XBox 360 Rally

Bungie has posted their weekly update and it’s chock full o’ pretty pictures, like the one of Cortana you see on the left here. I have no shame in admitting that I find Cortana insanely attractive. Regardless, the new Bungie Update shows off a few more of the Todd McFarlane figurines that are on the horizon. Click the thumbnails at the bottom of the page to get a better look.

Also being showed for the first time are the Kotobukiya statuettes of Master Chief. Now, if you don’t know who ArtFX/Kotobukiya is, they are the people who make the very detailed Star Wars statuettes — like this one. They’ve also released figurines based on Dead or Alive, Witchblade and Batman. I would post thumbnails, but come on — y’all can click a link and visit the page yourself.

[Bungie]

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So, there was a guy with the gamertag ‘Scar’ who somehow got his hands on the Halo 3 Epsilon Beta. So rather than playing it in secret, gushing about it’s awesomeness only to his closest of friends, this guy posts about it on the INTERNET!

Hello? Dude? The internet… yeah, it’s EVERYWHERE! My 90 year-old grandma surfs the damn internet!

Either way, Microsoft found out that it was him, and banned him from Xbox LIVE… until the year 10,000!

(Thanks Mark for the image)

UPDATO MAGNIFICO!
If you thought being banned until 10,000AD was bad enough, I have something else that will either make you even more sad for this guy, or will make you laugh his ass off — he had a gamerscore of 61,000!

UPDATO MAGNIFICO 2.0!
Ok, so apparently Mr. Scar here didn’t steal Halo 3 Epsilon, or somethin’. I’ve seen him on just about every message board refuting this claim — it doesn’t matter, dude. You still got your ass banned until long after we’ve colonized Mars. The story isn’t so much about the fact that you got your hands on Epsilon as it is that Microsoft gave you the eternal ban hammer. Suck it up, and move on.

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This should be included in t3h w31rd, but I’m at school, and I’m bored shitless.

It appears that Microsoft has committed a bit of a booboo. You see, a worker in the UK discovered that, after a customer returned their Xbox 360 Premium because of an incompatible power socket, their entire stock is American! Turns out, Microsoft accidentally shipped twenty THOUSAND (that’s four zeros) US consoles to the UK.

Smooth.

You see, because the UK uses a different style of power outlet than we do in the US, this essentially makes these twenty-thousand units useless. But what I am curious about is whether or not there are 20K UK units floating around the US somewhere.

Because I would buy one — and give it away via one of our popular contests.

[NeoWin]

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It is a sad sad day, it is time to close the series of posting these videos, I now present, with the help of YouTube user , the last episode of the short stint of Red vs Blue episodes promoting Halo 3

First time hearing of this series of videos? Enjoy living under that rock? For you, in order of the special five episodes, click the following links for ep 1 (Upward Mobility), ep 2 (Personal Spaces), ep 3 (Fully Equipped), and ep 4 (Open House). Thanks to the Rooster Teeth guys for making these, I am not the biggest 1-800-MAGIC fan, but I wish them success with that series.

Last week sometime while on Bomberman Live, I got the dreaded red rings. Inconceivable I thought, I mean, I just got a nice “new” refurbished machine no more than a couple of months ago. Before that, I was running on my launch console for years. Well, I shut down the machine and turned it back on ten minutes later with no problems since then.

Forward to this week, my Bioshock pre-order arrived, woohoo, game of the century and all that, I turn it on, I play for hours and hours. The next day, I play some more hours… then… it happened.. RED RINGS! I couldn’t believe it. I tried using that new service.xbox.com page Microsoft set up, it gave me errors. I didn’t want to towel trick just yet, because the 360 does work if I let it cool off, so screw it, whatever, I just waited to give a call as soon as I woke up (which was roughly an hour ago).

Spoke to my fine Indian friend at the Microsoft call center, I always have found them pleasant even though the whole situation is a hassle to have to make the call in the first place. As I was on the phone, memories of a gamer getting a free game out of Microsoft came to mind for having to get a third 360 because of the red rings (Note: I can’t find the link to that guy’s account, but when I do I will update this post so you see how he did it too). Either way, the long and short of the conversation was:

Me: Hey, I run an Xbox web site, this is now my second time having to get a refurbished machine, and I have only had this for a couple of months now, is there anything you can offer me, a controller, a free game, something, to make sure that I do not have to give Microsoft bad press over this issue.

Them: Hold on, let me check on that *puts me on hold*

*comes back* I have Kameo, Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Viva Pinata which I can offer you.

