Is your Xbox Live account safe?

I’ve filed a story over at MTVNews.com investigating security concerns raised with Xbox Live following my discovery that “Halo 3″ multiplayer producer Joe Tung had his account compromise by a hacker.

Tung isn’t the first person to lose control of his account.

Hackers have been taking advantage of a popularized technique called social engineering, where an individual (in this case, Microsoft customer service reps) is coerced into releasing otherwise private information. Social engineering isn’t a new concept, but it’s been a regular problem for Microsoft.

I contacted an avid “Halo” player and expert on the subject of social engineering to explain why this is such a dangerous technique and what steps you can take to prevent your account from being compromised.

And what did Bungie have to say about what happened to Tung? From my story:

Bungie would only tell MTV News that an outside party accessed Tung’s account. “We can confirm that Joe’s account was compromised,” Bungie Studios writer Luke Smith said. “Representatives from Microsoft aided Joe in swiftly resolving the issue.”

As for the implications of the compromise: “No comment,” Smith said.

Read the rest of my story, which includes tips on protecting XBL accounts, over at MVNews.com: Reports Of Hacked Xbox Live Accounts Stir Concerns Over Gamers’ Security

Afraid that you’ll never enter Hogwarts again when the story concludes in “Deathly Hallows”? Never fear.

I’ve just filed a story at MTVNews.com about how “Harry Potter” games producer Electronic Arts hopes to continue making wizard adventures after J.K. Rowling’s tale comes to an end.

“I think that’s a great opportunity,” said Wiimote-clutching “Harry Potter” executive producer Jonathan Bunney to MTV News last week at an EA summer press event just outside San Francisco. “Certainly, we’ve done it with ‘Lord of the Rings.’ We’ve extended beyond the movies there. We did it with James Bond for a while. I don’t know what we’ll do with ‘Harry Potter.’ It’d be fun to, I think. There’s more stories that we can tell.”

You can read the rest of my story on “Harry Potter”’s interactive future here.

[Image Credit: Warner Bros.]

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Rap stars Bow Wow and Game have exchanged YouTube challenges to battle each other in “Madden,” live, with $100,000 at stake.

Will they do it? I’m not sure. Our hip-hop reporter Shaheem Reid reports on the challenge, censoring the completely not-safe-for-work epithets used in the clips.

Now why does Bow Wow need to fly Game to a shared location to play in person? Why can’t they just play over Xbox Live or PSN?

Read Sha’s report at MTVNews.com: Game Vs. Bow Wow: No Rap Beef Here, Just A ‘Madden 09′ Face-Off

And, if the kids aren’t around, watch Game’s M-rated response here, notable for two reasons:

1. He wears the only PS3 necklace I’ve ever seen.
2. He offers to sell copies of “Madden NFL 09,” shrink-wrapped, for a pretty good price!

We know “Guitar Hero: Metallica” is coming. “Guitar Hero” publisher Activision announced the game in a financial filing (odd, we know) a couple of months ago.

That didn’t stop Metallica co-founder Lars Ulrich from getting a bit secretive about it when one of our MTV News reporters asked him about it recently.

“Let’s put it this way,” he told MTV News. “[Our next album] Death Magnetic comes out in September, and the day it comes out, it will be available in the ‘Guitar Hero 3‘ format, which we’re obviously super-psyched about. As I’ve born witness to in my house, its all about the next generation. My kids play ‘Guitar Hero’ every day, and to be able to get the Metallica record the day it comes out, that’s super cool.

“There’s an Aerosmith game out there that’s super successful, and if somebody’s gonna follow that up…we’re talking, and its exciting, and the people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision are rapidly becoming our best new friends in the world. You can put the rest of it together yourself.”

Sounds like “Guitar Hero: Metallica” is indeed still in the works, no?

Want to see some of the E3 coverage we aired on MTV? Check out this piece which aired earlier today and features top guys at Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony answering some of the tougher questions I asked them at E3.

• To Microsoft: Are Xbox Avatars cribbed from the Wii’s Miis?
• To Sony: How did you guys feel when Microsoft announced that “FFXIII” was coming to Xbox 360?
• To Nintendo: What do you think of the hardcore fan’s complaints about Nintendo’s showing at E3?

Answers to all are in the video. And following the video are some segments we’ve already shown you elsewhere on the blog, featuring more talk with the gaming execs.

(Video will not be accessible for users logging in from Canada or parts of Europe. Our apologies..UPDATE: A written transcript of this segment is after the jump.)

