Not content to merely offer the program in their own stores, Microsoft will expand its pilot program – which offers 4GB Xbox 360/Kinect bundles for $99 with a two-year subscription to Xbox Live – to two new retailers. Later this month, the program will migrate to all U.S. Best Buy locations and select GameStop stores.

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Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade lineup was revealed earlier today as part of the console holder’s many Electronic Entertainment Expo announcements. Apparently just …
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Microsoft, as part of its pre-E3 2012 media briefing, today announced Xbox Music, Zune’s replacement. More than 30 million songs are promised …
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Xbox SmartGlass will launch this coming fall, Microsoft revealed at its pre-E3 media briefing today. Following up on first details of the application being unveiled to content partners …
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That special time of year is upon us once more, as the biggest week in video games has hit with E3 2012 now underway. XBLA Fans is there bringing you all the news, hands-on reports and podcasts regarding the event. We’ve also made a hub to catch any E3 news you might have missed. If you are a fan of Kinect, please check out our sister site Xbox Kinect Fans that has a similar hub here.

Thursday:

The Walking Dead Episode 2 entering certification soon

Mini-editorial: E3 needs to drop the big presentation

Wednesday:

Evil wins in Guardians of Middle-Earth gameplay

$99 Xbox bundle coming to more retailers this month

Dungeon Fighter Live coming in July for 800 MSP

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD E3 gameplay

Observe the Mark of the Ninja trailer

Dancing the day away with a bear and a hare at E3

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD E3 gameplay

Observe the Mark of the Ninja trailer

Tuesday:

Worms Revolution gains WB as publisher

Happy Wars displays cuteness with gameplay and customization

Ascend: New Gods to use SmartGlass technology

Avatar Motocross Madness officially announced

New MTG: Planeswalkers game hits June 20

Dust: An Elysian Tail will feature casual and challenge modes

Avatar Motocross Madness gameplay shows big air and tricks galore

Smartglass compatible Homerun Stars coming to XBLA

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Shawn Saris and Perry Jackson join me to talk about some of the stuff we saw at Microsoft’s press briefing today at E3. First up is the Summer of Arcade announcement, then we talk some about the various new features coming to Xbox Live.

Please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes. We appreciate it! Check us out on twitter (@XBLAFans) where you can win codes for games, give us feedback or just ask a question. We are also now on Stitcher, so you can stream the show on your smartphone, give it a go!

[podcast]https://xblafans.com/xblafancast/XBLAFancastE3-2012Special.mp3[/podcast]

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E3 2012 is just days away and if the last few years are any indication that means we will soon find out which games will feature in this years Summer of Arcade promotion. In previous years it has been host to some true classics, including: Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Castle Crashers and Braid.

Places look to be hotly contested this year with just about every unreleased XBLA game currently sitting with a nebulous “summer” release window, many no doubt hoping to make the cut. With some of the biggest selling games on Xbox Live being entries in previous years it’s easy to see why. It’s anybody’s guess which games will make it, and in that vein we want you to tell us which games you think will be a part of the promotion this year. This isn’t just for fun either, we’ve got prizes! Find out how to enter and what you could win below. Read More

Feel like going for a ride? You will this XBLA Wednesday with the release of Joy Ride Turbo for 800 MSP. Based on the Kinect retail title, this time, …
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When the Xbox 360 launched in November of 2005, the console wars were largely viewed as a two-horse race. Nintendo’s Wii was an afterthought in the minds of most industry analysts and executives — a belief that would be proven correct in terms of relevance among the traditional gamer audience, but so very wrong on the sales front, as it marched on to over 95 million units sold worldwide as of March. Rather, both popular and informed opinion said the battle would be fought between Sony and Microsoft.

Sony had spent the past 10 years decimating Nintendo and Sega’s positions as dominant forces in the industry by appealing to an older consumer and making the PlayStation 2 the best-selling home console of all time with more than 150 million consoles sold as of the end of last year. After having replaced the name “Nintendo” with “PlayStation” as a synonym for video games, the Tokyo, Japan-based electronics empire was feeling as invincible as Superman. With Nintendo having done its damnedest to torpedo its relationships with third-party developers and the software behemoth in Washington looking like the proverbial babe in the woods when it came the console biz, Sony could see no kryptonite in sight. Of course, few outsiders did either at the time.

Had it not allowed the pride that success brought to convince it that sinking so much of its PS and PS2 profits into the foolhardy enterprise of out-muscling the Xbox 360 with the PlayStation 3, however, it might have foreseen that it was on a path to learn the same hard and humbling lesson it had itself taught Nintendo. Instead, it produced an expensively priced machine that arrived a year late to the party and quickly built a reputation, fair or not, of being notoriously difficult to develop for. Geekwire reports that when he spoke to the Northwest Entrepreneur Network last week, Robbie Bach, former president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, highlighted how Sony’s miscalculations and mismanaged generational shift opened the door for the 360 to become the hugely profitable success that it is today.

“When you’re doing a startup, you need friends. It’s just the way life works,” Bach said. “It turned out we were able to convince retailers and publishers like Activision, Electronic Arts and others, that it was a good thing for Microsoft to be successful, because if we were not successful, the only game in town was Sony. Being dependent on somebody else was bad for them, and so they supported us disproportionately to what they should have, mathematically.”

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Folks who can’t pony up the dough for an HDTV are up in arms over the lack of splitscreen  gameplay in Minecraft. It’s not broken or anything–at least that’s what they say. But SDTV players are entirely locked out of any splitscreen games, the option only available if your console is hooked up to some sort of HD output, Kotaku reports. It’s left some players on the Xbox.com forums completely clueless as to the problem, while others up in arms. It’s something that most reviews, including our own, didn’t catch–so yes, SDTV gamers are few and far between.

We’ve spoken our distaste about this recently, but this goes far beyond not being able to read text. This is locking players out of major features, players who spent money with no warning they’d be locked out. Players who are confused and mad. Take a look at just a few of the complaints below.

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