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Get in the race this week with Forza Motorsport 4...

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Ubisoft's Just Dance 3 promotional app for iOS (and, later, Android) isn't exactly the same as Just Dance 3 -- but it does encourage you to do the thing in the title of the game. In fact, rather than a graded dance simulator, the app is sort of a VidRhythm thing, speeding up and recutting your video footage into an automatically generated music video to one of three songs from the game.

You can see some examples, uploaded from the app, at the Autodance YouTube page. We're not convinced it's a thing we'd want to try more than once, but we don't even have that opportunity just yet -- the app isn't available in the American App Store as of now.

We already knew that some of the new services coming to Microsoft's Xbox 360 TV service would require an Xbox Live Gold subscription but, according to a Giant Bomb tipster, it looks like some previously Silver services will soon be turning Gold as well. One company apparently making the alchemical leap is AT&T U-verse, which will require Xbox Live Gold starting this November.

The company is apparently sending notice of the change to its customers and offering a one-time $60 bill credit in order to soften the blow. In theory, the $60 saved on your AT&T bill can be applied towards an Xbox Live Gold subscription. Of course, if you already have Gold - a likely possibility given the effort required to get U-verse on the ol' Xbox - it sounds like you'll have an extra sixty bucks to play with next month.

[Image: Giant Bomb]AT&T offering credit to Uverse subscribers for Xbox Live Gold

#tigerwoods Somewhat obscured by the promotion surrounding Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13's fan-voted cover contest is the fact the game, when it arrives in March, will be the first EA Sports title fully playable on Xbox 360 with Kinect. More »

Simulation games, be it racing-simulators, flight-simulators or farming-simulators, always run the risk of designing themselves into corners and alienating potential players. These types of experiences are a challenge to craft, as implementing a feature for the die-hard enthusiast often means sacrificing something designed for the novice or hobbyiest.

No one seems to have told Turn 10 how impossible a task the all-encompassing simulator is, however, and as a result Forza Motorsport 4 provides the same challenging, exhilarating racing experience to each and every player who gets behind the proverbial wheel.

Microsoft's Major Nelson has revealed that 40 different partners have been confirmed for the expanded TV functionality coming to the Xbox 360. There's some surprising stuff in the list just past the jump, including HBO Go, Comcast, SyFy and Verizon. Turns out that report was correct!

Hit the jump for the full list of initial TV partners for the upcoming Fall Dashboard Update, which has a tentative launch date of "Holiday 2011."

Microsoft's Major Nelson has revealed that 40 different partners have been confirmed for the live TV functionality coming to your Xbox 360. There's some surprising stuff in the list just past the jump, including HBO Go, Comcast, SyFy and Verizon. Turns out that report was correct!

Hit the jump for the full list of initial TV partners for the upcoming Fall Dashboard Update, which has a tentative launch date of "Holiday 2011."

#kinect Kinect hacks provide an endless rabbit hole of would-be tech wizards using the peripheral for a rainbow of results. Some of them are amazing, such as this Kinect-controlled drone. Some of them are silly, such as this. More »

Learn anger management with Rage this week...

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Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! No, not you, free-level Xbox Live subscribers. You leave your engines firmly in the off position. We'll get to you in a second. Everyone else: Engine's on! The demo for Forza Motorsport 4 is now live for paid Gold subscribers, and can be grabbed from the Spotlight reel on the dashboard. If you need inspiration for the big race, we suggest checking out this debut UK trailer, which just happens to be narrated by Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson. (Rad!)

Okay, those formerly known as Silverlings: You'll get your chance to play the demo this Friday. We suggest you spend the next four days thinking about your pathetic lot in life, and how you can improve it.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! No, not you, Silver-level Xbox Live subscribers. You leave your engines firmly in the off position. We'll get to you in a second. Everyone else: Engine's on! The demo for Forza Motorsport 4 is now live for paid Gold subscribers, and can be grabbed from the Spotlight reel on the dashboard. If you need inspiration for the big race, we suggest checking out this debut UK trailer, which just happens to be narrated by Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson. (Rad!)

Okay, Silverlings: You'll get your chance to play the demo this Friday. We suggest you spend the next four days thinking about your pathetic lot in life, and how you can improve it.

Tech blog Geekwire recently uncovered a U.S. patent for software which uses the Kinect to scan a potential player's body size, and restrict mature content based on their estimated age. It does so not just by examining their height, but the proportions of their body parts -- still, we think it would have an awfully difficult time detecting the age of a little person, or an unnaturally, horrifyingly gigantic teenager.

According to the filing, "output content can be replaced by substitute content when a person in a lower age group enters the field of view." This could mean that if an adult was playing Rise of Nightmares, and then their child walks into the room, the console would temporarily switch over to Kinectimals until junior left the room, returning the player to adult time. "Don't look at that, Johnny," the father would say to his curious offspring. "That's grown-up Kinectimals."

