Three XBOX 360's have failed me since the launch of the console.  My XBOX 360's disc drive just went out on me.  It stopped reading my discs.  Microsoft is sending a replacement in no longer than 3 weeks.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The initial community of beta testers was rock solid. Everyone was very vocal, mature, and articulate.

And then the flood gates were opened to a ton of other testers. Let's hope this guy takes the "fall" soon. What he was doing in-game to me was worse.

I've uploaded some of my carnage reports to my Flickr account.

I've been playing the Shadowrun beta on XBOX 360 (although I'd rather play on Vista with a keyboard and mouse) for the past few weeks. The NDA is pretty strict so I can't say anything about the beta that isn't already legally public. That said, there is a good bit of information out there that I want to share with everyone. I'll do that later. I plan on writing a pre-NDA-lift summary and a post-NDA-lift summary. That said, I've been playing the Shadowrun beta whenever I'm free to play on the 360 bar a few exceptions. Now, if I could get into the Shadowrun Vista beta.

Shadowrun beta: check

I decided to check out the demo on the XBOX Live Marketplace for Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a 350MB download. That was good news since I had less that 1GB free on my XBOX 360 hard drive.

I thought my XBOX 360 had locked up once I loaded the game. I was stuck at a black screen for about 20 seconds. During that time, the controller was not responsive. That had me cringing. The last time that happened, I was out $130 and had to send my XBOX 360 back to Microsoft.

Once in the game, I noticed a slick UI. The loading screen and splash screens looked vivid and crisp in 720p.

I hopped into the first level and noticed the graphics. They were last-gen HD in my opinion. They looked good, as good as Sonic has ever looked, but these graphics aren’t pushing the 360. Still, it was great playing Sonic on a Microsoft console.

It’s been a huge news day for XBOX fanboys. The meat? Microsoft announces new HALO titles available exclusively for the XBOX 360.

HALO Wars is the next big real-time strategy game from Ensemble Studios, creators of Age of Empires. Designed exclusively for the Xbox 360, “Halo Wars” allows you to take charge of the human UNSC armies and see the Halo universe from a totally new perspective. It is being developed by Ensemble Studios. Go check out the HALO Wars website at http://halowars.com.

Peter Jackson was on hand at X06 to announce that he and Fran Walsh are creating two new interactive HALO series for the XBOX 360 and XBOX Live Arcade. It’s a brand new game based on the HALO intellectual property. For now, the will be little details about the type of game this series will be. Here’s hoping it’s a MMORPG.

Also, it appears the HD-DVD player for the XBOX 360 is going to be $200 in the US. That’s not a bad price and much lower that I thought it would be. But still, I’ve got to be convinced that I need one.

Head on over to XBOX.com for more details.

I swung by Wal-Mart on the way home hoping to find the XBOX Live Vision Camera accessory for my XBOX 360. Target didn’t have any in stock the day before. Sure enough, WallyWorld had at least four for $39. The kit came with an extra headset, 1-month of XBOX Live Gold (claim code), and UNO (claim code). I added the 1-month to my existing XBOX Live Gold Membership. I’m currently good through Jan 2008. I headed home to check this thing out.

Hooking up the USB camera was easy. I just plugged the camera into one of the front USB ports on the XBOX 360 and I was ready to go. No installation. No setup was necessary. This camera will also work with Windows XP and Windows Vista.

At the Tokyo Game Conference Microsoft announced their HD-DVD addon drive will be available in Japan on November 17th for about $200US. That's a killer price for an HD-DVD player. Here's hoping that we'll see that price here in the US.

However, I had to wonder why I would want to have that device. We don't watch many DVD's since we've got a new RAVE Movie Theatre, Comcast's VoD library, and an HD-DVR recording all kinds of content.

Will game developers start shipping their games on HD-DVD discs instead of DVD's? I think in time they will.

Microsoft just announced that a software update is headed toward your XBOX 360. The update will allow for 1080p video playback. The software update will allow non-1080p content to be upscaled to 1080p. Although no games currently are designed for 1080p, gaming at 1080p will happen in the future. Game developers can now start making games for 1080p playback. Unfortunately, I doubt that Bungie has Halo 3 ready for 1080p.

Most HDTV’s won’t do 1080p. However, 1080p sets are now hitting the market at near the same price at 1080i and 720p sets.