The ability to stream all Netflix “Watch Instantly” content to Xbox 360 gaming consoles over Xbox Live is set to be released to the public on November 19 when the new Xbox dashboard update comes out. A few lucky beta testers already have their hands on it, and the blog Zatz Not Funny grabbed a video of it in action (below).

All I can say is that the interface and experience look slick. They look nicer than the current interface for Roku’s box which also has Netflix streaming capabilities, as Zatz points out. It’s hard to tell how good the high-definition content looks in this YouTube clip, and some of the buffering is caused by the method Zatz used to capture the video, but all in all, this video makes me very excited for the feature.

(The Netflix part of the video doesn’t start until about 1 minute and 10 seconds in. The opening part is the new opening video for the Xbox experience.)

Red Faction: Guerilla’s Associate Producer Sean Kennedy has admitted extra help was needed to bring the PlayStation3 version up to speed with the Xbox 360 version.

Speaking to OXM, Kennedy stressed how hard Red Faction: Guerilla is pushing the current-gen technology and then says that the lack of memory on PlayStation3 caused an additional headache.

“I mean, to be honest, we are pushing the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 to the limits,” he says. “I mean, not only has it been a balancing act making destruction work with the gameplay and making it all come together in a cohesive way that’s fun but it’s been a balancing act getting the game to run on the systems.”

One little change and you’re out of memory. When it comes to PlayStation3, there’s less memory to work with. We actually ended up hiring some from Sony to help us make our PS3 version. Fortunately, they are the same. We’ve been able to make sure that PC, 360 and PS3 versions are the same.”

Check back next week for the full interview.

According to Guerrilla Games QA Manager Seb Downie, the “Lean and Peak” system seen in Killzone 2’s single player campaign will not be present in the game’s multiplayer mode.

“It didn’t work too well in the 360 degree combat environment that is multiplayer,” wrote Downie on the Official PlayStation forums. “In single player the path is more linear and the action is usually ahead of the player. In MP levels are more arena based and you are more susceptible to flanking and being attacked from various angles.”

Downie continued to explain how in multiplayer, the developer found that players were actually working against the “lean and peak” system, and concluded it was simply best to remove it altogether.

“We found that the L&P system didn’t add anything in that scenario and that players often actually took a step back from cover objects to give themselves a little more freedom to move, so they were actually working against the system, so we ripped it back out,” wrote Downie.

“Crouching was deemed sufficient.”

Killzone 2 is due for release in February 2009.

We ask associate producer Eric Fong five questions to find out what’s next for LittleBigPlanet, including new developer levels and the ability to sell your creations.

New developer levels coming to LittleBigPlanet (click for more screens)
GamePro: Will Media Molecule continue to release new levels?

Eric Fong: Yes, Media Molecule is continuing to add to the player experience with new levels, costumes, materials, and a host of other content.

How will you ensure that players find the best user-created levels?

There is a slew of metrics we monitor to help point players in the right direction, including how many people have “Hearted” a level and/or creator, how often a level is played, user comments, “tagging” etc. The cream will literally rise to the top as popular levels take up more real-estate in the game.

Not a present, but there are certainly creative ways you could do something similar with the current perspective.

Will “power-ups” or “weapons” ever be added?

In our opinion, the spirit of LittleBigPlanet was to “figure ways around obstacles” and less about blowing stuff up, though certainly a player can already create their own experience to include missile launchers and the like.

When will users be able to “sell” their creations for real money, as promised?

There are still a lot of details that need to be worked out, that’s pretty much all I can say at this point.

Attention Xbox 360 owners: The New Xbox Experience is coming. November 19, if you’re wondering. Some of you might have read our hands-on preview of the free downloadable update, but we know there are still many questions still unanswered. So, we thought it would be a good idea to ask you, the lovely VideoGamer.com readers, what you wanted to know before we left for a NXE session with James Houlton, UK product manager, LIVE, and Robin Burrowes, EMEA product manager, LIVE. Read on for the answers you so crave.

