Joystiq at E3

Next week, gamers will finally be able to unlock an Achievement in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway worth 50 Gamerscore points if they play the game at any time on September 17, while connected to Xbox Live. The Achievement -- Remember September '44 -- references the War War II mission that sent Allied Airborne troops into the Netherlands to kick-start Operation Market Garden, which is also the basis of the game's story. Since Ubisoft's tactical shooter was delayed from its original Holiday 2007 date into late September '08, the Achievement has never been available for players to unlock. Until now. So on Thursday, September 17, grab a copy of Hell's Highway and fire up those Xbox 360 consoles. Because who can say "no" to freebie Gamerscore points? ...

Activision announced this morning that, according to data garnered from the NPD, ChartTrack, GfK and internal estimates, the Call of Duty franchise has accumulated $3 billion-with-a-b in sales over its lifetime. As all but the densest among you have likely deduced, CoD was put over the top by the release of Modern Warfare 2, which moved $550 million in its first five days on sale. For a bit of perspective, $3 billion is pretty darn close to the gross domestic product of the Kingdom of Swaziland, a comparison that's especially appropriate when you realize that 54 percent of Swazis have a Gamerscore over 20,000. ... Oh, wait, this doesn't say "a Gamerscore over 20,000," it says "access to clean water." Sorry, smudge on the page. ...

GameSpot has posted a "guide" for quickly accumulating a 6,000-point gamerscore. Wanna earn 400 points by pressing the start button for 30 minutes? How about the entire set of 1,000 points in a single game of College Hoops? Jeff Gerstmann will show you how, using these 7 games: Madden NFL 06 NBA 2K6 NBA Live 06 King Kong College Hoops 2K6 NHL 2K6 Amped 3 WARNING: While a 6,000-point gamerscore will look good on your gamercard, anyone that takes a closer look at your profile will be able to expose you for what you really are... Don't say we didn't warn you. ...

Those funny dudes over at the Gamerscore Blog released a video announcing some really crappy news. They put together the video above to announce that Absolutely Nothing will be coming to the XBLA this week. And no, Absolutely Nothing is not a new arcade title you have yet to hear about. It literally means not a single arcade game is coming out tomorrow for your gaming pleasure. Alien Hominid, Castlevania, and Worms are all sitting in their Microsoft certification cages waiting to bust out for all the children to enjoy. So instead we get Absolutely Nothing. Oh well ... at least we get a creative video to announce the bad news. A nice consolation isn't it? Update 1: Added Gamerscore Blog link love. [Thanks, Ben H.] ...

That major Xbox announcement that was coming today? Nope, it wasn't the Xbox 720, but rather Pac-Man Championship Edition, exclusively for the Xbox 360. Ostensibly announced today at the Pac-Man championships in New York City, this variation of the pellet-munching classic promises to make "video game history." How's it plan on doing that? Available tomorrow, June 6, 2007, for the asking price of 800 Microsoft Points ($10), Pac-Man: CE will be the same classic 2D Pac-Man gameplay with shiny new HD graphics, will contain "first new Pac-Man mazes in more than 26 years," and sport new widescreen mazes with wide walls in the Championship mode. There are several additional modes for the competitive Pac-Man gamer, and the requisite leaderboards, achievements, and gamerscore points. While we may quarrel with the hyperbole of the announcement we would like to take the opportunity to salute the Pac-Nauts chomping it out in NYC right now. Update: The official site, with screens and video, is up. ...

Coming on strong this week is 2P Start, whose 1337 Gamerscore nets them the top honors as this week's best game-related webcomic. Coming in second place is Digital Unrest, while the third place trophy has been divided in half between Penny Arcade and VG Cats. Thanks to everyone who voted, and be sure to let us know of any game-related webcomics you stumble upon this week! ...

There's not much to see of each of the games in Microsoft Gamer's Day 08 video recently posted to the company's Gamerscore Blog, but the clips of Gears of War 2, Too Human, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Fable 2 will hopefully be enough to keep you sated until today's media onslaught. Keep your browser here today for tons more 360 news featuring not only these games, but (we'd imagine) a few others. ...

