The offer: Buy any three titles from this list and you get 800 Microsoft points back. Now, some of these are full $19.99 titles. But if you get a new hard drive or Christmas cash and want to lay out the price of a new game to get three, you can consider the points back to be like a gift card. And many stores run that kind of special.

If you want to know the bare minimum you can spend to still qualify, that would be buying up both Mass Effect downloads, plus the Dragon Age: Origins DLC (or Madden AFL Legacy Pack), for 1360 points. You then get 800 back, effectively making the cost 560 points, or the entire package for $7. Naturally, given the units in which Microsoft points are sold, your actual cash outlay may vary here.

The special runs from Dec. 25 to Jan. 31.

Xbox Live Holiday Discounts [Electronic Arts news]

"Origins" highlights Forerunner battles with the Flood and "shed light on some of the main events of the Halo universe," according to official word. A "making of" episode of that segment will run the week after, all part of the hype cycle to get Halo fans in a lather for the release of the full Halo Legends anthology on DVD and Blu-ray in February.

And if you're still into watching those Red Vs. Blue machinima shorts, you can expect another one of those too, just in time for Christmas. The Holiday Special airs December 24 to 26, hopefully featuring a coked out Carrie Fischer and musical number from the ghost of Bea Arthur. But somehow we doubt it.

The man, from Richmond Heights, Mo., "developed a relationship in April 2008," with the girl, from Sanger, Calif., writes the Associated Press. In September he pleaded guilty to having sex with her, and was sentenced today. Somehow, he managed to elude capture by NBC's Chris Hansen (pictured) and the To Catch a Predator Team.

Federal prosecutors say Edward Stout, 27, drove almost 30 hours nonstop from Missouri to Sanger, "where he engaged in sexual activity with the girl." Good God, what kind of pharmaceuticals did he have? After 30 hours of driving, I couldn't have sex with a croissant, much less a sentient being, for the next two days.

Stout was sentenced to more than a decade behind bars and then will have to register as a sex offender once he gets out.

Mo. Video Gamer Sentenced in Sanger Teen Sex Case [Associated Press, via HBG]

There it is, pictured above. The free offer is good through the end of today, but I believe that clocks in at Pacific time, so it means folks on the U.S. east coast have to 3 a.m. if they want it. However, yesterday's Deal of the Day, Worms 2: Armageddon for 400 Microsoft Points, was still live when I posted this at 6 p.m. Mountain time. But the 2010 Avatar party glasses had gone back to 40 MS points. So who knows.

The DotD promos - which Microsoft is not announcing in advance - last through Dec. 31, and if you're keeping track of this sort of thing, Cheap Ass Gamer has been archiving the giveaways here.

New Year's Theme [Xbox Live Marketplace via Gay Gamer]

"Avatar Individualized By Physical Characteristic," is what Microsoft is claiming. "Linking the avatar to a physical characteristic of a user provides leverage to provide incentives or constraints that can encourage good behavior (e.g., healthy behaviors, virtuous behaviors, etc.)," says the patent.

So therefore, if you're fat, your avatar will be fat - or vice versa. And so Microsoft proposes that your avatar's conditioning would be reflected in its capabilities within a game, or unlocking a budgeted amount of time to play, or just making the little guy look all buff and hawt.

As a parental control, its use is quite clear. For the individual gamer, it sounds to me like an opt-in thing, whereby if you've been feeling bad about all the Hot Pockets and three-hour gaming sessions, you turn on this feature. Sort of like fridge locks, noise reminders and other (in my opinion, abusive) gadgets from the dieting craze.

How is it going to know what the real you looks like? The patent offers that Microsoft would get the info through a "third-party health data collection repository," I guess to which the player belongs and links to his or her Xbox Live account. Or, says the filing "a real-time physiological sensor (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose, peak flow, pedometer, etc.)" Yay! Sounds like more peripherals.

1Up, which spotted the filing, points out that Nintendo's already explored this to some extent in Wii Fit, where your Mii gets porky if the game decides you're overweight. In this case, Microsoft wants to link some sort of tangible benefit to a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

Those are honorable intentions, but given the butthurt that went up when Wii Fit started calling kids fat, I can't see this ending well. Just last night I screwed around with my avatar - which I always set to large size because, hey, I have a beer gut - and was appalled when I tried on the Vault 101 suit, which is not slimming at all. (My avatar normally wears an untucked golf shirt.) And that's with the existing body type templates. Before they do this Xbox Live should implement a "suck your gut in" button, like, click and hold the right thumbstick or something.

