Durrrr Brains!

Don't you just feel a twat when someone points out something that you can't see but it's perfectly obvious it's there and available.

I feel like I've been banging my head against a brick wall for the last few months and now the wall has collapsed and I'm thrashing around in the darkness until someone comes along and shows me the way.

So, and here's something I never thought I'd say, thanks to "Vagus" for helping me out and solving one of my biggest frustrations for the last few months.

Now, off to play all the Xbox Live Arcade games for free, download a few themes and gamer pictures and wait for the new Halo 3 video to be released!

And remember, if you're a man, you don't need an instruction manual.

A Bumpy Ride...

Well, a couple of weekends ago now, I said BXB had started a series of upgrades to the website. Last weekend, nothing was done due to other things derailing our plans. The planned upgrade for last weekend was the Gamespaces but Ash decided to focus on the Features Archive as we have great hands on previews of Dead Rising and Lost Planet on BXB at the moment that we wanted to make sure were given plenty of air time.

This weekend the planned feature was once again the Features Archive and once again this plan has changed and Ash has spent the weekend working on the new navigation bar we'll be launching very shortly.

In turn, this will gives BXB more chance of getting our new advertising features up and running in time to catch the rush of hits we'll be getting as people keep up with E3's announcements in May.

Changing priorities and balancing our real life jobs with BXB mean that more often than not we have to adapt and change our plans which always gives me the feeling that things aren't going smoothly enough. Never the less, we soldier on and keep working hard towards our goals.

And while I mention E3, I'm gutted because I can't afford to go this year. I was rather reckless with the credit card over Christmas and ended up getting into a little debt. My saving were dipped into to pay those off and the money I have got now will go towards spending a week in Lanzarote with my girlfriend.

A little disappointed that I won't be able to experience yet another E3 but it's very difficult for a site our size to effectively report on E3 as there's so much to cover. I felt our E3 Video Diaries were a great way of giving our community a look at E3 from a point of view that would have been very similar to theirs.

And finally, speaking of community events, I'm currently running a poll in our LAN events forum to see which community day idea BXB users prefer.

And I've realised if I'm not careful, I'm going to start linking every other word I post on this blog to something relevant.

The BXB Team...

I'd like to spend a while talking about a few of the kind of unsung heroes of BXB. Behind the scenes there's an amazing team of volunteers who are working for free and sparing as much time as they can to make BXB a great site for everyone.

We'll kick off with BXB's Reviews Editor Andy Gardiner aka Reaper UK. Andy has been involved with BXB from the beginning as a Moderator but when I took over running the front page, he was first in line to help with improving the content. Andy is a serious work horse and is almost totally responsible for the amount of information in our Gamespaces!

He's also been writing reviews for BXB for years and his reviews take up a massive majority of the reviews published on BXB. He visited and gave reports from Gamestars Live a couple of years ago and has been to every LAN event we've ever held.

Next up, is Dave Cartlidge. Dave is better know as Apocalypse Cow on the forums and is another person involved from the beginning as a Moderator. Dave has been a major player in the Moderation of BXB and contributes to the forums and community in a big way.

Dave's own website - www.apocalypsecow.co.uk - is a mix of a personal blog and linkatorium where you can find funny links and games from all across the internet. Dave was also the master mind behind BXB's brilliant Online Portfolio. Dave also designed two cool little BXB themed games which you can try out below:

BXB Top Trumps

Which BXB Moderator are you?

My normal result:









One of the newest editions to our Editorial team is Bill Bennett aka Auntie Val. Bill joined BXB just before the launch of the Xbox 360 as a news reporter but when former News Editor Ben Furfie shamefully left the site, Bill took his place and proved to be a great addition to the team.

Bill took the initiative and worked hard to keep the front page up to date and even secured review code and prizes for a competition on Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes. Which was going way beyond what I'd ask of my staff but was such a great way for Bill to get into working with BXB.

