Microsoft promises to keep Xbox Live up through the holidays

It looks like Microsoft doesn't want a repeat of last year's post-holiday Xbox Live outages, when the service was basically unusable for two weeks -- according to 360 product manager Aaron Greenberg, MS is "well prepared for the type of growth we expect this holiday," and that more Live staffers than ever before will be on hand to fix things if things do go bonkers. From what we've heard Live is more robust than ever now that the NXE and the associated backend changes have been rolled out, so we're hoping things go well -- but we wouldn't necessarily say no to another free Arcade game.

[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Avatars vs. Miis vs. Home people ... FIGHT!

In the battle of video game customizable character thingymabobs, there can be only one winner. Now, with Sony's release of Home and its unique inhabitants, we have a battle between the big three and only one victor can be crowned.

Gamesradar set up a battle between Xbox 360's Avatars versus the Nintendo's Miis and the Playstation 3's Home characters in a console avatar showdown by comparing each console's rendition of various people's likenesses. And after comparing to see which console is best at remaking said person, a victor is chosen. It's definitely a judgment based war, so I'll go ahead and award my console likeness creating winner to be the 360's Avatars. Not because I'm Xbox 360 fanboy, but because ... well, actually, that's exactly why.

Video: Super Xbox Fanboy's dungeon of terror

Posted Dec 11th 2008 3:15PM by Richard Mitchell
Filed under: Fan stuff

Let's get one thing straight. We are Xbox 360 Fanboys, but we're not, you know, fanboys. We're all for extravagant gaming setups. Hell, we helped create one. But this ... this defies description, and frankly we're not sure how we missed it (it's been up for two years, apparently).

In the video above you will see the Xbox 360 room of an extremely dedicated man. You might be with him while he's showing off the 360-themed paintjob. You might be willing to follow him along when he shows off the built-in mini fridge. You'll probably be losing him around the time you see the furniture covered in neon green fur. But for us, the abject terror set in when he turned on the green LED lights, giving the whole room an eerie, otherworldly glow.

It was then that we realized this is no game room. This is a dungeon. This is where someone stores you while he prepares to make a suit out of your skin.

[Via poeTV]

Jasper 360s: Secret to succesful identification

I spotted an informative writeup over at AnandTech regarding various Xbox 360 Jasper identification strategies. What's a Jasper? Well, Jasper is the codename for the latest Xbox 360 models to roll off production and house tiny 65nm CPU and GPUs. The smallest, coolest, least power demanding, most stable and generally "best" Xbox 360 version to be manufactured.

Anyhoo, if you're in the market for a 360, we highly recommend you try to secure a Jasper 360 using a few of AnandTech's Jasper identification strategies. They've detailed tips including console lot number matching, looking up the console wattage and - most accurate of all - looking at the power connector. Remember, Jaspers are teh hawtness. You want Jaspers.

Inside an Xbox 360 Jasper: Ben Heck dissects the mythical console, then tells you how to find one

"Gentlemen! I give you... JASPER!" [lightning crackles, thunder sound FX]

Ace modder Benjamin J Heckendorn (aka "Benheck") has found -- and immediately dissected -- an Xbox 360 Jasper. As widely reported, it was inside an Arcade unit. In the following story, he not only details what he finds inside, but will also clue you in on how you too can find this model on store shelves. Read on for the exclusive Engadget look at the guts and the glory!

This was a FDOU team Xbox 360, manufactured on 10-22-08, lot # 0842X.

For starters the Jasper does indeed have a large amount of on-board memory. With NXE installed, the system shows an "MU" having 214MB free. It'll be interesting to see if the 60GB Pro Jaspers have this... I would bet yes, having NXE on-board would be handy, but as we all know it still runs even with your hard drive removed.

That's all well and good, but enough of this running the Xbox, let's rip it apart! It's a "super unboxing!"

Here are the main internals of the unit. The GPU still has the extended heat pipe installed -- guess they're not taking any chances with this one. Good for them! CPU heatsink has not changed from the Falcon.

Looks like a Phillips drive. I took a picture of this since some people obsess over which DVD drive they use. Moving on...

The motherboard thus far. The amount / locations of toroidal coils and electrolytic capacitors has not changed at all from the Falcon unit. In fact I've come across Falcon units that actually use much smaller caps on the right hand side of the CPU, but as we all know there's scores of hardware revisions.

