Xbox Live takes serious action against gamerscore cheaters

Microsoft has taken action against numerous cheaters on Xbox Live who have been manipulating their gamerscore. The actions include resetting the gamerscore of these people to zero, removing their ability to regain all previously gained achievements, and labeling them as a cheater on Xbox.com and in the Xbox dashboard.

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Retail reveals new Xbox 360 Arcade package

A new version of the 360 is due out later this year; it's the core version repackaged with 5 Xbox Live Arcade Titles and a memory card.

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Games on Demand?

In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, the CEO of Eidos US made an interesting point about digital distribution of today's games. The take home message was that in the US it would take as long as 9 hours to download titles available at retail. The infrastructure just isn't there to support those downloads.

On a related note, another blogger detailed her frustration with downloading movies via Xbox Live Marketplace. Instead of waiting six hours for the film to completely download before viewing, she decide to order it from her cable provider instead.

What would it take for you to make the leap to downloading movies and games to your system of choice? Would it be price, download speed, convenience? Would you miss having the packaging for a retail release?

I'm all set for downloading games from Xbox Live Arcade. My network connection would have to be reset constantly if I were to download movies or games that are gigabytes in size. I think when the day comes where I have download speeds on the order of gigabytes then I'll look at downloading as an alternative to retail.

On board

If you're looking for something different to play, try Catan or Carcassonne. These Xbox Live Arcade titles are based on popular board games. They have similar goals, controlling land or resources to win, but the gameplay is different.

The Xbox Live Arcade title Catan is based on a board game Settlers of Catan. The object of the game is be the first player to collect 10 Victory Points earned by building roads, settlements and cities. Resource cards are used for building those objects and are gained either through a dice roll, trading with other players or stealing.

Carcassonne is based on a board game of the same name. According to the Wikipedia, it is named after the town of Carcassonne in southern France. The object of this game is to place tiles representing roads, fields and city walls together to form cities where residents called followers are then placed. Once all the tiles are used the game ends. Points are tallied based on where followers are located. The person with the most points wins.

If you're looking for something family friendly (neither of these games are violent) and a change of pace from frantic action like Geometry Wars, you should give these games a look.