Since I visit way too many gaming sites and blogs I've gotten a handle on the gamerscore of some prominent MS employees. The interesting thing about this is that the one with highest gamerscore of all is none other than J Allard, with Tony Hynes in a close second.

1. J Allard (HiroProtagonist) 11,735
2. Tony Hynes (Bastelyon) 11,480
3. John Porcaro (Stalalem) 8,260
4. Xezar 5,970
5. e 5,492
6. XboxFan 3,675
7. Larry Hyrb (Major Nelson) 3,597
8. Cesar Menendez (Cesarisok) 3,005
9. Michael Wolf (Phoenix) 2,710
10. Aaron Greenberg (BIGVIP) 2,505
11. Elle 2,005
12. IndieGames 1,050
13. Ross Erickson (Grazer) 940
14. Trixie (Trixie360) 815
15. Visigoth 190

You should know who all these people are, maybe you don't know Ross, but if you listen to gaming podcasts you should know who he is since he was on like 3-4 of them recently. He works on the Live Arcade team. Know any other MS employees who do the Xbox thing? Hook me up.

EDIT: Someone commented on Gamerscoreblog that I should check out the celeb leaderboard on mygamercard.net, so I did. Wow, they did a good job with this one. I still like mine, because it's mainly people that are well known by the community.
Celeb Leaderboard

I try not to bash Sony, afterall I kinda like their consoles, but the people that work for Sony deserve to be bashed. There's an exec over at Sony named Kaz Hirai claiming Microsoft copies everything they do.

"Every time we go down a path, we look behind and [Microsoft is] right there - we just can't shake these guys"

Wow, I need to get me some of whatever drug they apparently hand out over at Sony. Let's make a list of things that Microsoft copied from Sony
1. Dual analog control ( then again Sony took analogs from Nintendo)
Now let's make a list of things $ony stole from MS
1. Hard drive in a console
2. A unified online gaming service
3. The wireless controller standard

Now ask yourself, who's really stealing ideas? Hirai says that MS steals all Sony's ideas, and the only thing he mentions is the HD-DVD add on. Did MS steal the idea? I don't think so, I think they're offering it to compete with Sony, but it does offer a low cost add-on for anyone interested in HD-DVD.

Source: Gameindustry.biz

So as you can see in my previous entry I'm going to be reviewing podcasts for a while, and other stuff don't worry.  Anyone care to help promote this?  I'm trying to be more news oriented in an effort to get more hits, or get back to where I used to be.  I was getting like 200 hits per day then E3 struck and numbers plumited.  So if you want to mention it on your blog, site, or even podcast that's cool.  Maybe you or someone you know has a podcast, recommend them and I'll review it, or tell them about the review I wrote on them and let them come flame me.  Any help would be appreciated.

So this isn't so much news, just some commentary or Xbox/Gaming podcasts. You all know I love Gamertag Radio, they get some of the best interviews by far, easpecially considering they're dedicated to just Xbox and Xbox 360. So I really don't even need to mention them. I'll likely include them at some point but I totally whore myself for Godfree on this blog already so let's start with some fresh faces, or is it voices?

VGM Daily- VGM Daily is a great Podcast hosted by these 2 guys name Ryan Maule and Tony Thomas. First of all they're freakin hilarious, sometimes you feel like they're just making fun of each other the whole time, it's very entertaining. As the name suggests this is a daily podcast (well it's supposed to be, just this past week they've been slacking). The obvious upside to this is that their news is always relevant because it's not a week old. They also have good connections in the industry and get great interviews, so that's a huge plus. The only thing that sucks about this podcast, well is the on host Ryan, ok not really, it's just a good show. If you're someone cooped up in an office all day you need them, trust me. Rating: 9.5//10

XBL Radio- Well I just got done listening to their latest episode, ok I couldn't make it through the whole thing. I saw one of the guys from there had visited my blog so I figured I'd give them another shot. I listened a while back and my biggest complaint was it was just boring. They went on and on forever talking about week old news, it was just really sad. Well they changed the format where it's 2 shows now so the shows are shorter, and more frequent. Sadly I really just wanted to scream at my computer. First of all the one show, didn't like the hating on hip hop, it just makes you sound like an close minded fool. Now the .5 show or whatever, I love the idea of the roundtable, and you've been doing it for a while. The most recent one, just sucked, it was like listening to fanboys who only get their news from OXM.  That's not fair, they do know more info than that, but a lot of times it seems like they're just making stuff up or guessing.  I'm sure it was fun to participate, cuz it's always fun to talk gaming, but listening to it was brutal. I'll continue subscribing, and trying to listen just cuz I support their effort, but I just don't like it. I fully encourage any of you to at least check them out and give it a listen, I know lots of people do like the show and you may be one of them Rating: 4/10

Wow, thank you 360Monster.com.  Apparently Xbox.com Australia put up a release date for Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting.  So it looks like the Aussies, and likely the rest of the world, will be able to enjoy some SF2 goodness on July 30.  YAY!!!

