Still preying on RRoD fears, at least the Overcase doesn't void a console's warranty - unless removing a faceplate violates a warranty, which I doubt it does. The case features extra cooling that continues past powerdown, like the fan on a 1997 Mercury Sable station wagon.

Reminds me of the Gary Busey Outer Helmet Protector Protector.

MUST watch: ZooZen transforms the 360 into a beauty from a beast [MaxConsole via Hot Blooded Gaming]

Josh Holmes has been in the industry for around 15 years. He was part of the EA Canada exodus that formed Propaganda Games in 2005, having previous worked on the first two Def Jam titles and the NBA Street series. At Propaganda he worked on the most recent Turok game. He came to Microsoft's 343 Industries and now holds the position of executive producer of the Halo franchise.

My first question for Josh following yesterday's release of the Xbox Live Halo hub was what's next for the Waypoint team? His answer? Sleep. Waypoint has been a labor of love for the development team from the get go, to the point where they stayed up well into the early morning on Wednesday night, watching the players download and explore the fruits of their labor. "The team here has been really grinding to complete this and launch it. We're all super excited to see it go live. None of us slept. We just stayed up and watched as people came in and tried it out."

And try it out they did. During the first few hours of availability, some users experienced problems downloading Waypoint due to the overwhelming response fans have to anything Halo related. "We've been blown away by the number of people we've seen coming in to check out Waypoint, and that number is bound to get larger."

So now the fans are watching Halo Waypoint. They're keeping track of their progression; replaying Halo 3 and Halo Wars in order to complete innovative achievements that span all the Halo 3 360 titles; and learning about the Halo Universe through an stylized information database.

And there's a lot more on the way. Starting Saturday night, four episodes from the Halo Legends anime series will be made available for a 24-hour period every other weekend, alternating with making-of videos. There'll be new fiction, interviews, and news. The aim is to have daily updates, with content that, if viewed on a regular basis, give players an idea of what's going to happen next in the Halo Universe.

While you can read all about the regularly scheduled content in Halo Waypoint in Stephen's excellent article on the future of the service, it's the amount of weight that player feedback will have on future content that's the most interesting aspect of Waypoint.

Josh first mentioned community feedback in response to my query about the possibility of eventually meeting friends and launching games from within Waypoint. "There's a ton of great ideas that the team has had brainstorming about the types of things we'd like to do in the future, but we're also going to be really taking the lead from a lot of feedback we get from the community."

The community focus came up time and time again throughout the interview, generally after I suggested potential upcoming content, such as excerpts from the upcoming Halo Evolutions anthology novel, or more avatar rewards. "Avatar awards are just one of the ways we can reward people for being a fan of the franchise and a good member of the Halo community."

The Career section of Waypoint is also ultimately in control of the fan base. "We may be looking at additional ways to compare data between friends in the future, and might be one of the things we evolve if we hear from fans that that will be something valuable to them."

You get the basic idea here. If there's something you'd like to see or a new feature you'd like implemented on the Halo Waypoint service, make some noise. Talk about it in the Halo forums. Twitter about it. Facebook it. Josh Holmes and the 343 Industries Halo Waypoint team are paying attention.

Basically, I think another way of saying what Leigh's getting at is that many game critics, particularly those who write for avid fans, can obsess over controls or menu design problems in titles that are doing something innovative in tone or theme, but downplay the same types of faults in games that are essentially improvements on the ones they already love.

The result is that we don't value innovation or attempts to do something big and new, like make a funny game that's thematically consistent with an all-time great TV show or create psychological impact through artful storytelling integrated with gameplay, because we obsess on the mechanical problems or the length of the cutscenes. Not that those things don't matter. But they don't matter that much, especially for an artistically immature medium in desperate need of innovation and freshness.

If we re-arranged our priorities, I think we'd have more critics "championing" certain games or developers. In the end, that's what I'm calling for and I think that's what Leigh's implying. In the film world, there were critics who championed the then-radical filmmakers of the '70s who transformed the world of cinema. Wouldn't it be great if there were more videogame critics who championed certain titles or artists, while acknowledging their imperfections, the way Leigh does "Silent Hill: Homecoming" and Hideo Kojima?