One of the least recognised members of staff at BXB is Sam Gardiner, simply Samatha on the forums, married to Andy, she joined BXB in the beginning but didn't really have an online role. However, when we started hosting our LAN events Sam proved that her experience managing a pub in Loughborough was irreplaceable! Despite her slightly fearsome reputation, she's great with people and a considerate host. Our LAN events wouldn't have been such a great success without her.

Finally, Richard Worrall, the writer of Red:Tro has certainly earned his place on our team. His writing is second to none on the site and his proofing skills are equally as good. Another long standing member of the forum who originally started out as a Mod, Richard has really come into his own since the launch of the 360 with his new column and numerous reviews.

There are tons of other staff working on BXB and I don't want to think that they'd see this blog entry as me not appreciating their hard work. So, while I get to fanny about in LA and play on loads of games in advance, without the BXB team, I never would have had the opportunity to do it! Thank you to the entire team, you all work so hard, for literally pence....

BXB's Staff include:

Director: Ashley Allen.
Editor and Events Manager: Michael Rossell.
News Editor: Bill Bennett.
Reviews Editor: Andy Gardiner.
Assistant Events Manager: Samantha Gardiner.
Reviewers: Leigh Sherval, Dave Long, Ross Tebbatt, Alan McGuinness, Richard Worrall, Adam Breedon.
Moderators: Elliot Coad, Richard Worrall, "Jeej", Dave Cartlidge, "Codename 47", "Crazydave", Dave Long, "Gamemaster", "Pug".
Columists: "Ultrajamie", Richard Worrall, Leigh Sherval.

You can in London!

I've had a very exciting week. I'm proper exhausted from all the action of the mid-week adventure down into London to play on a couple of Capcom's forth coming Xbox 360 titles.

I've already written a Hands on Preview of Dead Rising for BXB and I've got to say I really enjoyed playing the game. I felt that the game is easy to pick up and play, fun with some more depth than you'd think from a Zombie romp.

I also got my hands on Lost Planet, a full preview will be going up on BXB soon, and I really enjoyed that. Perhaps my favourite features was the ability to customise your Vital Suits weapons in game by finding other weapons lying around. This gives you plenty of tactical options when fighting fellow pirates or some the planets massive natural inhabitants.

It was a really eye opening experience going down to Capcom's offices and I found out that, as usual, things behind the scenes of these big companies is not what you expect of it. While playing Lost Planet I tapped X and left with an analogue stick and it made the Vital Suit (I can't call it a Mech because it's copyrighted) leap suddenly to the left using it's booster.

The PR guy sat opposite me (Sam) said: "Oh, I didn't know you could do that." When I questioned if the PR people were given a guide by the developers on how to play the games I was surprised to find out that more often than not they weren't and were left to discover the game on their own.

Sam also explained to me that Capcom (and Japanese developers in general) were very secretive over their code (which matches up with Sony's desire to make all the components for their consoles themselves) and hence I wasn't allowed to bring any home with me to have more of a play on.

After my afternoon at Capcom, I met up with good old Dan aka DJ NES from the currently defunct (but soon to return, I'm assured) Game Network. Since I saw him last at the Join The Ghosts event he's secured two new female presenters; asked me to join the GN team and had his hair dyed blonde and blue.

He explained that in London, you can get away with hair like that, despite the fact I saw at least 5 people give him double takes as we walked into the pub in Hammersmith.

Check out some photos from the day on BXB's Forum

Dead Excited...

Excuse the bad pun, that's to keep myself happy. Tomorrow, I'm off to play Capcom's very cool looking Dead Rising at their offices in Hammersmith, London.

This is easily BXB's biggest Exclusive and shows that the support for BXB is growing with every passing day and due to this our Editorial Content is finally reaching a point where I'm happy with what we're providing for our users.

I'll probably post a little preview of the article on here after I get back tomorrow evening or the following morning! I imagine the full article will appeared on BXB over the weekend or the beginning of next week as we've still got some 360 game reviews to give an airing!

Busy Day

Man, I've updated my blog three times in one day. Surely this means nothing for about six months now!

