Pierce Mattie Public Relations New York & Los Angeles

We're reviewing a few of the new game councils out on the market. We love our computer-platform lifestyle games, (Desperate Housewives, the game) but knew we were missing out on HD (1080i), surround sound, game-matching, leader-board enhanced experiences that the new counsels offer. So we've decided to fully immerse ourselves in the gaming lifestyle and it's become very serious (fun) research. I happen to have received one of the Xbox360 platforms so your probably going to hear more about it in the future then the Sony PlayStation 3 as I blog more then the other participating game platform "researchers." Look for some posts on our discoveries in the near future.

Above you can see my gamertag. Please comment here if you have an Xbox360 gamertag. I wanted to offer an invitation to add me as a friend or email me your gamertag if you don't want your tag to be posted publicly. Steve Rubel, I know you have one...how about a little friendly competition?

A not-so-secret Santa recently gifted my household with a new fully loaded Xbox360 Pro Console. It came with two additional wireless controllers, battery chargers a few games and a Xbox Live Gold Subscription for one year. My two oldest sons love video games and when our original Xbox kicked the bucket after years of constant use, it was complete devastation to the boys. An Xbox 360 topped their list of what they wanted Santa to bring them this year and they are going to be more than surprised to find this set up in our family room come Christmas morning.

With my previous Xbox, I didn’t take advantage of the Xbox Live service offered. We soley used it for games purchased and as a DVD/CD player. When I was told of all the great things and fun that Xbox Live could provide for my family, I knew it was something I wanted to sign up for. I decided to get my ducks in a row prior to the big day next Monday by registering with Xbox Live and obtaining a gamertag. For now, I just went through the process of creating a gamertag for myself as the primary tag, but will soon be taking the time to set up one for the boys.

Different Styles Of Xbox 360 Gamertags:

Pierce Mattie president has this gamertag. The backround changes to the theme of the the game played last.

Notice how Jeremy Wright (of B5 Media) has more points then us, and played F.E.A.R. last.

You can look at the celebrity leaderboard and view the who's who in gaming on MyGamercard.net

I started off by going to Xbox.com and scanning through their pages to figure out how to create my gamertag. It took a lot of clicking to try to figure out how to register. After calling a friend, I was told that I needed to create an account with MSN first. So I went to MSN.com and registered an email address I already had in place. I was thankful it didn’t require me to create another email account all together. I had to wait about 15 minutes before I received the confirmation email that required me to click a link in the email to validate my account.

Tomorrow morning our family is about to embark into the new world of gaming online with our new Xbox 360. Yesterday I purchased a wireless network adaptor. The Xbox 360 Wireless Networking Adapter enhances your Xbox 360 experience in the digital home. You can easily transfer videos and music to your Xbox 360 system from your Media Center PC, chat with your friends, play games via Xbox Live, and more—all without the clutter and destruction (to the main unit) that can come from excited video game players tugging on controller wires for hours on end.

Parents or system owners can set permissions that allow all members of the household to enjoy Xbox 360 in a user-appropriate environment. This includes not merely deciding what games and DVD movies to allow, but also controlling the ability to establish Xbox Live memberships and managing access to Xbox Live.

It's good to know that Xbox 360 thought of parental controls. I will be setting these up tonight. Just because the Xbox 360 is a hard core gaming platform doesn't mean it is always appropriate for the little whippersnappers.

Follow Up From Christmas Eve Post: The Xbox 360 was opened, the kids were thrilled (and haven’t stopped playing Sonic The Hedgehog "Hero", but my frustration over trying to connect to the not so live part Xbox360 was just beginning. I had gotten my Linksys WRT300N Wireless Router all set up days prior to Christmas, so that when the Xbox 360 was set up, it would be just a click away from heading online to test out the games. The last thing I needed to do was attach my Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter and head online….or so I thought.

Upon clicking the Xbox Live button through my Xbox Dashboard, I kept getting an error saying that a connection to the internet could not be found. I was puzzled. I had done everything I needed to do to connect, so I began going through my Xbox 360 manual to figure things out. When I finally found that the error was coming up with a DNS failure, I put a call into Xbox Support to see if they could help me figure out what was going on.

You automatically get a computer that asks you to tell him what you need and he tries to troubleshoot, I decided I wanted to speak to a live person, so I simply said, “Customer Service Xbox 360 Console” and was promptly taken to a human being. The young lady seemed eager to help me as she went through a list of options to try to troubleshoot my problem. I spent about 60-90 minutes on the phone with her, running up and down the stairs between my computer and the Xbox, manually typing in numbers, resetting the router, modem and console and then trying and trying again to get the Xbox to connect. No dice. Finally she asked me my ISP provider, to which she told me was not on their list of compatible service providers. She suggested I contact them the next day to discuss this with them.