Microsoft's Lips has been "officially" unveiled at E3 -- a bit early courtesy of Gamerscore Blog. The karaoke game, developed by Elite Beat Agents dev iNiS, will feature motion-sensitive wireless microphones. (What does that mean?) The "franchise" is expected to hit Xbox 360 this holiday season. Update: "Lips breaks new ground by being the first game to let you sing from your own music collection," says Keiichi Yano. Wow. ...

Clarifying its stance on rhythm game compatibility issues, Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog announced today that all the instruments for Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Revolution will be "cross-compatible" on Xbox 360. Sony announced yesterday that PlayStation 3 would feature full cross-compatibility among the three games as well. Guess that leaves only Nintendo to make it official. Update: The Instrument Compatibility Matrix has been updated [Thanks, Mike] ...

Alright, we got our confirmation from the folks at Gamerscore Blog, and Major Nelson has posted it as well. Today's dashboard update specifically fixes some performance issues and is all behind the scenes. So there you go. It wasn't IPTV, it wasn't the Gears patch, and it's altogether uninteresting. At least we get Ms. Pac-Man tomorrow, right? Right? Anybody? ...

Just in case you're itching to milk that gamerscore, Xbox360Achievements.com is here to give you some insight to do just that. Boasting itself as the "one stop shop" for gaming achievements, they have already got a pretty impressive database of information ready to be used. They even have the arcade section working with Geometry Wars and Hexic. [Via Major Nelson] ...

Aussie band The Vines is set to release DLC tracks for Rock Band next week. The DLC was outed early by Microsoft's Gamerscore Blog, pricing the track pack at 680 Microsoft Points, which normally means a five-song collection. Specific details will be part of tomorrow's standard Rock Band Weekly post. Publisher MTV Games informs us that The Vines won't be alone, so we'll have more to share tomorrow. ...

You can now count time travel and resurrection among the miracles made possible through DLC. Microsoft and Epic Games have announced "RAAM's Shadow," an add-on campaign for Gears of War 3 that precedes the events of the first game and brings back a few familiar, snarling faces. Due on Dec. 13, "RAAM's Shadow" sees Zeta Squad attempting to evacuate Illima City in the wake of Emergence Day. Your muscular protagonists for the trip are Michael Barrick (plucked from Gears of War comics), original character Alicia Valera, Gears of War 2's tattooed Tai Kaliso, and a perforation-free version of Lt. Kim. (Presumably, he's still got the codes.) RAAM's running time is pegged at three hours, and it offers a couple of other bonuses. For $15 / 1200 MSP you'll also get six more multiplayer characters, the "chocolate" weapon set (we're unclear if that refers to a color scheme or a dairy-based construction), Achievements amounting to 250 Gamerscore and -- oh, what's this? "In addition to fighting as a new squad of ...

Normally we're not that interested in the litany of Xbox 360 achievements uncovered by that community's strange, gaming junkies, but every once in a while something shiny grabs our attention and we become fixated on it. And so it was when we spotted the list of achievements for Valve's The Orange Box, which answered some very obvious questions that (we're frankly embarassed to admit) we actually spent too much time wondrering ourselves. Questions like: If the retail disc has five games on it, how many achievement points can they dole out? 5000? Will the achievements be divided evenly amongst the offerings? Does Gabe Newell read our fan mail? (This one is more of a followup to that last one) Will he ever respond? The list does answer two of those four questions with aplomb: The Orange Box has the standard 1000 gamerscore points available to you spread out across a whopping 99 achievements –the Half-Life titles get the lion's share of those achievements and, therefore, gamerscore points. ...

In its latest video exposé on the New Xbox Experience, the Gamerscore Blog has teamed with Major Nelson and a few project insiders to show off how Avatars will work in several older XBLA titles. Specifically, Uno, Bomberman Blast, Hardwood Hearts, and Hardwood Spades will all incorporate the virtual "yous" in various ways. In the case of these games, player Avatars will be visible on-screen – you can't actually play as your Avatar in Bomberman, sadly. The video does show that players will be able to be ... themselves in the upcoming Ninjabee town building game, A Kingdom for Keflings. (This is likely the new title the Gamerscore crew refer to in their blog update.) A title update for Scene It? Box Office Smash will roll out on Nov. 19 to enable in-game player Avatars (looks like the game didn't ship ready for NXE after all.) Check out the full video below the break. ...