Today sees the start of a series of upgrades that we originally intended to be features for BXB360, but we've had to kind of forwards backwards engineer them to work on BXB and hence we're only just getting the first one up today.

It's not much to shout about, admittedly, a simple search function but what it represents is that we've listened to the feedback from our community and some of the new features will be helping to make navigation a lot easier.

The original "everything at your finger tips" style of design will be replaced with a much more simple and easy to use formula that's been tried and tested over the years.

While numerous other websites seem to be making their front pages complicated, very busy and tough to focus on, we're deliberately bucking that trend by having a simpler approach.

So, next week we'll be changing the look and features on our Gamespaces and then the following week an improved navigation bar. Assuming, of course, it all goes to plan.

Red:Tro Fusion

I recently got chatting with Chris from the new Retrofusion magazine. Brace yourself for the shameless plug: The new mag is available in Gamestation stores now at a mere £3. Anyway, I've been trying to get BXB's Red:Tro column featured in a magazine for a while now.

Sadly, it was turned down by the Xbox magazines which I thought was a real shame as Rich is a very talented writer and I consider myself rather lucky to have him on the BXB team but Retrofusion are very happy to publish new Red:Tros written by the word wizard that is Richard Worrall.

I got my complementary (sounds much posher than free) copy of Retrofusion this week and it's pretty cool. It's got a lot of the features you'd expect from a Retro mag with articles about Sonic the Hedgehog, Dizzy and a whole bunch of computers I barely remember.



But on top of that they also feature retro articles about TV shows and adverts. The first issue has a look back at The A-Team and the old instant mash Smash adverts which are both a real laugh to read.

Anyway, as I've been working towards landing some freelance work over the last few months I offered my writing services and they were accepted. So, I'm currently working on a nostalgic piece about Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors which is actually turning out to be much more exciting that I initially thought.

Anyway, I'll update the blog with more info on the mag and mine and Rich's features in it. I've also got a big exclusive hidden up my sleeve for BXB which I'll be revealing later in the week.

OXM360 love BXB!

I'm really pleased as BXB's brilliant Join The Ghosts event has been covered in OXM360 this month.

It's not the first time BXB has been in OXM and hopefully it's not the last but getting coverage for our site from the biggest Xbox mag out there is always incredibly good for BXB. We've been in a fair few magazines now like Xbox World and OXM and these features have helped propell BXB from the obscure little forum it started out as to what it now.

Thanks to OXM Nab Gill to coming along and bearing the freezing cold weather, I only met him briefly as, to be honest, I was just as busy as the visitors playing GRAW and enjoying the paintballing, but he seemed very deft with a camera.



Here's to working with OXM360 in the futre!

Two Way Relationships?

It’s very apparent to me that due to the very competitive nature of the gaming industry, that many people involved in it, don’t see working with Publisher PR or Community representative as a two way relationship.

Take large, voluntary fan sites like BXB for example. We don’t make money; we don’t have political agendas; I’m not just a ‘blagger’; we’re just here to write and talk about what we love which is games and specifically the Xbox.

However, it seems that many of the companies employed by Microsoft to deal with these fan sites simply don’t see this as a two way relationship. In my opinion there isn’t enough support from Microsoft for growing, large, professional fan and community sites like BXB and other similar sites.

First of all, as we all know, there are a very limited number of Xbox 360 development kits available and all the media outlets that Microsoft support and endorse have been sent them. However, Red aren’t then supplied with the same amount of preview code meaning that some media outlets with an XDK can’t get the code.

Excuse me if I’m being a bit stupid here, but surely it make sense to supply as much preview code as there are XDKs? Maybe it’s a budget thing? All business have to run on a budget but Microsoft doesn’t exactly have shallow pockets and it’s not like they’ve not thrown billions upon billions of dollars at making their console a success.

Red has to prioritise who it sends code out to maximise coverage for the games that are released but their hands are being tied by not being supplied with enough code. It just doesn’t add up for me.

