Triple Post - Battle of the Sexes, Call of Duty 4 Video Diary and IGNinsider Fame!

Linky

Press Release

XboxGameZone today announced its upcoming event The Battle of the Sexes – part 2. Part 1 took place in 2005 and saw Girls and Boys do battle against each other for 4 days on over 9 Xbox Live titles. The boys were the eventual winners of the inaugural event, so the girls are sure to want revenge this time around!

Due to the success of the original Battle of the Sexes, XGZ are proud to announce that they have gained the full support of game publishers including Microsoft, Ubisoft and Codemasters.

Editor and Event Manager for BXB Michael Rossell added: “Britxbox is pleased to be supporting our partner XboxGameZone with their latest tournament: The Battle of the Sexes. All too often female gamers are trivialised or pigeon holed into playing games like Animal Crossing, we know better, we know that there are some girls out there who love putting plate sized holes in their opponents…with shotguns.”

Chris Easton, Online Marketing Manager from Ubisoft UK said: “XboxGameZones previous Battle of the Sexes was a warmly received change from the normal tournaments we see online, and this was reflected in the strong reaction from the community taking part. We are eager to see their reaction again to this fantastic tournament and we hope that the community steps up to the challenge”

Samantha “Satine” Russell, Community Manager of Codemasters commented: "We are delighted to be able to support sites such as Xbox Game Zone who are fundamental in the growth and the support of our gaming community.”

Community partners PanicZoom, Britxbox, and the all girl team PZ Fallen Angels are also lending full support for what should be an exciting tournament.

Battle commences Friday 7th September and will last one week as the girls take on the boys once more across a range of Xbox™ & Xbox360™ titles promising players explosive fun from Bomberman Live to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.

Codemaster’s Samantha Russell has already tried to light the fireworks adding “Its obvious that the girls will win :).” I would like to respond by telling her to save the smack talk for the battlefield!


Oh, and check this cool video out...



Finally, myself and Mark got featured in a video on IGNinsider playing Rock Band, I sucked.

Games Convention Aside

Amazingly, I did other things in Leipzig than just oogle Booth Babes, play video games and spend all day inside darkened rooms.

The weather was actually pretty good and we enjoyed sitting outside our hotel in the evening sun drinking and talking about the days action. I took a few pictures of places outside of the Leipzig Games Convention and here are a few!



This is my favourite, managed to take it with my phone camera (K800i) and it turned out pretty well. I like the sun coming through the clouds but also the silhoutte of the rose statue.



This one is of the glass bridges that connected the central glass building the the halls at the side. I think it was just the lighting that made me want to take this picture, the reflections off the floor are great.



I took a picture of the airport at Altenburg because it had the word 'Nob' in the sign. At this point I lost any credibility I had as a photographer.

*titters* Nob.

Content Overload...

Well, I've been creating videos and writing article for BXB for three days solid now and it's getting pretty exhausted. I still have four more articles to go.

In the meantime, I have finally been featured on www.ukresistance.co.uk which is one of my favourite sites and I feel like I've achieved something cool today.

So check it out, UKR is timelessly funny.

Leipzig Booth Babes...

So, booth babes returned to games conventions with a bang at the Leipzig Games Convention and, as usual, lots of top sites have picture stories about them.

We saw loads of very fit Booth Babes, I had a bit of a soft spot for a certain Activision one who didn't speak a word of English. Anyway, here's our Booth Babe story...



Here's a booth babe for the World in Conflict stand. She was very good looking but because I'm an internet geek I was actually too afraid to go and get my photo with her despite the fact that's why they are there.



There were literally Booth Babes everywhere at the show and for many publishers they were as much as part of the hard material for promoting games as banners, videos and trailers. So much so that we caught this Booth Babe being ferried around the Convention Centre on a pallet truck.



Also, while in the EA Business Lounge (with the rotating bar) I noticed that EA were obviously trying to muscle in on Ubisoft's Jade Raymond action with this lovely lady being interviewed by someone. (Asian babes, eh, EA? Good move!)



Here's two more. Trinity and Sexina, we remember them from a movie about mothers and daughters we saw on the internet once.

If you want to see more pictures of Booth Babes then head over to IGN or Kotaku, they have some pictures. In fact, strike that, just watch porn.

Leipzig Days 3 and 4

I didn't get a chance to blog last night because I was so exhausted from an awesome day of gaming. Yesterday felt like it really all ended with a massive bang for a bunch of reasons.

Firstly, I enjoyed a morning within the Halo universe with appointments to see Halo 3 and Halo Wars. I managed to contain my excitement for some time, appearing to be a professional journalist right up until the end of the Halo Wars demo where they nailed a Scarab with an orbital MAC gun and I exploded. It was awesome.

