With over 70 million consoles sold since it was unveiled in May, 2005, the Xbox 360 is one of the most popular game consoles ever created. Many of the fans of the Microsoft gaming device are diehards which is why anticipation of the successor, the Xbox 720, has been building up for years. Rumors, both good and bad, have been circulating for some time, but as the anticipated launch is right around the corner, some of them are starting to become more clear. Here’s a roundup of the five persistent rumors that seem to hold the most credibility. 1. Xbox Live Microsoft’s online multiplayer and digital distribution…

Sony started teasing a big event that they’ll be hosting on February 20th. Much of the blogosphere is buzzing that it may be the announcement of the PlayStation 4. If so, this could be the move that Sony has needed to make for a while. It isn’t that the old platform is outdated. At just over 6 years old, the PlayStation 3 is still technically the state of the art when it comes to pure console play. The Nintendo and Microsoft counterparts have had their share of interesting developments such as the Wii U and Kinect, but neither has been enough to really distance themselves from the competition. Sony has…

It could be a play to increase the number of Internet Explorer users. It could be a differentiator between them and Playstation. It could be both. Either way, Xbox 360 users may soon have a Kinect-driven full version of Internet Explorer available to them for full web browsing in between games of Call of Duty. By applying voice and gesture control, Kinect integration may have people surfing the web while waving wildly and screaming madly. There is no time frame laid out at this point, but expect to hear something before E3 in June. Related articles Rumor: Kinect-enabled Internet Explorer browser…

With any payment plan, you will likely pay more than you would if you bought the product up front. That’s the case with the latest offer from Xbox, but don’t expect people to shy away from the deal that includes a $99 Xbox 360 bundle with Kinect. To get the deal, one will need to sign a 2-year agreement for Xbox Live at $14.99 a month. This makes the total package come to $459 spread out over 3 years. By contrast, if someone paid $299 for the standalone Xbox 360 + Kinect and prepaid for 2 years of Xbox live for $120, they would spend $419. There are bargains available on both the bundle (we found one for $259) and…

Most were impressed with Microsoft and their Xbox 360 when it was reported that they had sold 1.44 million units in November, beating the Nintendo Wii by 400,000 units and nearly doubled up on the Sony Playstation 3. Those who weren’t impressed may have just been waiting for the actual numbers. With a record 1.7 million units sold in the U.S. in November, the Xbox 360 may have outsold the Playstation 3 and the Wii combined. Sony is not releasing their numbers, but estimates of their numbers would put the Microsoft console at 49% of the total current-generation console market, their largest margin…

I suppose we should have expected it. Those of us who have dreamed of battling as a Jedi with real lightsabers have been waiting for a virtual version (so that we don’t chop off our own arms, of course). Microsoft appears to have attempted to oblige us at E3 with their initial release of a demonstration of next year’s release. While some would say that they “can’t wait,” I’ll have to pass until a better version is made available. It looks bad. It looks boring. It looks like a game that will be a novelty for an hour or less and then retired forever. Here are a couple of videos – the official release and YouTube…

You probably didn’t need a blog post to tell you that Halo: Reach was going to do well. Every word you’re now reading drips with the reek of superfluousness. But I’m gonna type them anyway, and I’m gonna rock out with my [xxxx] out as I do so. Halo: Reach did really, really well, guys. How well? 200-million-dollars-in-the-first-day well. If you’re bad with money – and what gamer isn’t – that’s a ludicrous sum of sweetcoin. In fact, that’s the biggest entertainment release of 2010. That’s bigger than Iron Man 2. That’s bigger than even Toy Story 3. And those films had three days apiece. Minor leagues,…

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) used to be the most important day within the game industry for publishers, developers, and consumers, but numerous issues over the years had taken away the spectacle’s appeal. This year’s E3, however, certainly had the emotion behind it to propel it back to its former greatness. Unfortunately, “great” isn’t quite the word I would use to describe it. There are three types of gamers in this world: the hardcore gamer is generally the teen or twenty or thirty something that is awake at 4 AM blasting away his or her buddies in Modern Warfare 2; the casual gamer…

Dear Game Publishers, what are you thinking? For years, loyal supporters of your games have dealt with ridiculous price increases, overpriced downloadable content, and silly DRM schemes. Yet now, in these most critical times for the game industry, your idea of repaying them is to make us pay even more? Really? Furthermore — stooping to an all-time low — EA has stepped up for your industry and decided that users should be pushed (if not forced) to purchase new games only, punishing gamers who legitimately purchase used games. The idea behind this is essentially to make them pay extra money…

The game console has been part of people’s lives for quite awhile now — to walk into someone’s house and see a PlayStation, Xbox, Wii, or some other system is nothing of a shocker. After all, these devices offer a one-stop solution to gaming without the hardware incompatibilities. They just work. And this system has worked — it has worked quite well for several decades. However, someone worth listening to is speaking up against this system of gaming. This person believes that the game console’s days are numbered: that the console is dying. This person also managed to stun Sony, the company…