Let me just give some love to 360Monster.com.  It's a really cool website, I think it's actually more of a Brit site but who really cares.  They give some good news and have some cool features for their site.  We should all do whatever we can to support some of the smaller Xbox sites, these are the people who really just love to game and love Xbox.

Source: 360Monster

First of all yesterday was my birthday, which was real cool.  I got mad love from the Xbox Live community, it was kind of ridiculous.  I got 2 messages via live wishing me a happy birthday, one PM on Gamertag Radio, and then there's Gamertagpics.com.  On GTP Mrs Zamees started a thread in the forums to which many people replied wishing me a happy birthday, I got 3 blog comments wishing me a happy birthday, as well as 2 messages on my message board.  Can I just say I love the community so much?  Cuz I do.

One thing I don't like is something that happens with some frequency on the Xbox.com forums.  I love getting into good discussions over there, but a lot of what I do is answer really dumb questions.  Sure the person asking could easily find the answer by reading through FAQ's or just Googling it but for some reason they created a new thread.  I just answer the question and move on, I figure it's the nice thing to do.  Then there's the times that people post something with completely inaccurate information and I correct them.  Now I really have no problem with these 2 kinds of posts, it's the feedback from other members I dislike.  So if I answer a stupid question or correct someone who's totally off base don't quote my response then type "OWNED".  I'm not owning them, I'm helping them, it's to try and make them feel stupid.  Play nicely children, please.

Nothing to blog about, but I have officially been alive for a quarter of a century, so that's kinda cool.

Well I came back to add to this blog, more of an update to a recent entry.  It appears as though the Prey demo has been delayed.  WHAT?  Something for the 360 has been delayed?  I'm shocked.  It feels like the only thing for the 360 that hasn't been delayed was the console itself.

Ok, so we all know about Uwe Boll, no I'm not talking about how he sucks more than a $2 crack whore, I'm talking about his challenge to fight his critics. Here's the thing, I could seriously kick this guy's ass, I mean it. Now I know my blog isn't hugley popular or anything but I know some people in the gaming community find their way here. So this is all I'm saying, make me staff of your site for a little, in name only of course. I can easily be in decent fighting shape in 3-4 weeks. I know people that are willing to train me, corner me, all that good stuff. All I need is someone willing to let me kick Uwe's ass, just leave me an email address and we'll go from there.

Well it looks like we'll be getting a new demo soon, Prey. That's right, another FPS for the 360, but hey if you don't like FPS that much then why do you even have an 360? This one defintely looks a little weird, and I"ve been thinking about picking it up. I'm really excited to see the demo so I can decide if I like it or not.  Just so you know, the full game is due out July 10, and there's even a collectors edition.  Is it just me, or does it seem like they're overdoing it with this whole collectors edition thing?  Seems to me like a slick way to make a buck, even though I always buy the collectors edition.

Source: OXM

I'm definitely a roll with the punches type of person, so hearing that there was downloadable content for Street Fighter 2 and it wasn't the game I was shocked.  Basically every 20 thread over on the xbox.com forums is about this game.  It's already been pushed back, and people are getting restless. I'm just shocked they had the guts to tease people with pictures, it's hilarious.  I figured that game forums would be buzzing about this, and I was right.  It's just plain hilarious.

Ok, so with the Xbox Vision camera you'll be able to set up a custom gamerpic that will be seen by those one your friends list only.  You did know that, right?  Well it seems you don't even need to camera to do this, you can do it right now.  I'm not sure of the process but I'm looking to plug in my flash drive when I get home and see what I can do.  Hopefully the reaper will be up by day's end.  I found this info on the Xbox Team's blog, for those of you who gave up on them they have resumed blogging after a month or so off.  I told you I'd get back to news.

Xbox Team Blog

Some of the questions I’ve seen asked a lot:  “What is the deal with personal gamer pictures?”   “Does this require the Xbox Live Vision camera?”

 

The personal gamer picture is a new feature enabled with the Spring Update.  You do not need the Xbox Live Vision camera for this; you can go pick a new image right now.  Personal gamer pictures will only be seen by others who are on your friends list.  Everyone else sees your public picture.

 

When the Xbox Live Vision camera does become available this fall you will also be able to take your own photo using the camera.  Again only your friends will be able to see this picture.

 

If you know a friend on the Xbox Team, or who works at Microsoft, there is a chance you may get to see their personal picture taken from the camera. We have been beta testing the camera and everyone really is having a fun time with the cool new feature.

