Xbox 360 Fanboy

In a sit down discussion with developer iNiS's Keiichi Yano, the chief creative officer for karaoke game Lips, Joystiq learned quite the factual load of Lips information. Informative highlights including mention that Lips will support both the Zune and iPod but will not use DRM'ed music, the microphone is in fact dongle'less, every song included will be a master track and feature the original music video and game scoring will be enabled with all custom tracks. You can jump towards the break to view Joystiq's compiled Lips information fact sheet. Lips'tastic!

Achievements news plus The Behemoth's Castle Crashers equals epic win. And what an epic win today is with the release of all twelve Castle Crashers achievements and artwork detailing how you and your colorful knight comrades will earn a 200 Gamerscore come release day. Make a (deer) jump to Achieve360Points to view all twelve achievements including our favorite one, "Kay Eye Ess Ess". Four princess kisses plus a fifteen Gamerscore equals epic win. Epic wins all around!

[Thanks, Matt]

Release details were lacking when, during their E3 conference, Microsoft announced their Vision enabled B movie creation game You're in the Movies. But now, thanks to some Joystiq detective work, we know that the game will in fact be bundled with the Xbox 360's Vision camera peripheral for a B movie price of $60. That said, MS hasn't revealed any details for obtaining the game outside the Vision bundle or whether or not the $40 stand-alone Vision camera will still be available this Fall. Patience as we figure out this You're in the Movies distribution confusion

After a much too long hiatus, we're proud to say that it's Halo action figure news time! Huzzah! And today we have a treat for Halo action figure fanboys, because Mr. Toddy McFarlane just updated Spawn.com with all kinds of Halo goodness. First off, the Halo 3 Series 2 mini site is now live, allowing you to view each and every figure, view photos, download wallpapers and analyze each one in super sexy Quicktime VR.

But that isn't all friends, because McFarlane just updated us on the Halo Points program. Halo Points, for the uninformed, are included with each and every Halo action figure purchase. Buy enough figures, collect enough points and starting this Winter you can earn exclusive Halo swag. Want a Halo 3 lithograph? You'll need 100 points. Looking at owning a red, blue or active camo Halo figure with Recon armor? Dish out anywhere from 200-300 points and you can haz Recon. There's even a gold Master Chief for 500 points. It's either time to start making some action figure purchases or time to take up the hobby of dumpster diving. Recon figures are way worth getting banana peel in your hair.

[Thanks, TMD]

Source - Halo 3 Series 2 figures
Source - Halo Points

A new Rock Band DLC announcement Friday is here which results in us getting new Nine Inch Nails and Shinedown tracks. Three DLC tracks from NIN (including "Capital G", w00t!) and two from Shinedown will be available next Tuesday, July 22nd for 160 Microsoft points each. The NIN songs will also be sold as a three pack for 440 points. List below, "Capital G" video above and we all look right.

• "Burn" by Nine Inch Nails
• "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails
• "Last" by Nine Inch Nails
• "Devour" by Shinedown
• "Junkies for Fame" by Shinedown

With E3 2008 coming to a welcomed end (it was fun while it lasted), so too comes the end of our official E308 X3F Sticker Gallery. During our stay in LA this week, we were able to tag 35+ industry developers, producers, PR folks and pretty much anyone that was willing to get tagged. It was entertaining, a source of free advertising and, darnit, we had fun doing it. Thanks to all the folks who were willing to play along with the sticker fun, especially those who slapped a sticker on their forehead or mouth. Too cool.

Anyway, we just uploaded another batch (the final batch) of X3F sticker photos including Dead Space producer Chuck Beaver, Mirror's Edge's own Nick Channon, the SouthPeak crew as well as the one, Joystiq's only, our main boss guy who keeps us employed ... CHRIS GRANT! Oh, and don't mind the pic quality. We had to use our cell phone camera due to a digital camera going MIA for a bit. Anyhoo, long live the X3F stickering.

Looking for simple answers to your Xbox 360 dashboard redesign questions? Here are a few points to take away from the new Xbox experience:

• "There's nothing to announce" right now regarding a keyword search for the Marketplace. We hope for some kind of searching option or a better layout for content
  
• Playing games from the hard drive will work fine for multi-disc games; in fact, you can pick which discs you want to rip (but a disc swap for the correct disc in the drive is required)
  
• As an example, Joystiq was told that Devil May Cry 4 is approximately a 4 or 5GB installation and takes about 10 minutes to copy onto a harddive: PS3 installation is roughly 18-25 mins
  
• You'll need to keep the disc in the drive the entire time. This is about speeding up load times and to check if you own the title -- the disc will not spin so no more jet noises
  
• Xbox 360 notifications look the same but are actually very cleaned up and look sharper -- the sounds are all the same
  
• Yes, you can still use your gamertag pics and your themes (they look cleaner and more crisp now, an example of what it could look like is above) -- example of a gamerpic in action is in the top right corner of the image above

Stuff your vote in the ballot box and decide on your favorite zoo animal, because it's time to get political with a new Hail to the Chimp demo that just released to the Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo, which is only available to U.S. and Canadian Live subscribers, features "presidential party game" style shenanigans and enough animal-based jokes to last you a few years. Download if you're interested, ignore this post if you're not ... but we really didn't have to tell you that did we?