Bam! So not only do they send me an extra 1 month of Xbox Live Card (if you have got a refurbished machine, you know this is what you get already), but now a free game. I highly highly suggest doing this yourself I am having no hopes of getting an HDMI machine, but I the free game is making me feel all happy. Now, if problems arise before I get my coffin, I will in fact just towel trick till I get the box to ship my 360 in.

There you go, get the red rings, get a free game, here is the cliff notes to do it yourself:

• Call 1-800-4MY-XBOX (Screw services.xbox.com)
• Say this is not the first time this has happened and you run a web site and will give bad press, tell them “What can you offer me!?” (be polite)
• Pick a game, say thank you.
• Now, just play the waiting game.

• “Ah, the waiting game sucks. Let’s play Hungry-Hungry-Hippos!’” - Homer J Simpson

  UPDATO MAGNIFICO:
  September 4th, and I have already received my copy of Viva Pinata! I thought it would be inside the box or something, awesome job Microsoft! (I guess it would be more so awesome if the machine never broke in the first place, but they admit their mistakes and are definitely fixing it!)

For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to be at PAX, hwe missed out on some killer Halo 3 footage. Thankfully GameTrailers has posted some of that insanely awesome gameplay video on their website, so that we can all get yet ANOTHER look at Halo 3’s awesomeness, plus we get to see some of Halo 3’s new weapons in action — including the flamethrower, which looks like it will absolutely rape your entire face.

Videos after the break.

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Ensemble Studios Exec. Producer Harter Ryan has revealed in an interview with Gamespot that a demo for Halo Wars will be available tomorrow (Monday)!

Even though I am not a big fan of console-based RTS titles, there have been a notable few that haven’t completely fallen flat: Command & Conquer 3, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth and Starcraft 64 immediately come to mind. If Ensemble is able to do with Halo Wars what they have been able to do with their Age of Empires franchise for a long time, I will be happy.

UPDATO MAGNIFICO!
Guess what, people! We have reason to believe that it is a video of the E3 demo, not a playable demo. Sorry for the mix-up… and on a personal note… clarify next time, Mr. Ryan. Or I’ll slap you. With a trout. Covered in tobasco.

You may not think much of that now… but have you ever felt a tobasco-covered trout slap your face? It scars a man… scars ‘em…

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The Xbox LIVE Marketplace is a true cornucopia of stuff. Whether it be classic arcade games like Paperboy, Time Pilot and Contra, or downloadable content for your favorite games, like Santa Claus outfits for Saints Row and expansions for Oblivion, Xbox LIVE is chock full o’ stuff for just about everyone. If you have the MS Points, you can open the door to all the world’s delight and joy.

But what if you’re broke? Are you just left outside in the snow, to stare in the window from behind the bushes to see all the joyous boys and girls playing with their horse armor and their extra Crackdown skins? Of course not! There’s stuff for you, too, cheap ass!

In fact, there is a LOT of free stuff for you. Whether it be extra content for your favorite game, or the most worthless of things (*coughgamerpicscough*), there is a surprisingly large amount of free stuff for your downloading delight on Xbox LIVE.

Read the whole list after the break!

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Dean Takahashi with the San Jose Mercury News has been able to confirm that the new 65-nm “Falcon” processor-equipped Xbox 360s will be here this fall.

Falcon is coming your way this fall. The first Xbox 360s with it are probably on ships coming from China.

Awesome, but what does this mean for you, Joe Consumer? Well, for one the 65-nm processors mean that the Xbox 360 costs less to manufacture than they did before, which could open the door for further price drops in the future. Secondly, the 65-nm processor will run cooler than it’s 90-nm counterpart, meaning (hopefully) less RRoD reports from gamers who’ve played BioShock for a week straight.

Here’s the deal, however — Microsoft isn’t going to tell us when the new Falcon systems are on the market. Makes perfect sense, considering they’ll probably want to empty out their current inventory. But, if your 360 has indeed died, then your best bet would be to wait until the fall. That way you can maximize your chances of getting a 65-nm system.

[San Jose Mercury News]

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We’ve all known for a while that the Xbox 360 Core is going to die. It’s just something that we knew was going to happen. However, Gamernode is reporting that the Xbox 360 Core will, indeed, be phased out. However, the Core console will live on, rebranded as the ‘Xbox 360 Arcade: Just Play’ pack.

The new Core package (since, really, this IS a Core) will come packaged with five XBLA titles and a 256MB memory card, but will still carry a $279 price tag. Also, while not confirmed, it is believed that the new Core will have a HDMI unit, but no HDMI cable.