Moving on from that, where is the other forms of support Red can offer? From the horses mouth, BXB is a website supported by Microsoft but where’s the support? I get the occasional press release, but I can get them without being officially supported!?

BXB gets great support from so many publishers but it seems that the one I should be working the closest just isn’t interested.

Maybe I should get down to Red's Offices and just shake them really hard while ensuring they spell my name correctly...

BXB 360

I wrote the following blog entry about an hour and a half before I wrote this opening paragraph. Below you'll find me doing something I find very hard. Admitting failure. I feel I've failed. I feel like I let down BXB's community to the extent that I'm struggling to admit it. But I will, because it's the right thing to do.

If It Isn't Broke..

So, I'm pretty sure that if you're a BXB regular you've wondered where our much hyped sister site BXB360 has vanished to? Well, I think it's time I was honest and told the story.

We trumpeted the launch of BXB360 a hell of a lot. A sustained campaign of advertising the launch was taken on BXB including the logo competition, an interview with myself and Ash which received some heavy criticism from my peers and, of course, that promotion video that never really saw the light of day.

As I'm sure you're aware, both myself and Ashley run full time jobs as well as working on BXB and hence we often have more important "real life" things to sort out and hence we can't spend the time we'd like on BXB. And it was a "real life" event that ultimately put every single nail in the coffin of BXB360.

It was a dramatic and unexpected event that saw us make the gut ripping decision to take down a site, we'd launched only a few day earlier. After months of hard work, our vision for a next generation Xbox website was crushed.

But what a vision. Since the launch of the 360 we've witnessed loads of wannabe fansites popping up all across the internet and they're all so painfully similar looking it's a little boring. As always, BXB wanted to try and buck the trend; bring something unique and different to the field; and this is what we consider to be one of our greatest assets.

Just in case you forgot what it looked like, or never saw it, check out the screengrab below:





I was very pleased with the design. I remember having a lengthy discussion with Ash about getting the site to be full of curves like a 360 and him saying how very difficult it would be to achieve. Still, he did it. However, it had a massive flaw. It wasn't very flexible.

BXB is a very flexible system allowing the writer to publish an article with freedom to place pictures, page breaks and headlines wherever he chooses. With BXB360 we had to fit the article around the design and I just didn't like that. However, it was something I was willing to work around because I loved the design of the site so much.

So, on with the show, LAN 2006 was the launch party and this is where it all started to go wrong. We couldn't show the Promotional Video because we'd not got the right hardware and shortly after the disaster struck.

Ashley had been working on a very big contract in his "real life" job and that promptly fell through just after launch meaning that Ashley had to pull out of launching the final features of BXB360 and find new work. With this news I knew we'd be looking at an unfinished BX360 for sometime.

BXB has already made a number of promises to its users we've failed to keep like the launching of the Shop and I didn't want to have to have that problem again except on an entire website.
So, we pulled it down. Either way we'd have let down the people that we cared about the most - our community. It was a tough decision and I was very upset but since then I've come to realise it's for the best.

Ash and I sat down and discussed how we were going to handle it all and we came to the decision that we'd keep many of the features that were intended for BXB360 and bring them into BXB.

You can find these features on our newly updated Online Portfolio and include a few nice ideas that will help make sure that BXB will grow and get stronger.

So, in a sense, BXB360 will live on in what we're doing at the minute, which is probably what we should have done from the outset. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Isn't hindsight the most frustrating thing ever?!

Another Top Ten Freebie Amendment (Ho hum)!

Damn it! How am I going to write this blog entry without looking like a dirty name dropping bitch? Well, I'll crack on and see what happens.

So, once again, I'm having to amend my freebie top ten because further information has been made available to me.

According to Chris Easton, Ubi's Community Manager (Stop reading my blog, I'm getting paranoid about my grammar), the King Kong beer mat is actually a magnet.

So, I'm now moving it to number 9 because I went downstairs and it really doesn't stick to my fridge, even if I lick the back a bit.