#kinect A Microsoft patent, filed in March 2010 but only publicly released last week, is called PARENTAL CONTROL SETTINGS BASED ON BODY DIMENSIONS. It's about using tech like Kinect to automatically restrict content on a PC or Xbox depending on who "or what" the camera sees in the room. More »

Somewhere, someone has tossed a coin into a fountain, quietly uttering "I wish I were an Antonio Banderas cat." Were we the universe, we would have fulfilled wishes about global hunger or world peace first, but whatever.

Puss In Boots: The Video Game is a licensed multiplatform exercise from TQH, coming to 360, PS3, Wii and DS sometime around the movie's November 4 theatrical release. The 360 and PS3 versions both tout heavy Kinect and Move integration, respectively, claiming that Kinect owners can "actually become Puss," which sounds painful and terrifying.

The PS3 version's Move support allows for a much more normal sounding "full-motion sword fighting experience," while the DS variant receives the standard mini-game collection treatment. Wii owners can expect a rather Zelda-esque sounding Wiimote + Nunchuk configuration, as well as a lower price-tag ($29.99), while PS3 and 360 owners will be charged slightly less discounty discounts ($39.99 and $49.99).

Personally, we've all got our fingers crossed for a Nasonex Bee pre-order bonus.

#xbox A recent leak of the latest software development kit for Xbox 360 included the new Xbox Live dashboard, which rumor has it will be released on Nov. 15, and scuttlebutt has it some kind of cable TV service could arrive with it. This two minute video [hit mute unless you want to hear some reggae] of the new dashboard does not show any streaming television, but it does give a good look at how complete Kinect integration works. More »

Just before TGS this year, I paid a visit to NanaOn-Sha's small studio in Tokyo's Aoyama neighborhood. The majority of the tiny studio is the meeting and testing room seen in our gallery below, where I spoke to founder Masaya Matsuura and director of development Dewi Tanner, and played a demo of the studio's upcoming XBLA game, Haunt.

Despite the relatively cozy surroundings, there's room for an impressive array of Parappa and Um Jammer Lammy merchandise. Was the Lammy pillow really something that was marketed? And just outside the door, there's (barely) room for all the awards NanaOn-Sha's games have received.

Improbably, there's also room for a bathtub in the small studio, something that Matsuura told me has been useful in the impossibly hot and humid summer Tokyo's experienced. "Especially this summer," he noted, "Japan has difficulty using electric power" as a result of conservation efforts following the March earthquake. They offered to let me use the bathtub, but there will unfortunately be no Joystiq review, as I declined. Past the break, Matsuura and Tanner speak about their studio, partnerships with Western companies, Haunt, and not baths.

#thegunstringer Some of the best ideas are born of strange, stressful circumstances. Case in point: Twisted Pixel's inspired and highly enjoyable new Kinect game The Gunstringer. To hear Twisted Pixel CEO Mike Wilford and chief creative officer Josh Bear tell it, the two of them came up with the idea for the game… during their pitch meeting with Microsoft. More »

Make a big impact this week with FIFA Soccer 12 (or alternatively PES 2012)...

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Not satisfied with hastily captured shaky-cam footage of Diabolical Pitch? We've got just the thing then, as Grasshopper Manufacture has released the official trailer we first saw during its event at TGS. Check out the flaming baseballs and action-packed power poses in the video above.

It's nifty that Forza Motorsport 4 will allow players to examine the Halo 4 Warthog in "Auto Vista" mode, but we doubt we're alone in wondering why you can't actually drive it. According to developer Turn 10's Dan Greenwalt, implementing the UNSC's iconic ground transport is much more complex than it sounds.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Greenwalt explained that the technology used in the Warthog simply doesn't exist in any of Forza's other cars - notably its "crab walking" four wheel steering - meaning Turn 10 would have to build it from scratch. It's not that the Turn 10 team is incapable, Greenwalt noted that they have the specs, but it would be "a big investment" in order to support a single vehicle.

The final straw, apparently, is that there's no way to simulate the Warthog's tires. All of Forza's tire physics are based on real-world tires, meaning that each tire in the game should react to road conditions in a (very) realistic way. Said Greenwalt, "they didn't give us tires from nanotube technology from 2525."

During a visit to NanaOn-Sha's Tokyo headquarters, I had the opportunity to try Haunt, the company's new XBLA Kinect game. And despite the superficial, high-level similarity to Rise of Nightmares -- both are "scary" Kinect games in which you can walk around freely -- Haunt couldn't be a more different experience. NanaOn-Sha founder Masaya Matsuura classified it as more of a "haunted house" experience. Think Casper. Think profoundly charming.