Microsoft Patents "Avatar Individualized By Physical Characteristic" System [1Up via HBG]

Essentially, we're hearing that people are joining MP matches, then finding that there are no ammo counters. It's unlimited ammo. On all weapons. Here's one forum post highlighting the issue, but hit the internet, you'll find dozens more. And some videos. Like these ones.

Like I said, I don't know how this is happening, but word on the street is that it's an exploit - created by modders - that can be "passed" around anyone and everyone who plays against them, as it sticks in their 360's cache. Only, instead of corrupting data, it blows up MW2 maps.

To get rid of the glitch, you'll have to disconnect from Live and reboot your 360.

I'd post more videos, but it seems every single one has awful cheese-metal/pop-rap playing over the top, so I'll spare you the torment. These ones should suffice for now.

Soon as we hear from Activision, Infinity Ward or Microsoft - or find out how extensive this glitch is, or how it's happening - we'll update you. In the meantime, any of you guys run into this? If so, fire off in the comments section, let us know how it went down.

UPDATE - Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling says "It's being addressed" and that "it'll be eliminated soon enough". Far from a concrete timeline for an update, but at least it shows IW are aware of the problem and are looking into it.

Microsoft generally isn't the habit of laying out several weeks worth of Xbox Live releases in one fell swoop, so we can assume that the company is going out of town for the holidays, and this is the note they are leaving on the really big fridge, containing all we need to know about the coming weeks.

First off, today sees the addition of holiday gear and tokidoki wear on the Avatar Marketplace, with tons of new items to spend your discretionary Microsoft points on. Be sure to save some for Christmas Eve, however, when Disney Classics wear shows up, filling your friends list with pretty princesses.

The Xbox Live Deal of the Week program continues throughout the month, starting with the Lips: Coldplay Track Pack (200 Microsoft points) next week, followed by Shadow Complex (800 points) and The Maw (400 points).

The Games on Demand service expands by several titles this month, with Crackdown and Disney's Bolt already available, and Viva Piñata: Party Animals, Lost Planet Colonies Edition and Devil May Cry 4, and Gears of War coming over the next three weeks.

*pause for breath*

Xbox Live Arcade gets two new additions over the course of the next two weeks, with Alien Breed Evolution Episode 1 dropping on the 16th (800 points) and the Trails HD Big Pack adding 35 new racing and skill tracks to the game on the 23rd.

On top of all that, December 18th through the 31st, Microsoft will be holding one-day sales on select Xbox Live Marketplace items, including games, movies, add-ons, and themes, counting down to the New Year with savings, as is tradition.

As for me, I'm driving to Florida to hang out with my girlfriend's mother and grandmother. Not really all that interesting, but since we were sharing.

Major Nelson announced that this afternoon Microsoft rolled an update that enables access to those three services by minors, provided they have parental approval. Minors in the U.S. will get access - again, assuming parental approval - on Dec. 15.

The Major reminds: Be sure to set Automatically log in or Remember me when setting up the application for the first time, otherwise you will be prompted for parental permission every time you launch the application

Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM updates for those <18 [Major Nelson]

"I hate sports games," Kristen says with a weary laugh, reminding me for about the fifth time this Thursday night "I had to ask someone what a sack was. They said it's when you tackle the quarterback. I said, 'Which one is the quarterback?'"

Only in name are Kristen and I playing Madden NFL Arcade. Instead we are "boosting," - throwing games to each other, more or less, to rack up multiplayer achievements. I've already gotten 50 points the easy way. Now it's her turn.

It is a substantial part of how Kristen, whose last name I'm withholding out of concern for her privacy, has become, according to one leading compilation, the No. 4 ranking woman, worldwide, in Gamerscore. Her tag is CRU x360a - go ahead, look it up. Kristen - CRU or Crubie to some online - is a 24-year-old stay-at-home mom in northwest Indiana. You call her extremely motivated. You can call her obsessed. You can also call her an achievement whore, like she hasn't heard that from every piss-ant with a 5,000 gamerscore in the underground zone.

Bottom line, she's is really effective at piling up her gamerscore. But she's not sure when, or if, she will stop.