I was also proud to say that the guys from Ensemble Studios commented on how impressed they were with my Halo knowledge! I was geeking it up hardcore all morning and my previews will be up soon.

I also finally got to play Rock Band. It's great. I did vocals for The Stroke's Reptilia and got 100% on my first go on easy. Everyone tried to play down my awesome vocal talents, but they were all secretly jealous...!

Day 4 wasn't very exciting as we just did a whole lots of travelling around and I'm finally home and about to go to bed as I'm still on German time which means it's 10:42pm right now.

I did play on Elite Beat Agents on Slicker's DS though and that was awesome.

Leipzig Day 2

Well, today has been a little different. I did a few catch up appointments this morning with Fracture and the Command and Conquer Expansion pack and I've spent the rest of the day in the press centre working.

I'm pretty sick of hearing the collective sounds of journalists now so I've plugged my headphones in and have started listening to a little Trance. Tiesto's remix of Barber's Adagio for Strings is currently playing.

The visit to EA's fancy room was most successful with all four of us getting to see some of their forth coming games including Need for Speed Street Pro, Command and Conquer and The Simpsons. Even though the very slowly rotating bar made me think I was about to pass out.

Also ran into a few familiar faces today including Luke from play.tim and Nick and Steve from Hexus.net. I also ran into a couple of peoplo who clearly remembered me but having a terrible memory had no idea who they were!

I've still not quite recovered from the awesome Call of Duty 4 press event and I'm about to shoot off for a Fracture multiplayer event. Activision have really kicked ass this week.

After losing Mark all day, Andy and Ben stumbled across him and now the three lucky souls are heading off to a Ubisoft party.

Still having problems with the video uploading but I've published a Guitar Hero Hands on Preview on BXB!

We're recording the Podcast later, so that should be interesting...

Leipzig Day 1

My God I'm tired. This marks my twentieth hour awake today after making the most of the press day at Leipzig.

I've played Guitar Hero 3, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground and Call of Duty 4 among a few other games. Guitar Hero 3 is awesome, it's a great improvement on the second game and has some brilliant new features. The new guitar is also a must buy!

Spent most of the day touring various booths and attending appointments. The EA ones were all messed up so we're going back to re-do them tomorrow, the same with Lucas Art games like Force Unleashed and Fracture.

The evening was the highlight. Activisions amazing Call of Duty 4 event where myself and Andy enjoyed hands on experience with two single players levels and a go with the Multiplayer Beta. We've got loads of video which we'll post up later.

We have made a video diary of day one, but the wireless connection in the hotel is poor and hence Youtube times out before the upload is complete. I'll try again tomorrow in the Leipzig press centre.

Bed time methinks!

Happy Landings

I guess I was a little nervous coming to Leipzig, but it suddenly got a lot worse when I read in The Times on the flight (A little high brow for me, I know) that a National Socialist Party has gained increasing support in and around Leipzig and groups of Neo-Nazis have been reported attacking foreigners screaming racist taughts.

Add to that the fact that after a very relaxing flight over, the pilot decided to nose dive the plane and scare every single person on the flight - including a very large contingent of gaming journalists.

I presume the flight over over was a who's who of elite gaming press in the UK - not that I'd know...

So, I sit here blogging in the restaurant of our hotel, drinking a beer, which is rather spookily located in a strange industrial area and right next to a massive road that points the way to Berlin.

The highlight of the day so far was one of the taxi drivers at Leipzig Train Station had a badly printed out Halo 3 "Believe" banner which seems to be a cynical way of making games journalists give him our cash. I was attempting to take a picture when he drove off at great speed.

Oh, and if this Blog doesn't work right, it's because I can't make blogger.com speak to me in English - it's all in German!

Blogging from Leipzig

So, Leipzig is only two days away now. We'll be flying out around midday on Tuesday and we're pretty excited!

Naturally, I'll be blogging from Leipzig and I intend to publish plenty of photos from the event that don't normally get seen. Sort of, the wierd, funny, silly stuff that doesn't really get covered!

Also blogging is our Podcast Presenter Ben 'Hallben' Hall! You can check out his blog here: It's All IMO.

Ben is easily as loud mouthed and as opinionated as me and can inspire people with his enthusiasm just as much as rub them up the wrong way with his comments!

Most Excited Person Ever...

So, I'll admit that until yesterday afternoon, I was only thrilled to be going to Leipzig. I know it's kind of snobbish, but I've been to a fair few press events now and from our appointments, it wasn't really grabbing me.