FantasyMeister: What was the precursor for driving such development in the first place?

James Houlton: The whole idea of NXE is to reinvent, and for us we feel it’s the first time that anyone has done this from a consumer electronics point of view, particularly a console, just using the upgrade of software, and create something that really fresh, really easy to navigate, uses audio and visual to really get the thing to pop up so that people can easily identify and find what they’re looking for and just make it a lot easier from a navigation point of view.

Obviously with the price drop that we recently announced, that the Arcade starting at £129 being the cheapest next-gen console, it’s a big Christmas for us in terms of where we think we’re going to go. We feel we do a fairly good job with games like Fable and Gears, but with NXE and our other broadening titles we feel there’s an opportunity for us to grow that market as well. So not shift our direction at all but actually grow into that more mainstream and NXE is there to help us on that journey.

Ghost5: Will we still be able to use gamerpics?

James Houlton: You don’t have to use your Avatar picture if you like. So you create an Avatar, but your Gamer Pic is your public display. You can take a picture of your Avatar and you can use that on your Gamer Card, or you can use whatever image you’ve got now, currently.

FantasyMeister: Are there any upcoming titles that are going to incorporate Avatars and other new features of the Experience into their gameplay?

James Houlton: 1 vs. 100 is part of the Prime Time channel, so that’s next year. November 19 is really just the start of the NXE. The official date is that in Spring 2009 we’ll be able to add in Prime Time as its own channel and 1 vs. 100 is that pivotal content part where you’ll be able to change the way people play in terms of an interactive quiz. Your Avatar will also be part of that experience as well.

In terms of Avatars from launch, Scene It! Box Office Smash, that will be one of the first games where you’ll be represented by your Avatar in game. There’s things like Uno Rush as well. There will be a selection of titles out for launch as well, so once you’ve created your Avatar you will already be able to start to use it in a relevant game. You’re not going to see Avatars running around Call of Duty 5!

Robin Burrowes: In certain instances we’re going back to games that we’ve already published, like Hearts and Spades, and retrofitting those with Avatar support. So there will be about five or six Avatar supported games both full release and Arcade that will happen at launch. And then we’re looking at ramping that up to certainly a few dozen Avatar related games by spring time.

FantasyMeister: Will the above become compulsory for developers in the future like Achievements currently are?

Robin Burrowes: It will be an encouragement point of view and we’ll show best practice with some Arcade games and some first party games. Scene It! right now is probably best practice that we’ve got from a first party point of view. From an Arcade point of view, games like Uno Rush, which will probably be the hero title for how Avatars merge with games. We’ll certainly be giving publishers the publishing rights to be able to merge those in.

Dave from Streatham: Will game installs improve load times and by how much? Won’t this cause widespread piracy?

James Houlton: One of the things you can do is install the game now onto the hard drive. So if the disk is in the tray it will play from the hard drive and the disk just basically validates that you’ve got a genuine copy. If you were just going to play a game and try it you probably wouldn’t want to install it, you’d just play it from the disk. We did some testing in the office and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise took six minutes to download to the hard drive so it’s pretty quick. The estimates in terms of performance, obviously depending on the game, it increases between 30 and 50 per cent in terms of load times. So if it’s a game you play a lot, it’s probably worth doing. Depends how big the hard drive you’ve got is and what else you use that space for.

FantasyMeister: Will there be any LIVE downtime on November 19?

James Houlton: No. They already did the downtime on September 29. There was a 24 hour period of LIVE downtime, and that was to basically prepare for it. On November 19 you’ll just turn it on it’ll just do the standard update.

Rogue Soul: Whatever happened to the friends list expansion (still capped at 100)?

James Houlton: You can have up to 100 friends and the Avatars will all be represented in your friends list.
FantasyMeister: What unique features will be available to each country/region?

