurring monthly fee.
“It’s no longer, ‘Buy Madden 11 and then buy Madden 12 and start from scratch.’ It’s, ‘Buy Madden 11 and take everything you’ve done into Madden 12,’” Moore said, according to GameSpot.
And 13, and 14, and 15, if things go as planned.
Get a 4,000-point Xbox Live card free when you buyany Windows Phone.
Experience your favorite Xbox games when away from home – on a Windows Phone.
Windows Phone 7 is the only phone that lets you play games with Xbox Live. You'll be able to see who's online and what you friends are doing on their consoles, PCs or Windows Phones. Plus, earn, view and track achievements, view Xbox Live leaderboards and more.
The Chicago Piano, used by both law enforcement officers and criminals, was favored for its reliability, ergonomics, compact size, large 45-round cartridge, and high rate of automatic fire. This bonus weapon will be stored in the trunk of Detective Cole Phelps’ car throughout L.A. Noire, ensuring that extra firepower is always close at hand.
Offer 1 worth 250 points
Join Red Cross Racing today and you'll be able to exchange Red Cross Racing Donor Rewards points for Best Buy® Reward Zone® points—any number of points—anytime.
Here's how to convert your points:
First, join Red Cross Racing and start donating blood to get Donor Rewards Points.
Next, make sure you have a Best Buy Reward Zone member number. If you don't, visit myRZ.com and follow the easy instructions to create one.
Give blood as often as you're able and report your donations online.
Log-in to your Red Cross Racing account and click on the Best Buy Reward Zone banner on the homepage and start converting your points.
Every time you report a donation you'll get points. You'll also get 250 points just for joining! Points can also be exchanged for exclusive prizes or you can support the Red Cross Service to the Armed Forces by giving back your points through Red Cross Racing.
Do you get frustrated when you want to watch your favorite sports team and it is either blocked out in your area or not televised? A couple of years ago I found a site to watch my favorite team and not have to pay for a high priced season pass from my cable/satelite company. check it out HERE
I know for sure it works with firefox and my Dad was able to use it from his android phone.
I am sure most of you know about the free games on Xbox Live so this post is going to be a little out dated. For those of you who dont know here is a Recap:
Sony has been hacked, and one of its servers used to host a phishing site, according to Finnish company F-Secure.
The hack, which is not connected to Sony's problems with its PlayStation Network, has placed a phishing webpage on the Sony Thailand site, F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen told ZDNet UK on Friday.
"The phishers are looking for credit card details and logins," said Hypponen.
Two phishing pages mimicked a site for the Italian CartaSi credit card. The first page asked for username and password, while the second page asked for "additional verification" for credit card number, expiry date, and security code. Users were then redirected to an official CartaSi site.
Hypponen said that the timing of the hack was unfortunate for Sony, given that its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services were coming back online after a major cyberattack that compromised the details of millions of people.
"Right now it looks especially bad," said Hypponen. "It's just bad luck and bad timing."
The security researcher came across the Sony website compromise while looking for phishing scams connected with PSN. The page was most likely to have been compromised via SQL injection or a PHP vulnerability, and is no longer active, Hypponen added.
The latest Xbox 360 System Update has started rolling out today and brings with it a couple of interesting new features.
Perhaps most notably, the update brings expanded PayPal integration, which will allow US and international XBL users to use their PayPal accounts to make purchases and XBL related content, such as Microsoft Points and Games on Demand titles.
The update also brings along with it a new auto-standby feature, which will automatically be enabled once you update. This feature is meant to reduce power consumption and, as such, will automatically switch your system to standby once it has been idle for an hour. Seeing as one or two of you might occasionally leave your Xbox on for some reason or another which a standby mode might have some impact on, you may want to go to your system settings and turn that one off. Just think of all the power you won't be saving, though!
Along with this update, there have been reports that a small number of consoles have been negatively affected by the update. Microsoft released the following statement on the matter:
Following a recent update to our system software, we have become aware of an issue that is preventing a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail game discs. This issue manifests itself as a unique 'disc unreadable' or 'disc unsupported' error on the screen and is unrelated to our recent public beta. We are also able to detect this issue over Xbox LIVE and are proactively reaching out to customers that may be impacted to replace their console. Any Xbox 360 owners receiving this error are encouraged to contact us at www.xbox.com/support/contact so we can verify if the console has been impacted.
Microsoft has also stated that any console owners who encounter this problem will have their present Xbox 360 replaced by the company with a 250GB model.
The update begins rolling out today and will continue to do so over the next couple of weeks. When the update is available in your region, you will be prompted to download it the next time you try to connect to LIVE, just like all previous updates.
Are you a PlayStation 3 owner feeling the blues about the PSN reboot? Well Goozex feels your pain and starting on May 9th, we gave all previous PS3 and Blu-ray traders free trades for the rest of the month! As part of the gaming community fabric, we felt we could play a positive role in helping PS3 gamers have a little more fun this month. And we know free trades can go a long way for Goozers. Here are the details about free trades for PS3 & Blu-ray Goozers:
-Free trades for any member that has completed a trade for at least one PS3 or Blu-ray item prior to May 9, 2011
-Users must have a feedback score greater than zero
-Free trades ends on May 31, 2011
"Free trades" means you don't need a trading token to buy a game or movie on Goozex.com. Hurry up!
If you havnt signed up for Goozex yet and want to try it out, CLICK HERE
All PlayStation Network customers can select two PS3 games from the following list. The games will be available for 30 days shortly after PlayStation Store is restored and can be kept forever.
* Dead Nation
* inFAMOUS
* LittleBigPlanet
* Super Stardust HD
* Wipeout HD + Fury
For PSP owners, you will be eligible to download two PSP games from the following list. The games will be available for 30 days shortly after PlayStation Store is restored and can be kept forever.
* A selection of “On Us” rental movie titles will be available to PlayStation Network customers over one weekend, where Video Service is available. Those titles will be announced soon.
* 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership for non PlayStation Plus subscribers.
* Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an additional 60 days of free subscription.
* Existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days of free premium subscription.
* Additional 30 days + time lost for existing members of Music Unlimited Premium/Basic subscription free of charge for existing Premium/Basic members.
* To welcome users Home, PlayStation Home will be offering 100 free virtual items. Additional free content will be released soon, including the next addition to the Home Mansion personal space, and Ooblag’s Alien Casino, an exclusive game.
I just used this link HERE and purchase 1 month Xbox Live gold for $1. After you pay for it click the link and do it again and again. This let me do this 5 times before not letting me purchase anymore. So I got 5 months of xbox live gold for a grand total of $5!
**update** If you didnt get this deal you missed out, it has now changed to buy 3 months get 1 free for $24.99CLICK HERE
**I just checked and this is still currently active**
On the May 10th episode of the hit show The Biggest Loser, reality TV will meet Kinect gaming when the Xbox 360-exclusive The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout is featured on the show. Set to air at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC, the episode will feature the all-new endurance-based "TV Show Challenge" add-on for the game.
Following the episode, the "TV Show Challenge" pack will be available for free on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, so owners of The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout will be able to try the same moves and see how they fare compared to the show's contestants.
As an added bonus, for 24 hours following the May 10 episode, the Pilates Exercises add-on pack will be available free (it's normally 400 MS points...$5) on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