Admittedly, I was excited to be playing Call of Duty 4 as that looks awesome, but the other games I'm booked in for, while great, weren't what I was looking forward to most.

So, yesterday I called *name drops* Kate at Microsoft's UK PR as she'd e-mailed me to arrange a couple of appointments. Non of the UK PR team are heading out there and it's all being organised by the German PR team. Kindly, Kate got in contact with them and arranged two appointments for the BXB team.

So, when I found out what they were, I went from thrilled to the most excited person in the country. She confirmed that Halo 3 Multiplayer, Halo Wars, PGR4 and Mass Effect will all be playable at the show and BXB have appointments to see Halo 3 (she couldn't confirm if it was multi or simgler player) and Project Gotham Racing 4.

I got off the phone and immedately started packing!

Leipzig Madness Begins!

It's less than a week away and I can assure you that the BXB team are working hard, researching into games, booking appointments and discussing which nights we can get away with heavy drinking.

We've just launched our first wave of exciting Leipzig coverage on the site which you can view by going to www.britxbox.co.uk!

There's also a few specific links you might want to checkout:

BXB's Podcast 17: Leipzig '07 Pre-show Special.

Our dedicated Leipzig forum

A thread with a list of games we'll be viewing and the opportunity to ask questions!

We'll have all the latest news and previews from the event as well as Video Dairies and a Podcast so keep your eyes on BXB next week!

Leipzig Preparations

Leipzig is less than two weeks away now and BXB is getting ready to launch our biggest team on a press event ever and we've got a temporary big banner so users can get all the latest Leipzig news.



There's a little preview of what it will look like and we're hoping to launch it in the middle of next week along with a special Leipzig Podcast!

Keep your eyes on BXB for more!

Britxbox Version 3.0

Well, it's been a long time coming but finally movement on version 3.0 of Britxbox is happening. It's odd really, it took an offer of someone helping to pay for the development of the site to make us realise we should just do it ourselves.

So, Phlash has dipped deep into his ocean of cash and decided to pay a web designer to create the new BXB. Who's doing it? Well, rest easy as it's BXB very own Apocalypse Cow who's done some work for us in the past on our now rather outdated Online Portfolio. (It still says we're in the XCN!)

He's already done some work on the new site but we've sat down and hammered out a series of new features for both the front page and the community side which, we hope, will give visitors a new and exciting BXB to play around with.

Some ideas from the sadly defunct BXB360 have been brought over, while others haven't and we've come up with a whole bunch of other ideas. I'm not going to go into much detail now and just let Cow do his thing.

I'm hoping he'll be up for writing a developers diary as he creates the new site which I'll post on here and on BXB, but web design isn't the most thrilling of things, so it'll quite intermittant!

Dear Midway

I recently downloaded the John Woo Presents Strangehold demo from the Xbox Live marketplace.



I wasn't very interested in the title, just semi-curious and downloaded it for something to do despite still being addicted to Guitar Hero 2.

I'd just like to say:

SOLD

*sides hurt*

So, what's been making me laugh uncontrollably today? Well, the news that Keith Chegwin is releasing a video game! God help us. Right, where to start?



First we have these hilariously cringe worthy renders of Cheggers with his fat, shiney face and stubbly little fingers. Thankfully, he's not naked.



Doesn't it make you wish he was an NPC in Manhunt 2? We also have probably one of the most entertaining press releases I've seen for a while:

"CHEGGERS – THE CHEEKY CHARMER!

Get up close and personal with the UK's favourite funster!

August 9th 2007: Northamptonshire, UK: Cheggers, Chegwin, Keith – call him what you will, there is no denying he’s one of Britain’s best loved TV personalities…and he’ll be ‘round your house this Christmas with Cheggers’ Party Quiz!

Keith Chegwin rose to fame back in the mid 1970s, when at the tender age of 17, he secured a role as a presenter on Multicoloured Swap Shop, which ran from 1976 to 1982, making a household name of the Merseyside lad we’ve all come to know and love.

With over 7,000 TV shows as a presenter under his belt – most famously, Cheggers Plays Pop - and a myriad guest appearances in the nation’s most popular television programmes, Keith Chegwin has also fronted his own radio shows, written regular newspaper columns and made several records! The fact that there are very few Britons that have never heard of him is testament not only to his popularity, which is due in no small part to his infectious charm, but also to the fact that he remains one of the UK’s hardest working stars.

Spanning more than three decades, Cheggers’ career has seen more than a few ups and downs but he has always bounced back with renewed vim, and maintained his position in the very hearts of the UK’s TV viewing public.