James Houlton: You might be familiar with Inside Xbox. It’s like a news magazine programme created by the guys at the office. They get to programme it locally, so they go out and do interviews with, say Guillermo del Toro, and they can just pop that straight up there on the service. They go to game launches filming and interviewing people. They can then take that content and put it straight up here so they can create really relevant content. If it was around an Arcade game coming out that day they can put up a video talking through it and announcing it’s coming out. They can link to Game Marketplace.

Spotlight is an area that we can program around new launches, or content we think is relevant or new. So if a brand new blockbuster film had gone up we can change that there, or the PES demo might be up. We can try to help people by pulling up the new stuff that they might want to see. It uses art work, like movie posters or game box art, to really help draw people to it, so you’re not searching through lists of stuff, you see it straight away.

Video Marketplace is ever growing for us in terms of partners, with MGM on board as well from a European point of view. You can go in, as you can with all the other channels, do New Arrivals, Most Popular, we can feature up stuff. We can actually program that so we do give a good idea of the variety, if we just happen to get a load of titles up there that appeal to a certain audience when people start downloading it doesn’t put people off. With the price point now at £129 we feel a real switch point in terms of broadening our audience. Hopefully as we drive people to LIVE the last thing we want to do is go, ‘actually it’s all Hellboy and stuff like that’. So we can program it around family titles or slightly more action, or whatever we want to do, we have control of that.

Netflix (US movie service) is certainly somewhere we want to get to and we’re evaluating who and what that could be with but we haven’t got anything to announce. For us it’s one of those things that’s definitely a priority for us. That whole idea of being able to get access to a lot more content.

Robin Burrowes: It’s basically a business model that we’re exploring right now. Netflix obviously launches with the NXE in the States, and it’s a great way of extending the entertainment capability as well as the fact that form a social entertainment point of view people can access that content on different consoles at the same time, and it’s that social entertainment experience that we’re really looking to evolve. We see that as one of our key unique selling propositions. So you can have an Xbox LIVE party where you can socialise with your friends more visibly, the fact that you can have quick launches into certain games, if you’ve all got the same game in your Arcade selection, having those games more easily launched and playing with each other becomes more achievable. It’s a rich area for us to continue to evolve. So there will be lots more that we do within that shared space.

Wido: Will you still be able to use themes?

James Houlton: You can still use existing themes, a little bit like the Gamer Pics. If you’ve bought themes, or one theme or unlocked them, they still work within the New Xbox Experience as well. If you were to go to My Xbox and change the theme to say something like Night, the background changes. If I go to my Friends list then all the items on that Friends list look different as well. It’s a fun, little bit more visual way of looking at your Friends and being able to find them quite easily. Existing themes obviously won’t drive this content but the backgrounds still work. We were really conscious of that, especially if people have bought them or they’ve won them. They mean a lot to people.

FantasyMeister: Do you plan to come out with an environment similar to Home at any time?

James Houlton: It’s when you’re in your Friends list, that’s when you’ll see your Avatars, in there. You could then have a party, if there was a group of them together you could go up and join the party. This is the area where you would do most of your Avatar interactions, so to speak, but not in anything more than this Friends list.

pblive: Are there any plans to support more video formats at the same time in the update?

James Houlton: No, it’s the same.

There’s a ‘huge amount’ to come from PS3, says UK MD, and ‘it’s all planned’.

Great news for PS3 owners, Sony has said it’s “not even halfway” to where it needs to get to with its console.

Sony Computer Entertainment UK managing director Ray Maguire told VideoGamer.com at the Games 3.0 conference in London that gamers are set to see “something even more exciting” from the next generation of games on the console, including new genres and a focus on “the game experience” rather than “sequel after sequel after sequel” and graphics.

When asked if gamers were seeing the potential of the PS3 being realised with the current crop of games, including Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet, Maguire replied: “No we’ve got miles to go. The power of PlayStation is just awesome and we’re starting to get to grips with it, third parties are starting to get to grips with it and we’re starting to see some of that come to fruition. But when we see the next generation of games coming after these, then I think we’re going to see something even more exciting, we’re going to see even more genres come to the marketplace rather than just sequel after sequel after sequel.”