Covering the gaming lifestyle: I'm a fan of the tease, building anticipation, planting seeds and keeping your fans in the know of what is going on. Halo 3 will pick up where Halo 2 left off. The Master Chief is returning to Earth to finish the fight. The Covenant occupation of Earth has uncovered a massive and ancient object beneath the African sands - an object who's secrets have yet to be revealed. Earth's forces are battered and beaten. These new generation games are getting better then movies as now you can play them in HD with crystal clear image quality and hear them in surround sound. Here is the first teaser for Halo 3.

By now you know we here at Pierce Mattie love playing the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. If you haven’t already seen Steve or my gamertag, you can find our tags in this post, and hopefully you will add either (or both) of us as friends so we can play you online. We’re not the only ones who love the Xbox 360, with $11 million dollars worth of consoles sold since November, I’d say there are plenty of you out there who also think it surpasses other consoles on the market.

Now Hollywood has taken notice of the 5 million Xbox Live members, most especially the fact that the majority of those 5 million members are the hard to reach demographic of males ages 16-34. If you are on Xbox Live, then you are well aware of the exclusive movie trailers that Live members are given access to, the thousand plus hours of entertainment with buy-to-own TV shows and movie rentals, music videos and arcade games, but also the Demo downloads for games not yet launched and games made exclusively for Live. One such being the upcoming Halo 3; this is one game myself and my b5media friends will be playing together online.

Years ago in the news you would often hear about how a violent video game lead a child to go on a rampage and sometimes sadly, a killing spree. However, a news article pointed out today that video games could actually be educational for children and even help them build skills they will need later on in life. I couldn’t agree more.

My oldest son has ADHD, something that has caused great strife in his young life (he is only about to be 8) and even got him kicked out of pre-school at age 3. One thing my husband and I have found is that playing video games seems to assist in him learning concentration. We bought the original Xbox for our family in 2002 shortly after it’s launch in November of 2001. Without really giving much thought to our son, then 3, understanding how to play games on it, we would look on as he played Blinx. I honestly did not believe a 3 year old could truly have the skills needed to work the game controller and make it coincide with what it needed to do on the screen. Within a few weeks, my son had made it past several levels and was even correcting me on how to do things when I tried to play the game.

We’ve noticed over the years, that with choosing the right games and only allotting so much time to game playing, my son’s ability to concentrate has increased and his thinking skills along with it. This has transferred over into the classroom and his teacher’s are always praising him for his thinking skills and how he is able to do so well without the use of psychotropic medications (this may not be true of all children and our decision to not use them has nothing to do with game playing.)

The marketing behind Burger King these days has impressed me. In the age of Tivo, Burger King has managed to find alternative marketing strategies to continually bring their name to the forefront, even when you skip through the commercials.

"The King" ad campaigns brought about attention when a strange oversized plastic King could be found in bed next to an unsuspecting person or just outside of their window to the catchphrase of, "Wake up with the King." The commercials were a bit odd, but definitely catchy. The commercials moved on with dry wit humor and occasionally I would find myself laughing at some of them. Burger King’s actual products remained in the commercials, but weren’t necessarily the main piece to the ad.

In November Burger King began offering Burger King Xbox and Xbox 360 games with their value meals in three different genres; action, fighting and racing. I thought it was in good fun and admired the cross promotion involved with a fast food chain. When I saw it was available on Xbox Live and that the game involved other Burger King mascots, I realized that Burger King was onto something.

Where else can you interact with a celebrity from your sofa? I don’t just mean imaginary interaction watching E!, but where you can play your favorite Xbox Live (talk with them) games against someone famous? Xbox Live’s Game with Fame gives you just that.

One of the funniest moments though was when Jenny asked "What the hell is a gravity modifier?"

In 2006, gamers found that they could interact and play along with such celebrities as Jack Black and Jenny McCarthy, as well as New York fashion designer Marc Ecko, musical acts Tyrese, INXS, 30 Seconds to Mars, P.O.D. and Audioslave, among other celebrities across the board. In 2005 it was Incubus, the year before it was Maroon 5 (I am kicking myself for missing that one). Gamers found that they not only got to play against their favorite celebrities, but interact over their headsets, as well.

Left To Right: INXS (Halo 2), Jenny McCarthy (Marble Blast Ultra) & LaMarcus Aldridge (NBA draft)

Of course last year, there was the infamous Game with Fame with The King from Burger King, a character known to not speak at all. It came during the Burger King/Xbox collaboration to sell The King Xbox and Xbox 360 games with value meals. Aaron Stanton at GamesFirst wrote a very funny post about how this interaction might play out, especially when gamers were used to vocally interacting with celebrities through GWF.

