"SmartGlass, a software-based application that extends Xbox 360 experiences onto smartphones and tablets, does shine best when paired with television or movie entertainment. That's where programmers have fleshed out the most whiz-bang features at this time, but game designers have clever plans for this tech, too."
abstract: "This work focuses on the design and implementation of an educational game for deployment on the Xbox 360 commercial game console. Video games can be extremely powerful and effective learning tools when deployed with methodical precision. Currently, no learning tools are available for commercial consoles that focus on teaching core concepts in Engineering. This work presents an overall design for an educational game to address Number Systems in the scope of the Electrical and Computer Engineering curricula.
BINX is an educational adventure game designed to address Number Systems and their arithmetic operations in Digital Logic Design, a core course is Electrical and Computer Engineering programs. Object Oriented Design Principles were used in the development of this game. This work presents one sublevel implemented using the XNA framework - a Microsoft Software Development Kit (SDK).The BINX gameplay takes place inside a computer where a malicious virus is threatening the computer's operability. The player has to find the virus and eradicate it by disconnecting the terminals of the graphics processor. The player has the opportunity to practice before taking on the Boss Challenge. In the practice phase, the player practices number conversions without fear of penalties. In the Challenge phase, the player is timed and has to perform the number conversions before the allotted time expires. The combination of practice and challenge provides players with the ability to practice number conversions and, when ready, to take on the challenge task where assessment is conducted to provide the player with the knowledge of how well he/she has performed on the challenge. The number conversion level of BINX was implemented and formally evaluated showing improvement in student scores after using BINX."
"07/2012; In proceeding of: The 11th International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Practice (SERP 2012), At Las Vegas, USA ABSTRACT Usability is considered a relevant quality factor in video games. However, usability evaluations are usually performed too late in the game development lifecycle. We present
a usability evaluation strategy that can be used in early stages of
model-driven video game development approaches. The usability
evaluation is based on a Video Game Usability Model, which
extends the usability characteristic of the ISO/IEC 25010
(SQuaRE) standard by incorporating measurable attributes and
measures related to the video game domain. The traceability
established between the models that are produced in a modeldriven
development process and the corresponding source code
allows performing usability evaluations on these models,
facilitating the early detection/correction of usability problems
that may appear in the final video game application. To show the
feasibility of this approach, we have performed an early usability
evaluation of a video game for the XBOX360 platform."
abstract: "This paper examines video game sales by platform in the North American
market from a period spanning 2006 through 2011. As the home video game industry
has rapidly matured and become established as a forefront facet of interactive
entertainment in the home, we seek to determine what aspects of the video game market
seem to most impact sales. This question is particularly poignant as the maturation
of the video game industry has witnessed efforts at both vertical integration and
horizontal expansion on the part of the top game publishers and developers in hopes of
solidly grounding the industry. This study employs a Kruskal-Wallis test to compare
eight different gaming platforms. The results indicate Nintendo's Wii and DS are the
top selling game platforms, Xbox 360 is in a second tier, multiple Sony PlayStation
platforms are in the third tier, personal computer games are in tier four, and the retired
sixth generation Nintendo GameCube is the lowest sales tier."
"The U.S. government has hired a California-based company to hack into video game consoles, such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, to watch criminals, especially child predators, and learn how to collect evidence against them."