I'm not sure it's simply a matter of rearranging priorities, but overhauling the culture of game reviews and how we talk about games. It shouldn't be either/or — criticism is usually a range of grey, with polarizing opinions at least inspiring spirited debate. Does the audience at large really want 'real' criticism, though? Or just a concise roundup of whether a game is good or bad? We already have various types of 'reviews,' ranging from the generic thumbs up/thumbs down to detailed reviews that pull apart every conceivable part of the game. Certain types of criticism are rarely meant for a general audience — and that's OK. The average consumer looking for a title they'll enjoy isn't going to care if Kojima is a visionary or not; they just want to know if the game is worth spending money on. But are critics comfortable with the idea that their championing and detailed criticism is going to put much of the potential audience to sleep? Are we OK being irrelevant to most people other than the 'hardcore' and each other?

If critics did more championing and less obsessing over details [Cut Scene via Sexy Videogameland]

“One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for ‘Diablo III’ is the fact that color is your friend. We feel that color actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in ‘Lord of the Rings’ — not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn’t allow you to have a lot of contrast.”

Lee also explains that they want players excited to enter and explore new areas, rather that simply provide the same dark environments over and over again.

Lee does admit that fan feedback is a major factor in how Blizzard develops titles. It'll be interesting to see what impact - if any - the petition has on the development of the game.

‘Diablo III’ Producer Justifies Controversial Art Direction: ‘Color Is Your Friend’ [MTV Multiplayer]

Outside scenarios with vivid colors, beautiful forests with colorful vegetation, shinny and beautiful waterfalls where even rainbows take place.

They hate rainbows! They can't draw gothic fan art with rainbows in it!

*sigh* It just goes to show you that no matter how hard you try there's just no pleasing some people.

Renewed artistic direction for Diablo 3 [PetetionOnline.com via WorthPlaying]

1. Open your 360, thus voiding the precious warranty.
2. Firmly grasp your system fan, ungrasping as your hand swings in a graceful arc towards your trash can.
3. Install new, glowy Whisper fan.

Of course it is much more complicated than that, but it does result in a much quieter Xbox 360, perfect for streaming your legally procured anime episodes. Of course you still have to deal with the loudest optical media drive this side of the Dreamcast, but it's a start.

Hacking Your Xbox 360 Fan [ExtremeTech]

When the son of Sephiroth broke up with his redheaded barmaid girlfriend, the real-life girl tracked down the other player's telephone number and phoned him at night, weeping. They ended up moving in together - in the real world. A young man who played the indisputable leader of a prominent ShinRa faction was arrested for some disciplinary trouble in school, and in his one quintessential jailhouse phone call, he telephoned not his parents, but his roleplaying lieutenant. "What will happen to the ShinRa?" he cried in a panic. FFRPers loved their own characters even more than the canonical creations that beckoned them to this world.

I've always found this sort of devotion to games (or books or movies) a little odd (and endlessly fascinating), but using your one phone call to ... discuss what's going to happen to your online faction? Wow.

Midgar Is Burning [The Escapist via Sexy Videogameland]

What's the fan rush look like at GC07? We risked life and limb to put you right in the action. Seriously, about 30 photographers are lined up in front of thousands of fanboys. It's scary. And this is just one of three entrances to the show floor.

So what big company is behind us? Sony.

So, for some hardcore Halo 3 weekend reading, head on over to Bungie's Weekly Update. [Bungie]

Being surrounded by clapping teenagers, a shirtless, singing adult in Mario overalls and a video camera-weidling dude in a Toad hat. Yep, this is a Nintendo exec's nightmare. Though, half way through, Nintendo's Senior VP George Harrison does warm up to Game Jew. No wonder: It's not a bad tune, not a bad tune at all. Brian Ashcraft

Game Jew Confronts Harrison [Gamer Andy]

In addition, they've also translated the other Silent Hill character and history resources "The Crimson Tome" and "The Sullivan Victims" from Konami's Silent Hill 4 official site, again only previously available in Japanese. While "Lost Memories" focuses on the entire series of psychological horror games, these two resources are simply backstory for the fourth game.

Every Silent Hill fan needs to bookmark this site immediately—and possibly print out a copy of the translated book for safekeeping. Michael McWhertor

Translated Memories Site