Microsoft has just announced that they have sold 30 Million Xbox 360's and that they have 20 Million active users on Live. That means that out of the 30 Million 360's in the world, roughly 5 million have had a hardware failure and gotten the red ring of death (and that's being very generous). Another one of my laymen estimations put the number of racist homophobic tweens on Live at around 19.2 Million. Congratulations Microsoft you continue to successfully frustrate the world.

This just in: Not all baseball players are jacked on drugs and women’s hormones. Boston's own Curt Schilling is slowly on the rise in our beloved broken industry. The Red Sox former pitcher's 38 Studios has acquired Big Huge Games (BHG) from THQ. BHG is the developer of the well received real time strategy, Rise of Nations. Head over to 38studios website for the full scoop.

Pixilated pugilists rejoice! The Fight Night Round 4 Demo is live. In this corner my dated 20 gigabyte Xbox 360 Hardrive! And in this corner a hulking demo weighing in at 784MB...sigh. The demo is currently only available to Xbox Live Gold members. It's ok though, I am sure that all the PS3 owners out there are too busy playing Infamous in a dark room all alone. The big talk about Fight Night Round 4 is the collision detecting physics, from what we hear it is slightly harder to punch directly through your opponent and into their soul than it was in Round 3. Keep your eyes peeled for our hands on report.

This is first and foremost a gaming website, and what's more gamey than Monopoly? I'll answer for you...maybe checkers, but not much else. Check out these slick German ads for the board game. The above happens to be Boardwalk, the most expensive spot on the board. Follow this link to see the other three, representing a few other neighborhoods on the board. [via Trend.Land]

Every time we post something Mario related, it fucks the whole vibe of our little website! Harkening back to those simpler 8 and 16 bit days where everything was side-scrolling and 2 buttons were all you needed. I spent a few moments wondering why we pay hundreds of dollars a year for the newest and slickest item when what we always go back to and end up talking about are the old and uncomplicated. There is one step to playing a Nintendo game, just hit the power button and there it is, ready to go. The same can't be said about the current generation of consoles. There are profiles to choose, submenus to get through, accounts to sign into, saves to load, updates to download, and 23 minute intro movies to watch before you can throw a punch or a pitch. Where I'm going with this, I have no idea so I'd better stuff it for now and get to the point of the post. Some clever fellow has designed a very comprehensive Super Mario desktop theme, with instructions available here. Highly recommended if you happen to be a huge Mario fan and are (like us) living in the past, man. [via lifehacker]

The trailer for Team ICO's new release has popped up over at PlasyStation LifeStyle. I may have to return my geek card for admitting this, but I have never played Ico. I was a great fan of Shadow of Colossus though. I don't want to ruin this footage with too many words. Head over to PlayStation LifeStyle for the full scoop.

It seems like only yesterday that I was defending advertisements in Bionic Commando. Oh snap, it was yesterday. You can imagine then how horrid I felt when I fired up Grin's latest effort last night to find more advertisements than even I can handle. I made a little game of jumping around the decidedly small cityscape and ripping down all the ads that I could with my claw (Alienware, Pepsi, Nvidia etc).

Then while hunting for collectables I found the terror that you see above. I was going to take a picture using the retro skin, but it just looks too much like a woman in drag or Annie Lenox circa 1980. In-game ads are a necessary evil, but for the love of all things holy, do you really have to advertise your own game's website and an upcoming Capcom game (Dark Void)? And at the same time no less! Talk about pulling you out of the experience. So far I am really enjoying Bionic Commando though. I can't fault the harsh reviewers (at least the ones that figured out the great swing mechanic), there is a lot more wrong with this game than the gameplay video's lead me to believe. The early areas are far too limited and it feels as if the overly agile character is trying to bust out of the tepid level design. Still it's great fun, I am just hoping it sells enough to warrant a sequel. It could be something very special. 

YouTube user s1rPwnage87 has successfully created the Left 4 Dead survivors in Rock Band 2. The user very cleverly has them perform L7's Pretend We're Dead. I am ashamed that I don't have the crew created on my console. That will be remedied as soon as I get home from S-Mart. Considering how most stadium concert goers act like mindless, aggressive, hero worshiping idiots, who desperately want to consume the people on stage; it's not hard to pretend that the crowd are zombies, clamoring for the survivors' flesh.

It seems like only yesterday the gaming community was up in arms about the in-game advertising in Fight Night Round 3. But it wasn't yesterday; it was well over 2 years ago. Yet when you look at the recent reviews for Bionic Commando there are a slew of game journalists complaining about the Pepsi and NVIDIA ads in the game. It’s as if no time as passed and that in-game ads are new to the medium. The battle has been lost and you are doing nothing but increasing your word count and being naïve if you choose to speak against in-game adverts in your review.

 I for one see nothing wrong with these ads, as long as they don't affect the gameplay or completely suck you out of the experience. Why can't Super Joe drink Pepsi? Richard Donner's Superman did. Video games are not indie rock songs on mix-tapes. They don't belong to you. They are hulking products of a soulless industry churning out 80's B-movie conventions while pushing the graphical capability of your console. In an industry where the engine in built before the story, you should never be surprised the places it will whore itself for some extra scratch. Anyway, I am off to go pick up Bionic Commando and a soft drink. For some strange reason I am craving a Pepsi.