A Race to the Top

"It was a friendly race at the time," Kristen says of the beginning, three years ago, when she got serious about her Gamerscore. "It was to 20,000. My buddy was at 15,000 and I was at 13, I was 2,000 behind him. I said, 'OK, this might take years.'

Kristen had bought an Xbox 360 in early 2007 and, like most, it wasn't because it offered achievements. She was a multiplayer gamer on a few titles she enjoyed - shooters mostly. Then she joined a Gamerscore league. And then she got into this side bet.

"Once I found sites that had guides on which were the easy games, I beat (20,000) in like a month and a half," she says. "It got me hooked and it was like a drug. A bad drug. A bad habit."

Soon enough Kristen managed to fall in with some elite players in the achievement grinding world. One, named Smrnov, who is the global No. 10 on MyGamerCard, praises Kristen's team-spirited achievement hunting. "CRU was unselfish in the help she offered our team, and has always been reliable for getting the game time in, which is a very hard trait to find for spanning so many different games, versus a single one," he says.

Stallion83, the global No. 2 on that list, played with Kristen in those early days, and was most recently her boosting partner on Damnation - a terribly received game. ("We managed to have fun talking about The Leprechaun movies," he says. "Party chat has made some of these games less painful.")

"She was just a nice person," Stallion83 recalls,"like one of the dudes. Most girls cause drama and try to get attention. I didn't see that with CRU." Both he and Smrnov heap praise on Kristen's FPS skill. "A great FPS player," says Smrnov. "In addition, she's very good about figuring out the best strategy for completing a game quickly and doing all associated research. She has both gaming skills and gamerscore skills."

But that doesn't keep Kristen from going after the kids' stuff, too. Last week, Spongebob: Truth or Square put her over 165,000. It's a cute detail but it barely scratches the surface of Kristen's performance over the past three years. Nor does the four-game Gamefly subscription, in constant rotation. That's to be expected. And the shelf full of games, many of them years old and still waiting to be played, well, what would you consider impressive? A hundred and sixty?

She bought Jumper: Griffin's Story - one of the worst reviewed games ever in Xbox 360 history. The day Modern Warfare 2 was released, she spent all her time on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. American Idol? She put the microphone in front of a speaker and played songs into it to ace the performances that much faster. It didn't work for Sing It: High School Musical or Hannah Montana, so, she had to belt those out herself.

"They're easy enough songs; It's not bad, there's no one looking at me while I'm playing it," Kristen says, "but my friends (on Xbox Live) see it, and all the guys can't believe I'm playing that game."

Remember that deal a few months back, when a someone tried to round up a 1,000 players to log in to NBA Live 07 and get the 100 gamerscore achievement for 1,000 players being online at the same time? Kristen was a part of that, with two versions of the game, one she had to go out and find for $3 at a game store, and the other playing on her Japanese 360.

Yes, she has an NTSC: J console. Kristen got that to play BioShock's Korean version, which has a separate achievement list. She's gotten 1,000 gamerscore in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. She's gotten 1,000 gamerscore in 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand in Japanese. "I haven't even opened the Saint's Row 2 Japanese version, or the Saint's Row 1 for that matter," Kristen says. She's eyeballing a PAL console, but even an Arcade will be close to $300 with shipping and, "Do I really need to play BioShock again?"

Some of the region-locked Japanese games she plays are bought by pooling money with Stallion83, Smrnov and others in the ultra-gamerscore crowd, and the group then trades the discs around by mail. One game, Clannad, was picked for its low-hanging fruit. It's a "visual novel," sometimes called a dating sim, but as the choices are all text-based the gameplay should be pretty easy, right?

"It's a text game, and you have to choose A or B, you only have these text options," Kristen said. "But I'm sitting there on Google Translate trying to translate these strategy guides and match up (Japanese) characters to make my choices. And I'm thinking 'Why the hell did I buy a Japanese Xbox and this game, this is just retarded.' It's so embarrassing trying to match characters to a language I don't even know. I've spent $400 on a game I can't even read."

It makes me wonder. These are called games. And technically, she's playing them. But is this even fun? Is this ever fun?

"I definitely play more games I don't enjoy than games I do," she says. "Like, maybe 65 percent of the games I play I don't enjoy."

Kristen's husband doesn't even know why she sticks with it, if something like CSI: Hard Evidence is so unfulfilling for her to play.