Maguire added: “I think the online experience is going to change radically over the next few years. The online additions to our games, just the way we consume games, is going to change massively. And using the PS3 for non-gaming activities as well, with PlayTV, using the remote play function with your PSP to extend your playing environment, there’s a huge amount more to come from PS3. We’re not even half way to where we need to get to. It’s all planned, it’s just a question of having the right amount of development time to make sure that when we bring it out it’s what people expect it to be, rather than rushing stuff into the marketplace.

“We’ve never rushed with PS3 because we wanted to make sure that we’re as right as we can be. We’re learning all the time, we make mistakes like everybody else, we’re not perfect but the talent is there, the energy is there, the commitment is there and the passion is there. And all I can say to the customers is thanks so much for the support because without them there would be no PS3 and there would be no business.”

Maguire’s comments are sure to excite PS3 owners who are still waiting to play some of the PS3’s headline titles due out this year. Looking to the future, Guerrilla Games’ Killzone 2, Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, Zipper Interactive’s MAG and SCE Santa Monica Studio’s God of War 3 are all due some time in 2009.

Maguire, however, said that the improvement will be less about graphics and more about the “game experience”, saying: “They (PS3 game graphics) will get better but I don’t think that will be measurable. It’ll be about the game experience that will change. And I think that’s an area which, without saying what we will do, that’s the area to bear in mind that that’s where we’ll put our energy.”

Not rain, not wind, not post rush hour traffic could keep AllHipHop from the hottest show of the year, Power 105.1’s Powerhouse show at the Izod Center in dirty Jersey. The bill boasted underground heroes D-Block, R&B showman Ne-Yo, and two of the biggest names in the game co-headlining in Lil Wayne and Jay-z. With all the recent talk of Weezy no-shows, it would be interesting to see what the evening would bring.

First up was D-Block performing to a less than packed house at the time due to the weather, they stormed the stage to their D-Block Anthem. They went through a few of their classics including a half hearted attempt at “All About the Benjamins.” It ain’t the same without Puff or Kim, so that’s a wrap on that one.

The issue with a team like D-Block is that they are really not built for a stadium. Their performance was haphazard and visibly unrehearsed and as veterans of 10 years in the game and former pupils of Diddy, they should know better than that. Too many people on stage with nothing to do went out with WuTang, they never really had control of the mic situation as two of their lil homies had low mics and they never passed off the working ones. In what would be a recurring theme for the night, they shouted out Barack Obama

They did drop a new joint that sampled “Nautilus” (Daytona 500, Brothers on My Jock), and the highlights included Styles’ “Blow Your Mind,” and Jada’s “Knock Yourself Out.” Cool if you love the 90s but meh overall.

Next up to bat was everyone’s favorite Michael Jackson impersonator, Ne-yo. I say that in jest, because Ne-yo is not shy about homage and he’s a superior showman in this landscape so if he wants to be MJ lite then more power to him. Mike borrowed from Jackie Wilson and the Godfather so lineage is apparent.

He bills himself as the new “King of R&B” and there’s really nothing right now to dispute that. He’s got 4 dancers that seriously earned their paychecks, hot, lithe and synchopated and a band that was on point all night. His voice was strong and almost album quality, you really couldn’t spot a weakness in his show.

He opened with “All Because Of You” and continued the vibe with “Sexy Love.” Then you realize that slowly he’s building a solid catalogue. He performs a song “Nothing,” which is a tribute to Mike so you have to give him the thumbs up.

As the only R&B cat on the bill you would think that he was there simply for the ladies, but he brought out a few of surprises for the fellas. First up he brought Jada back to perform their new joint “By My Side.” This is a certified banger. Next up to bat was Plies for the smash chicken head anthem “Bus It Baby.” All the high-pitched singing let you know it was on and poppin. Last but not least, F-A-B-O fresh from demolishing the Cypher to body “You Make Me Better.”