The Haunt demo begins on rails -- like, literally on a cart guided down a railway, like a haunted house ride -- but that's just to ease you into the game. And, like any good haunted house, as you're slowly clack-clacking your way through the halls, spooooooky ghosts and skellingtons jump out to scare you. You dodge by moving your body to one side, in order to avoid taking damage.

#diabolicalpitch Diabolical Pitch, if you haven't been keeping up, is the horror baseball game for Kinect conceived by the oddballs at Grasshopper Manufacture. Kotaku saw it at Tokyo Game Show last week, but here's your first official trailer for the most curious Kinect game. More »

We're not quite sure we understand the motivation behind this union of 'hoff and Burnout Crash. Is it because Burnout is a game about cars, and Hasselhoff just wants you to jump in his car?

Microsoft and Harmonix confirmed today that all of Dance Central's routines will export to Dance Central 2 for 400 Microsoft Points ($5).

It should be noted that if you were not a fan of the "freestyle" sections in the original Dance Central, they are still part of the exported songs, even if you turn off the freestyle section in Dance Central 2. The reason being there was no choreography to cover those sections in the first game.

Participating retailers are offering 400 MSP with pre-order of Dance Central 2, subsidizing the transfer charge. Dance Central 2 hits the streets on October 21 in Europe and Asia and October 25 in North America.

As anyone who possesses the required documentation and vehicular means can attest, it is not terribly difficult to crash a car. There are countless laws and infrastructural guidelines designed to keep your automobile from touching anything but the ground beneath it -- ignoring just one is enough to cause a horrific, steel-twisting wreck. If impulse, not reason, guided your hands-on-wheels and feet-on-pedals, then the act of safe driving would be exponentially more difficult than the dangerous variety.

Perplexingly, Criterion Games has centered the focus of Burnout Crash on a task that's even more difficult, and more obscure than avoiding collisions with other automotive objects: In Burnout Crash, you must collide with all the other automotive objects. Harsh penalties await for players who let chunks of traffic slip through their grasp, bringing you to a haunting realization: You're not orchestrating symphonies of coordinated property damage, you're committing automotive genocide.

Here's the thing: The stuff you loved when you were a kid changes as you grow up. Mr. Rogers passed away after a long and full life. The Smurfs got turned into a terrible movie starring Katy Perry. And Rare, the creators of all those games you loved way back when, are really, really into Kinect Sports.

That's the lesson from this quick tour of the company's studios, where you can see lots and lots of wall-sized displays of Kinect avatars, but only two mentions of the company's storied and prosperous history with Nintendo. Goldeneye 007 and Banjo and Kazooie may sit front and center in many gamers' hearts, but at Rare HQ these days, they mostly just sit as unmarked cartridges inside a glass history case.

That's fine -- Rare is doing quite well under Microsoft's leadership, and as the article says, the company is very proud of what it's done with Kinect and Xbox Live. But that won't keep us from remembering the good old times, and all of the fun we had together way back when.

A trio of fresh songs awaits your bouncing booty in Dance Central. Harmonix has made available three new songs at three bucks a pop each today: "Don't Cha" by the Pussycat Dolls (featuring Busta Rhymes), "Tempted to Touch" by Rupee and "The Way I Are" by Timbaland (featuring Keri Hilson and D.O.E.).

Of course, being a blog that prides itself on masterful use of the English language, we're trying our best to ignore the title of that last song.

#cabelas You don't need controllers to use Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect. That's the point of the thing. You don't need a controller. You certainly don't need an inflatable boat. But to play this winter's Cabela's Big Game Hunter: Hunting Party, you're going to need a special Kinect gun. It comes bundled with the game. More »

#halo When word spread this summer that Halo: Anniversary would include Kinect support, gamers fidgeted nervously, wondering just what the hell 343 Industries had in mind for the franchise. Calm down, they're not introducing motion control to the HD remake. They're letting you switch between the game's high-definition and standard-definition graphics using your voice. More »

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary may be just a couple months away, but Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor is still keeping mum on some of the remake's Kinect functionality. He did let a few bits of info slip, however. "For example, you can switch to Classic or Anniversary mode using voice commands," he explained to me in a meeting at TGS 2011 this week. Wait, really? That's it?

"We actually have some more story content in the game that's gonna be supported by Kinect," he added. Unfortunately, either the folks at 343 Industries or its corporate benefactors at Microsoft Studios have deemed the rest of the information too early to mete out. "We've added a really interesting feature we're gonna talk about in October that uses Kinect to add some story to the game."

As interesting as the content may be, it may never make it to the final product -- apparently the October reveal is about more than a carefully timed marketing plan for the re-release of a decade old game. "We're still testing the features, so if it doesn't work, we're gonna change it." And with just under two months to go until launch, 343 had better get a move on.

[Image credit: 'LaughPong']