Bad news for Arcade Wednesday fans hoping to catch a new game today. Word on the street is for today’s Arcade dish of the day we will be tucking into Texas Hold Em updates. This FREE update addresses the community feedback that Microsoft have received since its release on the Xbox Live Arcade. Sadly there will be no Xbox Live Vision cam support with this update, but it is expected early next year.
Below is a run-down of the update, which will be released today at 08:00 GMT.
Update Includes:
Game-play has been sped up.
Post the blind and play right away! – Players can now, if they wish, start playing immediately when joining a table by posting the big blind, rather than having to wait for the blind to come to them.
New ‘Away’ mode – Players can now set their status to ‘Away’. Hands will be auto-folded and blinds auto-posted until the player returns.
New ‘Auto-boot’ mode – Players who continuously let the timer expire (more than three times in a game) will be booted from the table
Faster overall pacing – Timers and messaging durations have been adjusted to speed up game-play among experienced players, but still allow novice players plenty of time to play.
Improved blind structure – Initial blinds, as well as blind increases, are now more proportional to table stakes, ensuring more meaningful increases during game-play.
Matchmaking improvements – Players are no longer matched into games they cannot afford
Improved interface controls – Improvements to controls, such as increasing/decreasing stake amounts
Leaderboard display – A player’s full winnings and rank are now properly displayed
Art and text improvements – Game art and spelling issues have been addressed
Online exploits addressed – Certain known exploits that enabled cheating have been addressed. As a result, the online multi-player leaderboards will be reset to eliminate inflated scores as a result of these exploits.
It seems Microsoft are gearing up for a weekly fun packed December for us Xbox 360 owners as they dish out the last remaining announced Arcade titles in the run up to the closing of 2006. We’ll let you know as soon as the Texas Hold Em update is up on the Marketplace.
