First, the usual Marketplace info and other news, since a lot is going on this week.
Xbox Live Down on June 16: An up to 24 hour service outage for scheduled maintenance is planned today. Online play will not work, but all local games will. Service is planned to be restored no later than tomorrow, June 17.
Arcade Release - Sam & Max Save the World (1600 Points): This is an alternate name for Telltale’s "Sam & Max Season 1," a series of point and click adventure games starring an insane rabbit and a cynical dog; together, they fight crime! With hilarious writing and equally good voice acting to back it up, these are some of the funniest adventure games around, and I highly recommend this one! A full review will be along in the coming days. Just to stress, this is 1600 points for the entire season, you get all six episodes for 1600/$20. See our review.
Arcade Release - Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (800 Points): An adaptation of Wizards of the Coast’s popular competitive card game, it will apparently offer scenario-based play against the computer along with online multiplayer. I’m optimistic about this one, and should have a review done in the near future. See our review.
Deal of the Week - None?: At the time I write this, it is Monday afternoon and there is no sign of a Deal of the Week. This could be because Major Nelson is in Iraq right now, but I fail to see why that matters; surely someone in marketing could come up with an insulting and exploitive ’deal’ just as easily as he could. I’m thinking 15% off Aegis Wing?
Temporary Community Manager Change: Microsoft posted a Dashboard video recently, consisting of a mandatory Doritos ad and about two minutes of poorly acted ’drama’ to let us know that the Xbox Live community manager, "trixie360", is going on maternity leave and Major Nelson will be taking over her duties temporarily. I’m not sure why we’re supposed to care or if we’ll even notice any difference, but here’s an idea, Microsoft: If you think it’s such an important service announcement, don’t force us to watch a Doritos ad to learn about it. That’s like if we had to watch a Chrysler or GM ad before hearing a State of the Union address.
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237 days ago
As a quick addendum on 4 PM EST of Wednesday, June 17... Live service is still not fully up. Most things seem to be, but the Marketplace isn’t behaving quite right for some users.
Also, there IS a Deal of the Week up now and this time it’s a good one: 30% off Operation Anchorage, the first of the expansion packs for Fallout 3. Normally 800 points ($10), it’s now 560 points. If you haven’t picked it up yet, this would be a good time to do so... though I will note up front that getting it at 560 points may unbalance your points total; you’ll want to figure out how to get that back to an increment of 400, I suspect.