In all a crisp performance that was well rehearsed, well executed and full of hits, surprises and routines.

After a prologued stall, Wayne actually showed up for this one. No hoax, no joke, live and in living color. Wayne’s status as heavyweight is clear as he gets a standing ovation as he takes the stage, with rock band in tow, looking to cement that status even more.

With no dancers and no posse, he opens up with Mr Carter. The girls know it word for word. We wait for the Jigga that would never come, and the crowd was paused to explode but that moment never came. Blown moment, but a solid opening.

His performance is very subdued to this point, at points rhyming with his own vocals in the background, which was a bit awkward.

“Fireman” sends everyone into go mode but once the song goes on it feels like the crowd is still trying to figure him out. The young cats get it totally, the girls are all in, but the older cats are trying to figure out what they should be doing. It’s like when your team is winning but you waiting for that three pointer to break the other teams back but it keeps rimming out.

“Lollipop” was another highlight which took the show up another notch. The rock guitars gully up lollipop and it was a dope rendition.

Next Wayne himself dons the guitar for “Leather So Soft.” Not really playing but it looks good on stage. He’s in full rock star mode but he’s losing the crowd. Those that know it jam people are starting to sit down. Gets most of the crowd back with “Ms. Officer” with Bobby V on the hookup.

Baby comes out to “Pop Bottles” and that got a rise, but the true highlight, of course, was A Milli. Telling the crowd to “spazz if you want,” the band got back on with those guitars and brought the house down. A fitting climax to an off balanced but good show. Weezy bows left, Weezy bows center, Weezy bows right…and leaves the stage to Whitney’s “I Will Always Love You.” Bizarre but entertaining.

Last but not least it’s show closer Hova. His live band, the Roc Boys opens with “Say Hello” with Bleek at his side like Dame still barking orders. Brings the energy up with “U Don’t Know.” This song has that heat. If anything Bleek can be Spliff Star 2.0. Roc signs still go up in unison for this.

From there you hear the horns, and you know “Roc Boys” is in the building tonight. If you’ve seen his post American Gangster shows, you know the photo montages and light show is in full effect, and everyone knows the words. Nobody crowd checks like Jay-Z, and this show is no exception. he doesn’t allow the audience to chill too much.

He keeps the energy on a nice ebb and flow through AG songs, as images of the Vietnam War, the Watergate Hotel,Jackie O, the American flag, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon flash in the background.

Another voter registration shout out. Another Barack shout out. It’s very strange to hear crack rap songs and then Political endorsements but what is Hip-Hop without hypocrisy.

More crowd pleasers like “PSA,” “Swagger Like Us,” and “D Originators” keep the crowd hyped. Its a dope show but I gotta say, he looks naked without the Roc especially after seeing State Prop’s recent reunion.

After a run of Jigga standards (he has ALOT of songs) he seemingly closed the show with “Dope Boy Fresh.” As is his custom he rarely does a NY area show without hovatime (overtime) and as the uninitiated were filing out, he returned to the stage with miracle DJ AM. Rather than pretty it up, I’ll just list the medley he went through for the next 15 minutes:

“Feeling It”

“Ain’t No Nigga”

“Who U Wit?”

“What We Do”-Borderline blasphemy w/o Beans & Free

“Hello Brooklyn”-No Weezy

“Where I’m From”

“Best of Me (Rmx)”

“Fiesta (Rmx)”

“Money Ain’t A Thing”

“Money Cash Hoes”

“‘03 Bonnie & Clyde”

Whew. Then he brought her out. Yes. Beyonce in all her bootylicious glory, bookended by the hotties from the video to “Single Ladies.” It’s now safe to go. It can’t get any higher than that. However we had a few more joints and he closed with one more vote plus and with encore. Illness.

All in all, Ne-Yo shined, Weezy Rocked and the Jiggaman delivered. D Block could use some stage polish but they didn’t suck. The event was smooth throughout, there were no abnormally long delays, no violence in the crowd, and the people got their money’s worth.