 

-IndieGames (Daryl Welsh)

Straight outta Xbox-Scene

As promised, back to real news here.  So with the new update there is apparently a hidden feature.  There is apparently a way to clear you cache through the dash now, this is kind of similar to forcing error codes when you get 3 red lights.  If you don't know how to do that hit me up, I'll get you an error code, not that it helps.  I'm just glad to see this because it gives me more useless Xbox knowledge (I still have never used the trick to reset parental setting on the original Xbox). 

An undocumented feature in the latest Xbox360 dashbaord update has surfaced -- a cache clear. In order to perform this "maintenance" follow the instructions below. (Thanks, Kakarotto)
Go to the system blade and then memory. Press Y on either the HDD or a MU and then press X,X,Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X,X. Once you do this a blade will pop up saying: This will perform maintenance on your Xbox 360 storage devices. Do you want to continue? Pick yes or no.

Now you're a nerd like me, HAHA

Ok everyone, I do plan on getting back into the whole blogging about real news stories, but not quite yet.  Today I'm talking about the Frag Dolls, and if you don't know who they are then well, you need to go another webpage because you're a moron.

I listen to gaming podcasts at work, it helps pass the time and just make the day better, but to be honest 95% of gaming podcasts SUCK.  To be completely honest, for the longest time there's only been 3 gaming podcasts I could listen to regularly.  Those happen to be Gamertag Radio, Major Nelson's Blogcast,a nd VGM Daily (Ryan's a tool).  So the other day I did a search in the iTunes music store for gaming podcasts, came up with the normal junk, but then I saw a Frag Doll podcast.  Now I've always defended these ladies, yeah I guess there's some gimmick attached to what they do, but they've gotta be good and they've got to be real gamers.  So I checked out their Podcast, and it's actually really good.  I'm not so much surprised that it's good because it's the Frag Dolls, I'm just suprised because so many gaming Podcasts suck.  Listening to it just affirms everything I've believed about them, and I gotta give these ladies some props.  If you're into the whole podcasting thing then they're defintely worth checking out, I just wish they'd do it more.

Well ever since E3 came and went the amount of traffic my blog gets has been cut in half so at least I don't have to worry about very negative comments on this entry.  That's right, the man who is all about some Xbox 360 isn't all too happy with the current state of things in Xboxland, so let's get right into it.

So what exactly makes the 360 so incredibly difficult to work with?  That's a serious question, because I'd love to know.  I just don't get why everything seems to be so incredibly hard to develop for the 360.  What am I talking about?  Here we go...

Full Games-Well my gripe as it pertains to games is that game after game after game is delayed for that 360.  I know I can't be the only one noticing this.  Even games that have a release date that is months away end up getting pushed back.  Hell, Frame City Killer was originally hoped to be launch title and after about 3 delays they finally canceled the game.  It just seems like every 360 game that seems next-gen (I mean not a port) is never going to come out.  Then there's the games that are released and have bugs from day 1.  I mean look at MLB 2k6, they patched that game like 2 weeks after it came out, I will say it's awesome that 2k was able to patch it so quickly.  It just seems like every game is a struggle to make.

Arcade Games-Well I bet you can see where I'm going with this one.  It's basically the same problem as regular games, they never come out.  At E3 weren't we told about all these cool games that would be out by then end of May?  Well it's June 2, and all I have is Uno, which is buggy as all hell and Carbonated games is working on a patch.  So basically since E3 I've gotten one new arcade game that doesn't work correctly.  Where's my Street Fighter 2?  Hell where's anything new?   It just seems weird that no games seem to come out for the 360

Backwards Compatibility-This is definitely a hot issue right now, check any of the major blogs or gaming sites.  First I'll say Peter Moore nailed me dead on, I don't care about backwards compatibility.  I thought the ability to play Halo 2 was needed, but I don't even play that, and since I opened up my original Xbox there's nothing I can do but keep it and play whatever I want.  The thing is, if their goal to eventually have all games be backwards compatible then they need to change their goal.  Sure I know that there's about a dozen games that will have emulators available in coming weeks, but that's like using bottles of Evian to put out a forest fire.  These new additions mean that 20 something games have been added to the backwards compatible list since launch.  I understand it's hard to do, but why is it this hard?  Why does it take 3 months to make emulators for 4 games?  While I don't care about playing old games, there are some people who do care.  I'd like to call BS on Peter Moore, you really think you underpromised and overdelivered?  That's a sales concept that I fully understand, and MS has done the exact opposite of that.  I'd say that compared to the original idea of nothing being backwards compatible this is a success, but compared to the comments you made later you've failed.  Why can't you just come out and say hey this is a lot harder than we intially thought and it's going to take a lot more time to get games compatible for the 360.  Gamers would respect you so much more if you were just honest instead of trying to make this screw up seem like a success. 

Ok Microsoft I still love you, don't worry.  It just seems like everything is such a chore when it comes to the Xbox 360.  I really would love to know why nothing seems to get done.  btw, don't anyone tell my 360 what I wrote on my blog, I'd hate to hurt her feelings.