Very soon, the first set of Horse Armor, I mean... let me start again. As you all know, the NXE dashboard update has brought with it a whole lot of possibilities in terms of friends list backgrounds as well as avatar clothing options. Microsoft have now announced that they will be continually releasing theme packs that include avatar clothing over the next six months. Pretty soon, a Ninja Blade them is going to be released for Xbox Live that not only comes with a background image and friends list backdrops, but 5 pieces of themed clothing to wrap around your new Xbox Live Avatar. As much as I am enjoying the new dashboard, I am sorry to say that a new era has begun in terms of paid downloadable content. While I already thought it pretty ridiculous that so many people were spending tons of money on gamerpics and dashboard themes in the old dashboard, the new dashboard brings with it an entirely new way to draw gamers' money out of their wallets. The price has gone up as well. More after the jump. While the old dashboard themes had a price tag of 150 points, the new ones are coming in at 250 points and while they are significantly more interesting than before, I can see a whole lot of people throwing their money at Xbox Live just to get some interesting clothing and backdrops to look at. At the same time, I have to wonder... if one of you are on my friends list and you download and add new items to your avatar, doesn't that mean that I will have to download them automatically when I next see you in my friends list? I think so. So tell you what, do us all a favour. Save your money by not spending it on silly outfits because at the end of the day, you will be saving all of us a bunch of bandwidth as well.

A rep from Microsoft has complained that Microsoft has completely screwed a lot of them over by releasing the NXE update, which was rumoured to start causing RROD's, right after the time that a lot of customers warranties had ended.... Apparently the update has been causing a lot of issues for users and caused the MS service lines to explode with calls of complaint. The rep from Microsoft had the following to say: "I hate what the company did this year," "They released the New Xbox Experience a few days after the extended warranty period ended for most users and it's tough to explain that to raging callers. How do you say that MS just screwed them all?" Ouch, not afraid to tell it like it is I see. More of this whole mess, after the jump. The rep also went on to say that: "our bosses really fed us to the lions this time. We're getting everything from crying kids to death threats from angry adults. It's an orgy, I tell ya." Now while I don't want to move the focus away from how incredibly bad the NXE experience has been for many people, I really had to laugh at this next bit. The rep also said that some callers were blaming the update for some of the most ludicrous things.... Well, someone actually phoned in to complain that the his power went out after updating to the new dashboard. Well angry caller, look on the bright side, at least that way you were safe from having a RROD burn your house down, just like in those other reported cases. I can't see the release date of the NXE being a coincidence, so this whole deal of releasing just after a lot of peoples warranties had expired was a pretty mean trick to pull. Any South African users experienced a RROD after the update?

Gears of War 2’s skill-based matchmaking has now become Epic’s top priority as far as fixes to the recently released game goes and they hope to have a solution soon. Hit the jump to see what Senior producer Rod Fergusson had to say on the official forums Gears forums. Last Updated: November 20, 2008

  For Gears of War 2 we decided to do our review a little differently, we knew that everyone who was anticipating the game would be getting it on launch day anyway so we decided it would be better to hold off on the review and rather give a post mortem of our experience. The hype has come and gone …

Ensemble Studios has revealed that the Halo MMO that we reported on a while back actually had a green light. In an interview with Shacknews, Ensemble’s technology chief Dave Pottinger said, “It had actually been green-lit, and then it got cancelled after that.” He also revealed that “Ensemble has been wanting to make an MMO for a long time. Microsoft… …

Microsoft believe that with the New Xbox Live Experience will turn Xbox Live into more of a Social networking system. Shades of this intent have been visible since the last large update for the current system where Bio’s and such where introduced. But just how far do Microsoft want to go with this? Last Updated: November 18, 2008

So Microsoft has a new online store that has just gone live. You wouldn’t be wrong for expecting some cool exclusive toys or game related paraphernalia to be lying on the virtual shelves, but the reality is far from that. Last Updated: November 18, 2008

Apparently a few other people have been hassling Microsoft for an answer for the lack of Gears of War 2 mapcodes and we now have a mass media response from Microsoft It’s lengthy so click through to see what they have to say Last Updated: November 14, 2008