Read more…

Traditionally, movies based on video games tend to take a bit too much creative freedom with their source material. “Doom,” “Alone in the Dark,” “Super Mario Bros.,” the list can go on and on, but, the upcoming “Tekken” movie hopes to represent the game that bears the same name as faithfully as possible.

Over at the MTV Movies Blog Luke Goss, the star of the upcoming “Tekken” movie was interviewed and had this to say:

“The same producers were very adamant to make sure that the characters that were in the game translated quite literally to the movie — visually and everything,” Goss said. “Their fight styles were studied and the way they looked, the producers wanted people that looked similar to the actual characters in the game. They understood that genre fans and game fans would want that. I think they did a good job.”

Head over to the MTV Movies Blog for more from the star.

With the big press conferences at E3 over, Stephen does a quick wrap up for MTV News of what each company had to show. After a quick run though of the highlights from Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, Mr. Totilo offers a little bit of insight into who’s “winning” E3, and asks the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto about “Wii Music.”

(Videos not viewable by users logging in from Canada or the U.K.)

Over at MTV News we’re running a report on the new “Madden” soundtrack and an interview with the always interesting head of the music division at EA, Steve Schnur. It begins:

n the age of “Guitar Hero” and MTV’s “Rock Band,” game maker Electronic Arts says the “Madden” soundtrack is still a leading force for the future of video game music.

“Respectfully to ‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘Rock Band’ — which we have a hand in here at EA — those games are about the rediscovery of artists, which is fantastic, but ‘Madden’ is about discovering something that is going to change your life six months from now,” Steve Schnur, head music executive at EA, told MTV News in an interview Tuesday (July 8).

The annual “Madden” soundtrack and its ability to break songs and artists is a well-documented phenomenon. “Madden” sells millions each year, exposing players to a raft of new music. To reinforce his point about “Madden” this year, Schnur demonstrated that 14 of the 26 songs announced for this year’s 20th-anniversary edition of the football series, “Madden NFL 09,” are either exclusive songs or sneak peaks of songs that won’t be on their artists’ albums for months. “Madden” is clearly still a powerful force for breaking new music.

The rest of the story is at MTVNews.com.

MTV Games announced this morning that “Rock Band 2” will be debuting on the Xbox 360 this September. The Associated Press added that the game will be hitting PS2, PS3 and the Wii by the end of the year. The big news, so far, is that the sequel will work more with its predecessor than many gamers may have expected.

From my MTV News story:

According to a press release from MTV Games, “Rock Band 2″ will initially be released exclusively on the Xbox 360 this September and will be fully compatible with the original instruments, as well as the more than 100 songs that were available to download for the first “Rock Band.” Like the first, the game will be developed by the MTV-owned Harmonix games studio.

This “Rock Band” sequel is a departure from recent music game sequels and spin-offs, including entries in the competing “Guitar Hero” franchise, which do not always sync up to the originals. For example, the new “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” coming out this week does not work with downloadable content marked for “Guitar Hero III,” according to a report on gaming blog Joystiq.

“Rock Band 2″ comes from MTV Games, of course. But, no, that doesn’t mean that we already have a copy here at the MTV Multiplayer blog. The rest of my piece is at MTVNews.com.

In an exclusive interview with MTV News, Black Eyed Peas member Taboo spoke out about his role in the upcoming “Street Fighter” movie, “Legend of Chun-Li.” Taboo will be playing an “edgier” Vega in the upcoming film.

The multi-talented rapper, dancer and actor also took a stab at one of life’s most puzzling questions: who would win in a fight, Vega or Wolverine?

Check out the whole interview here.

Analyst Michael Pachter, developer Kellee Santiago and reporter Brian Crecente agree: big games like “Grand Theft Auto IV” don’t pose a threat to Hollywood’s summer blockbusters.

You can read their explanations in my story at MTVNews.com.

Here’s a highlight from Pachter on why he doesn’t think “Metal Gear Solid 4” is a threat to the movies coming out against it in June:

‘MGS’ will have no noticeable impact on movie attendance,” [Pachter] said. “Its audience are even bigger geeks than the ‘GTA’ audience, so if they weren’t playing ‘MGS,’ they would be playing some other game.” The theory is that hard-core gamers, when not playing one big game, are spending their time playing other games [rather than going to the movies].

More Pachter and more from the rest in my story at the link above. Hollywood, don’t worry! Unless… is it all a trap?

Over at MTV News I filed a report on the big gaming news of the morning: that “Grand Theft Auto IV” sold six million copies in its first week, netting publisher Take-Two Interactive $500 million. “Halo 3” made Microsoft $300 million in its first week in September. So “GTA IV” appears to be the biggest starter in gaming history.

Should be interesting to see how “Mario Kart Wii” did in the same week.