"Sometimes I'll be playing, and he'll ask, 'Did I have to buy that or did someone else buy it?'" Kristen says. "And I'm like, 'Do you want the truth or do you want me to lie to you?' And he walks away, saying 'I can't believe you're playing that.' To me that's more embarrassing than playing Disney: Sing It."

A Mother's Work

Kristen is careful to remind me that she does have a life outside of gaming. "I'm an avid paintball player; I have my own gun, although that's also another expensive hobby," she says. "But yeah, I'd much rather go out to a bar, go bowling, play darts or pool than sit at home and boost games all night. I'm still young."

She's also the mother of a six-year-old girl. You can do the math there, it means Kristen became a mom at age 18. Before then, she was a rather typical kid, if a little tomboyish, and absolutely delighted by video games. Kristen says she's played them since she was five. When she lived with her parents, new games and new consoles were common, especially around the holidays. When she had her daughter and moved out of the home, her original Xbox and her beloved NES - which she still has even though it won't work - stayed behind. The Xbox 360 she bought a little more than three years ago marked her re-entry to games since having her daughter.

Sometimes mother and daughter play - Spongebob was one such example. But Kristen had to load up one of the five other gamertags she keeps on the console for family and friends to play. Boosting games might sound out of bounds to some gamers, but it's entirely within the ultra-gamerscore ethos. What isn't, however, is having anyone get an achievement for you. Even your six-year-old girl.

"She climbed up and said, 'Let me play,' so I said, 'Just a second,' and put her up with another (gamertag) and let her play," Kristen says. "Sometimes she'll say 'Look, Mom, I got an achievement too!' She gets excited."

This isn't something Kristen wants to encourage. "I don't want her to get addicted like I am though," Kristen says. "She doesn't really see me play too much, actually."

Her husband, Jeff, doesn't game much at all himself. He owns a towing business that provides a comfortable lifestyle and accommodates both his interests and Kristen's gaming. He's rather mellow about all the time she spends with games, if not the money, and keeps both in perspective. Some guys have wives who spend a ton of money on clothes, or dislike spending as much time around the house as she does.

"I have some hobbies myself that are fairly pricey and I can't really blame her for that," Jeff says. "However, occasionally a string of new games will come out within a two day span and magically a few hundred dollars will be missing from the bank account. With as much time as she has allotted for video games and the kid I can account for her whereabouts at any given moment so I'm certain that she isn't cheating on me."

Even pressed for a ballpark estimate, Kristen doesn't know how much her obsession with Gamerscore has cost in the preceding three years. "My pro system is $250, my Japanese console cost $400, the hard drive I put on it was $50 - I don't want to see the number, and I'm sure Jeff doesn't want to see it," she says. "But I think it would be cool to know."

There's another number about which she seems even less enthusiastic, though. And that's the next big milestone for her gamerscore.

Calling It a Career

Two hundred thousand. According to MyGamerCard, only one other woman has a total that high (with a second very close to reaching it.) And yet when Kristen brings it up, it's with a tone of voice that ponders what she will do then. It's almost like she doesn't want to get there, for what it will force her to consider.

The simplest answer is by far easier said than done: Just quit. "I keep saying when I get 200,000 gamerscore, I'm going to retire," Kristen says. "There are people who do that. I say it now, but I don't think you can ever actually quit. It's like a drug. It is addicting."

And she uses that word often enough that I figure I should bring up the subject. Carefully. I would never say video game addiction isn't real, knowing that real people do indeed battle it. I also believe it's a topic given to alarmism. And I'm not a psychiatrist, so it's not my place to go diagnosing other people's behavior. But I ask Kristen anyway. Maybe, has she ever considered talking to someone about her gaming?

"I wouldn't say I need to talk to someone," Kristen says after considering the question for a long moment. "I'm not hurting someone by doing this. My family life is not being hurt. Granted, it's like an addiction, but I'm not hurting anyone. Well, I'm getting little sleep sometimes, but that's on me.

"Besides, I saw where someone had gone to be treated at a rehab center for video games, and it was something like $30,000 a year, and I thought, 'Do you know how many Xboxes and games I could buy with this?'" she says, without a trace of irony. "I don't think so."

When Kristen is most at ease with her gamerscore is when it describes how she's good at something. How she's figured out a way to beat the system; or how she's actually put in the time to get the "General" achievement in Call of Duty 3 - getting 40,000 points in ranked matches - to collect a rare 100+ gamerscore achievement.