As you can see from the image above supposedly taken from the Microsoft PowerPoint presentation… they OBVIOUSLY believe in staying in-house with their photo editing. No photoshop there. Nuh uh.

[Gamernode]

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Sometimes reading the Xbox 360 positive news ends up sound more like a pissing contest between the 360 and the PS3. Instead, lets just look at two recent quotes that stood out as just more so overall positive rather than being attacks against other consoles, this isn’t a news story or an article, just two quick blips to make you happy you own the best console:

“…the 360, which is the platform we do a lot of the initial work on, as it’s very developer friendly and contained…unlike a PC, where even in the office it can be hard to get the same results on everyone’s system. That’s one area the 360 really excels–awesome development tools.” - Todd Howard, Bethesda (Elder Scrolls: Obvlion) producer, interview regarding Fallout 3’s demo using the 360 version for their displays.

” it makes financial sense to focus on finishing the games for the Xbox 360 first because there are more 360s in the market than PS3s. More consoles means more potential sales for EA.

…such a dynamic was nothing new — and that in the last generation of consoles it sometimes made more sense to push out a version of a game for the PlayStation 2 before publishing one for the original Xbox.” - Jeff Brown, EA spokesperson on why Xbox 360 version of their games get more manpower.

Oh, and what the hell, here is some fuel for the fanboy fire, DiRT PS3 vs Xbox 360 Graphics Comparison.

[Karate Kid YTMND with the best music EVAR]

*sigh*

I thought these damn SKU rumors were going to die after the Elite. Then the Halo 3 SKU was unveiled, and again, I thought these SKU stories would finally die.

I am a very stupid and gullible man.

Rumors have begun spinning regarding the Xbox 360 “Ultimate”. Apparently the Xbox 360 Ultimate SKU is being designed to act as a broadband-connected PVR device that will also include a 320GB Hard Drive. The DVD Drive is also rumored to be replaced with a fancy, newfangled internal HD-DVD Drive.

Now, as an Xbox fanboy, I have but this to say: NO MORE SKUs!

[Stuff.tv]

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Microsoft is currently having their Gamefest 2007 (yesterday and today), in it they discuss everything from programing for Windows, 360, and XNA, as well as audio, certification, and everything under the sun having to do with games and Microsoft. 1up was able to sneak their way in and snap a couple of photos that told us something we already knew, that 360 games can require a hard drive. Though the games are decided on a case by case basis, this is going to ensure that titles that require connection to a server (MMO’s) will be able to utilize the hard drive if they deem necessary.

Two things worth noting, first, if you are only using a Silver account, and want to play that new Marvel MMO coming out next year, you do not have to upgrade to a Gold Live account, however you will still have to pay whatever fees that the MMO itself would charge. The second, is as shown in the picture of the slide above, that they must print how much space would be required on the box, however they are giving it the leeway of saying basically that it is ’subject to change.’

Variety is reporting (Variety? We’ve resorted to VARIETY?!) that Microsoft is shooting for Spider-Man 3’s opening weekend record of $151 Million.

Chris Di Cesare told Variety “We did $125 million last time… We’re confident we can do better.”

You’re confident? Give me a break, you have three different versions of the game! Even if you sold the same number of games for Halo 3 as you did Halo 2, you’ll surpass the previous high of $125 Million simply based on the $10 price jump. When you throw in the $69.99 Limited Edition, plus the $129.99 Legendary Edition of Halo 3 with that awesome helmet, and it almost seems certain that Halo 3 will surpass it’s predessor.

…freaking Variety…

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Even if you hate the PlayStation 3 as I do, you can not deny that the PlayStation 3 Starter Pack being sold overseas is a good bundle. Hell, a 60GB PS3 with two controllers and BOTH Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm? That’s a good deal.

It’s a bundle that Microsoft has seemingly caught on to as well. Superblog Kotaku recently found two images showing what certainly appears to be the box design for an upcoming holiday bundle.

Both the Xbox 360 Premium AND Xbox 360 Elite (Notice the lack of a Core?) appear to have stickers on the boxes advertising two free games: Forza Motorsports 2 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

The original images were found on a Microsoft-owned site, so I would imagine that these images are about as accurate as you can. But the question remains: How much will these cost? Are these games truly free, or will the price of the bundle be inflated slightly to give the impression that they are free? Only time will tell, I suppose.

[Kotaku]
[Gamick]

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