I would suspect this sticker pretty much confirms what this unit is. In the past this location would have stickers saying things like "RMA Heatsink" -- so apparently they called it a Return Materials Authorization heatsink in-house? Interesting. I like "extended heatpipe" heatsink personally... to each his or her own I guess.

So far so normal...

Whoa! The bottom-mounted memory is back -- who woulda thought? As the world's foremost buyer of Xbox 360's (I pretty much have to be) I've seen this flip-flop a lot... some have bottom memory, some don't, some with bottom memory had pads heat sinking it to the RF shield, again, some don't. Weird.

X-clamps haven't changed, nor has the layout of the circuitry below the GPU. Well, nothing drastically noticeable...

Hello, what's this? Traces for some kind of controller and a memory unit. This is right under the ring of light, wonder what the purpose could be?

OK here's the star of the show -- the new GPU. The main body is the same size as the past GPU's, which I did not expect, but there are a lot less components on the surface and the main heat die is considerably smaller and not centered on the package, either.

Old 90nm GPU for reference.

The CPU hasn't changed much from the Falcon.

I'll do some heat tests with this unit once I inevitably slap it into an Xbox 360 laptop. Now let's move onto how you can spot one of these new units in the store!

The Xbox 360 box has a hole at the top of it where the bar code of the console is visible. Clerks usually scan this when you buy one. What you need to do it look at the lower left corner of this box. If you peer closely you can make out at least half of the voltage/amperage rating of the unit. The # of amps used by the 12 volt rail is the key to determining which console it is. The photos below show this in detail.

14.2 amps equals a Falcon unit (65nm CPU, 90nm GPU). Please keep in mind there's nothing wrong with having one of these, I play mine a lot and it's fine. You might not be able to see the whole voltage listing just through the peep-hole, but you should at least be able to see if a 14.2A or 12.1A is just to the left of the "5V".

12.1 amps equals a Jasper unit (65nm CPU, 65nm GPU). This voltage rating is also listed above the power input, but of course you can't see that when it's in the box.

There has been a lot of discussion about lot #'s, power supply ratings, and things of that nature being used to find Jaspers. I have found those to be unreliable. For instance, this Jasper was lot #0842X. However at Circuit City today I saw a 0843X Arcade unit, but it was 14.2 amps.

Also this particular Jasper came with a 175W power supply (like the Falcons used). They are probably trying to use up all the older PSU's and thus it was packed with the unit. Keep in mind that even if this Xbox only needs 150W it's not a issue to power it with a 175W supply, just like people who put 700W PSU's in their PC's for no apparent reason.

Above we see the power port of the Jasper 360. Note how it has a slit in the middle of the top plastic bar. The plugs on the PSU's are designed in a way to be forwards not backwards compatible. That is, an original 203W PSU will fit in any Xbox 360, but because of these 'keying", a new 150W PSU will only fit in an Jasper. Likewise a Falcon PSU will fit in a Jasper but not vice-versa.

So yes, check the amperage rating of the unit at the back -- it's the most sure-fire way to find a Jasper from what I have seen.

OK that's about it for the Jasper autopsy. I look forward to using these in my Xbox 360 laptop-building endeavors!

-Ben Heckendorn
www.benheck.com

First you kill hip hop then you kill video games....

Soulja Boy game coming to Xbox 360 in 2009

Posted Dec 9th 2008 1:45PM

There's not much more to say really. Soulja Boy, game critic and online gamer extraordinaire (and also rapper), has dropped a bomb on the gaming world: He has a video game heading to the Xbox 360 in 2009. No details about the game have been revealed. According to Soulja Boy it was inspired by the "challenge" he recently posed to Xbox Live gamers.

In his own eloquent words: "After I put the Xbox 360 challenge up on the Internet, it was over all these video game sites. And a couple video game companies hit me up on my email because I put the email on there too. And hit me up like, 'Blah, blah, blah, blah.' So I was like, 'Oh snaps!'" Soulja Boy neglected to mention which game companies contacted him. That's unfortunate, because we really need to know who is responsible for this. No word yet whether his game will be for people who smoke or people who drink.

[Via Complex Blog]