Now he adds another feather in his cap as the presenter of Oxygen Games’ new quiz title; Cheggers’ Party Quiz, enthusing;“This is such a fantastic project - I'm so excited by it! I have been very impressed by Oxygen Games, because of their enthusiasm for this project and I hope that everyone who plays the game thinks it is great fun.”

Party with Cheggers this Christmas, with the year’s most wonderfully wacky party Quiz! …Get it now, or he’ll be ‘round your house! Cheggers’ Party Quiz out on WiiT™, Playstation®2 and PC, November 2007."

The whole thing is highly entertaining, but reaches new levels of hilarity as the writer of the press release tries to come up with more than one nickname for "Cheggers" only to think of using other parts of his name.

Plus the use of the word 'vim' is brilliant.

I almost feel bad about emailing the publisher and feigning interest just to get a comment to stick on the piss take news story I wrote on BXB!

If this light hearted adventure really has offended anyone, I'm sorry.

BXB Brings Leipzig GC Home!

With E3 downsized, Leipzig Games Convention has some big shoes to fill, and being as it's not a 14 hour flight away, Britxbox is re-invading Germany to bring you all the latest gaming news, latest game previews and all sort of other madness we'll make up while hung over from German beer abuse.

But before we go, we're going to need some help coming up with clever things to ask all those important games industry types we'll be talking to games coming out over the next few months.

We'll be supplying you with a stream of news, exclusive hands on previews, a Podcast recorded at the show and BXB's Famous Video Diaries. We've already been invited to play a bunch of games that you'd kill you nan to get your hands on...(except Bee Movie).

But we want to know what you want to know about the following games:

Fallout 3
Alone in the Dark
Ace Combat 6
Eternal Sonata
Bee Movie
Quake Wars
Tony Hawks Proving Ground
Spiderman: Friend or Foe
Call of Duty 4
Assassins Creed
Far Cry 2
Haze
Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway
Naruto

We'll be updating that list as we secure more appointments but in the meantime, post any questions you have about these games In this thread!

We'll be playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat along with a limited amount of other British Journalists, meaning BXB is the place to get an honest opinion on this amazing game!

Leipzig kicks off on August 23rd for the public, but it's open on August 22nd for the press, so expect the news to come rolling in then. Leipzig expects over 200,000 people to attend making it bigger than this years E3.

Check out more by clicking here!

Also, if you're planning to attend Leipzig this year as a consumer, drop mike@britxbox.co.uk an e-mail and maybe we can meet up and drink head-spinningly large amounts of German ale, you might get the chance to appear on BXB or even on our Podcast!

Novel Attraction

So, I've barely even thought about working on my novel in the last few months, which is really frustrating because I think it's such a good idea.

Maybe it's like Brian from Spaced who can't paint when he's happy, they do say that contentment is the enemy of creation. I've been thinking about it more often recently, and I actually spent some time editing one of my earlier chapters on the way to Ubidays (which shows how long it is since I worked on it).

The last thing I wrote was really cool as well which was the short peice about Ilya Thaxton that I published a while ago. Maybe if I go and re-read eveything I write I'll be inspired to tell the story.

I had somewhat of a realisation the other day, an epiphanie if you will, that the reason I like writing and reading so much is because my Dad used to read to me all the time when I was a kid.

I had this while thinking about a new novel idea I've had which will probably never be written.

Media Alert!

Pinch and a punch, the first day of the month and you know what that means, new traffic stats. Wooo, this is my favourite type of blog entry!

Britxbox.co.uk, Leicester, UK, 01 June 2007 - One of the UK's leading Xbox Community sites, www.britxbox.co.uk, today announced that traffic figures for the month of July 2007 dropped in comparison to June 2007 to 52,818 unique hits.

A total of 446,135 page views were recorded in July, while this figure had decreased due to the summer lull, BXB recorded our busiest day of the year so far with 3,393 unique visitors on July 10th. BXB also saw an increase in traffic from America in July with 70 per cent of new visitors to BXB in July coming from America.

Ashley Allen, Director of Britxbox.co.uk said: “Our figures always slump slightly over the summer in line with the behaviour of the gaming industry as a whole.

“It comes as no surprise that our busiest day yet was during the run up to this years massive E3 and we expect similar traffic in August around Leipzig.”

Michael Rossell, Editor and Events Manager said: “We're looking forward to a better month of traffic in August as BXB are sending a four man team to cover the Leipzig Games Convention in Germany.

“With a whole range of appointments already booked and the promise of lots of unique content for the site, we're excited to see how this will affect our traffic in August.”

In all seriousness, it's not.