[Via Game Stooge]

Last night, we went out of E3 in style and on our own partying terms by hosting a Joystiq and X3F Reader Meetup event in Santa Monica, California. The turnout was great (something close to 300 readers attended), we ate some pizza, chit-chatted some, gave out a couple hundred pounds of swag and the highlight of the meetup was Rock Band 2. You read correctly, the guys from Harmonix showed up with Rock Band 2 (which is freakin' amazing btw) and new instruments in hand to let everyone try out the new setup. All in all it was a great way to close out the E3 week and for those who attended, we send a gigantic "thank you!" your way. Without your support we'd be nothing but a few sad and lonely fanboys.

Check out the photographic reader meetup recap below and for more meetup coverage, jump on over to Joystiq and browse their photos too.

We just wanted to update you on our (Richard and Dustin) current status as it pertains to E3 2008. Simply stated, the expo is now over and we're jetting out of Los Angeles in the next few hours. This in turn means a few things. The first, most obvious conclusion being that WE SURVIVED E3! The long hours we put in all week, experienced by not only those in LA but team X3F back at Fanboy Towers were grueling. But our brains haven't exploded under the stress so we can't complain too much. As a result of our leaving of E3 we probably will not be updating as much as we should be today. We'll do our best, but no promises. Finally, you should be seeing some E3 wrap-up coverage heading into the weekend and carrying over into early next week. We have a backlog of E3 hands on impressions and general news that (due to there only being 24 hours in a day) we just couldn't get to.

Again, thanks to everyone for sharing a memorable E3 2008 with all of us at X3F. It was exciting, it was stressful, but overall we'll be walking away from this week with a grin on our face and dreams of special Xbox 360 releases that will be coming later this year. Tata.

Remember that epic trailer showcasing the new South Park game for Xbox Live Arcade? All 2.4 seconds of it. No details were dropped regarding what type of game it would be but the South Park Studios official site is already trying to fuel the hype train.

A posting moments after it was unveiled at the conference reads: "A brand new South Park game is coming to Xbox Live in 2009. That's all we've got for now, but stay tuned for more details over the next few months. Let the speculations begin!"

We don't have any guesses on what it will be but we hope it has nothing to do with that awful first-person shooter or the terrible kart racing game or that laughable mini-game collection or ... wait, are we supposed to speculate on whether or not it's going to suck? Who do we send our guesses to?

Valve's Doug Lombardi (seen muzzled by an X3F sticker at E3 2008) recently cleared up some confusion regarding the content of Portal: Still Alive for the Xbox Live Arcade in an interview with OXM. "It's just a series of new challenges," Lombardi told the magazine. "[Portal: Still Alive is] another way for people to experience Portal, without having to buy the full Orange Box."

We can't say we're surprised. With such a focus on story we didn't expect Valve to do anything exclusively for the Xbox that would factor into actual canon of the series.

Lombardi later detailed that Valve has new projects in the works for the Xbox 360 but remain firm on its disinterest for PS3 and Wii development. It was also confirmed that Team Fortess 2 that the achievements and content added to the PC version of the game will come to the Xbox 360 at some point, when Valve has worked out how it wants to package and release that content.

Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton discussed Sony's take on the recent announcement that Final Fantasy XIII will release simultaneously on the Xbox 360 with the PS3 with a round-table of journalists, including our own team at Joystiq. "Am I disappointed by it? Yes," Tretton told the group, adding: "Am I surprised by it? No." He was quick to stress that the game remains a PS3 exclusive in Japan, but that "seeing as there isn't that big of a [PS3] installed base in [there], I don't know how big of a coup that is for us."

Speaking on the subject of paying off publishers for exclusivity, Tretton told Joystiq "[Sony] invested so much money in the [PS3] hardware" that it simply "can't write checks for exclusive software."

While popular theory is that Microsoft paid Square Enix off for its recent handfull of upcoming releases, word around the industry campfire points at a decision made by Square Enix months ago to focus on multiplatform development that saw Final Fantasy XIII land on the Xbox 360. With a high install base and solid attach rate for the Xbox 360 in North America and Europe many developers are forgoing exclusivity in order to lessen the blow of "next-gen" game development. Capcom has been a prime example of this point with Devil May Cry 4; which saw better sales on the Xbox 360.

Regardless of the situation, Square Enix is happy to bring the experience to as many people as possible and as gamers we all should be too.

Before we left to go to E3 2008 we each outlined our Top Three Interests for the big show. Nearly every one of our interests were available for us to poke and prod at but what about your interests? Asking you to list your E3 anticipations, we molded our content to suit your needs. Why? Because you're the X3F Army!

Jump in for a list of the games you asked about with links to all the news and content we could find, steal and bribe our way to get! We couldn't get them all and there is a ton more not listed but check it out and let us know what you thought of our coverage.

Oh and by the way, we are SO not even done covering E3 2008. Prepare yo' self!

There's really no way to get around this, so here it is: Galaga Legions might as well be called Galaga Championship Edition. It's made by the same Namco team that made Pac-Man Championship Edition and it achieves the same success: reinventing an arcade classic and making it relevant again. At the same time, it is definitely still Galaga in much the same way that Pac-Man CE is still Pac-Man. It's new, it's classic, it's pretty. Period.