Game with Fame for 2007 is already kicking off with Quietdrive, a Minneapolis quintet that just released their debut album, “When All That’s Left is You.” They’ll be playing Gears of War with Xbox Live gamers. The date and time have yet to be announced, but you can register now at Xbox Live GWF.

Also, if you want to game with everyday non-celebrities you can play against Steve or I, we both have gamer tags.

If you have played Xbox Live’s Game with Fame, we’d love to hear about your experience with the celebrity you gamed with.

Viva Pinata, a game you can only find on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, is said to possibly be also heading to Nintendo DS. Viva Pinata, which is also a popular Saturday morning cartoon that even my own children watch, is often one of the most misunderstood games in the Xbox 360 catalog. First pegged as a children’s game and sworn off by hardcore gamers, Viva Pinata has come to be a game that many adults also enjoy playing.

According to 1UP, a gamer’s paradise resource, one of their own spoke directly with Shane Kim who is the Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Game Studios and relayed that Viva Pinata on Nintendo DS would make perfect sense from a franchise perspective. Nintendo DS is known for more kid-friendly games, while Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Live target that elusive 18-34 male demographic and offers more hardcore violent games such as Halo and Gears of War. Viva Pinata has slowly come to find success on Xbox for those seeking more family-friendly games. It is most likely part of their catalog of games to be more well rounded since it is not only men gaming, but women as well as evidenced by Xbox’s Gamerchix group.

You know you are admist a public relations nightmare when it is the height of the holiday shopping season and one of your high profile products is making news for being defective. There is no denying that Microsoft potentially has a public relations crisis on their hands. Vista was a debacle, but now Microsoft is facing yet another issue just weeks before Christmas as word continues to spread about the Xbox 360's "red ring of death." While Microsoft has put aside a billion dollars to extend warranties to fix the issue, is it really enough to remedy what seems to be an unfixable issue?

Having experienced the red ring of death myself and promptly sending my Xbox 360 back to Microsoft, I have to say that the timing couldn't be any worse. With a little more than 3 weeks left until Christmas, Microsoft told me it could take 4 weeks to fix my Xbox. What does this mean for Microsoft? For myself, and I'm sure for many other Xbox owners, that means there'll be no money spent on Xbox products this holiday season. Words Microsoft doesn't want to hear as Sony just launched its PS3 and Nintendo's Wii sales are going strong.

Just as the MAC commercial mocking PC's need for a PR person says Vista users switching back to XP are "Upgrading to an older, more familiar experience," will 360 owners be "upgrading" to the original Xbox or abandoning ship and taking the PS3 or Wii for a spin with their holiday cash? Either way, with a class action lawsuit looming, I have to wonder what PR tactics Microsoft will be using to take the focus off of these issues to restore consumer confidence in their brand.

According to Jim Goldman of CNBC's Tech Check, Blogger complaints about the Xbox 360 has had no bearing on sales, and in fact reports that Microsoft's sales for 360 are up. Could this be due to the Xbox issues not being mainstream knowledge or simply consumers brand loyalty? Frankly, I had no idea that the Xbox 360's cooling system was defective until I saw fellow blogger, Jason Bean of "The Unauthorized Microsoft Weblog" in a report on CNBC that aired today. The issue certainly wasn't relayed to me when contacting Microsoft support about my Xbox (as I am sure they meant to keep it that way).

I decided to ask Jason's perspective on the situation. I wanted to find out how Microsoft can play down the bad press regarding defective 360's and rebuild consumer confidence in the Xbox brand, as well as, after all of the bad press Vista has gotten, if there was a more negative feeling about Microsoft now that their Xbox 360 is also having issues and how if affects their overall image.

As most have heard, Grand Theft Auto 4 was released to the public last week and has already exceeded expectations by making over 600 million dollars in its first week. Despite being part “4”, Grand Theft Auto 4 is actually the 9th grand theft auto game in the series. The locales in all the games have been inspired by real life areas such as London, Miami, and Los Angeles, but this time around, the development team chose New York City as their canvas. The game is loved by fans and critics, but is being grilled by parents and news organizations for its content. While it’s true that the game contains tons of violence, graphic language, drugs, and sexual references, when one actually sits down with GTA (and video games in general), you may actually realize there may be more to it than that.

In this game one takes the role of an Eastern-European immigrant by the name of Niko Bellic, who has just come to America in search of the “American Dream.” The game consists of Niko doing favors and jobs for a number of different seedy characters, until one reaches the “top”. Violence and drugs aside, the game has amazing writing, is smart and humorous, and parodies politics, the media, and current events. Many news organizations who have bad mouthed the game have later come out and said they didn’t play it for more than 10 minutes, and some even admitted that they didn’t play at all, but are basing their negative thoughts of GTA on what they’ve heard.