"It's very much a personal pride thing, being ranked in the top five in the world in something, whether it's gaming or the fact I'm a female gamer," Kristen says. "I'm never going to be in the Olympics, so I'll be a great gamer. It's something I know I'm good at."

But I hope when she breaks 200,000 she can put the controller down. She spent the first three years of her adulthood being a mom. I suggest to Kristen that, maybe, she's spent the last three in front of a console, trying to get some of that lost time back.

Kristen ponders this, and seems to agree. "Maybe," she says.

Maybe then she can call it even.

I suppose Activision is trying to show the range of the Guitar Hero: Van Halen product to those of us who didn't already get it for free via the promotion in Guitar Hero 5. A promotion I completely forgot to redeem, mind you, so now I am getting my first taste via this demo. Van Halen's "Panama" is joined by Weezer's "Dope Nose" and Killswitch Engage's "The End of Heartache," making the Guitar Hero: Van Halen demo a little light on the Van Halen.

Still, it's "Panama," and if Gran Turismo 4 taught me anything, it was that "Panama" never gets old.

Update: Make that four songs. I checked out the demo with the mic only, and instrumental "Eruption" isn't available on that playlist.

Guitar Hero: Van Halen should be out in time for Christmas Eve.

Despite being a phone, the iPhone doesn't have a single cohesive online experience for playing games.

Where the DS, Playstation 3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360 each have a single online services for gaming, Apple has left the creation of iPhone gaming networks to the game publishers. The result is a handful of disconnected services vying to be number one.

Publishers Gameloft, Ngmoco and Aurora Feint operate the three most popular services for the iPhone, each giving gamers the ability to connect with one another, share their gaming experiences, and play online.

Gameloft Live allows players to chat, message one another, earn game trophies and play mulitplayer matches live. Currently nine of Gameloft's titles are supported by the service with most of the publisher's future games slated to include Live support.

While Gameloft Live is only for Gameloft's titles, both Ngmoco's Plus+ network and Aurora Feint's OpenFeint are used by other developers to add online support to their games.

OpenFeint is being used in more than 300 games with another 800 in development, said Peter Relan, chairman of Aurora Feint.

The service includes game lobbies, social discovery, the ability to see what friends are playing and challenge them to games. Mulitplayer support is currently being tested, Relan said, with turn based multiplayer expected this holiday.

Ngmoco's Plus+ network allows players to create a profile, challenge friends, compete on leaderboards and find other games supported by the network.

While some gamers may feel it's inconvenient to have to sign up for multiple services to play online, the lack of any single gaming service doesn't seem like a bad thing to the three companies.

"We see it as an opportunity," said Simon Jeffery, Ngmoco's chief publishing officer. "Apple has provided a strong foundation for the development and publishing community to nurture into a rich gaming and social ecosystem. The Plus+ network was born out of consumer need, and its evolution and growth are fueled by the market."

Julien Fournials, Gameloft's senior vice president of production, agrees:

"At this point, I don't think it's that big of an issue," Fournials said. "What's happening now is that publishers are testing out and playing around with different gaming networks and customizing it to fit the needs of their games. It's good for the industry as a whole to offer consumers different gaming options."

But eventually the multiple networks could lead to problems, says Aurora Feint's Relan.

"In the long term it's a problem if the game networks are fractured," he said. "In the short term it's OK to have multiple because it creates innovation."

Eventually, Ngmoco's Jeffery say, the market will sort itself out if Apple doesn't step in with it's own network.

"We believe that there is certainly room for a couple of networks within the iPhone gaming ecosystem, possibly serving different segments of the overall market, but ultimately probably not more than that," he said. "Casual users in particular will get frustrated with multiple accounts and multiple login requests. We firmly believe that the market will rationalize into a couple of strong leaders very quickly now."

It could be a mistake to look at the current status quo of console gaming when considering the future of Apple's iPhone. Gameloft's Fournials says it might be better to compare iPhone gaming to other social networks like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, rather than to gaming platforms.

"The whole DNA of the App Store is diversity, so to have multiple social networking sites fits in with that structure," he said.

In the future, Gameloft Live will include stronger integration of social networks like Facebook, something Ngmoco is already pushing.

Meanwhile, Aurora Feint's founder and CEO Jason Citron says that his service is working to provide a network similar to Xbox Live for their games with the introduction of OpenFeint 2.4.

"Players will know when their friends are online, what game they are playing, and be able to instant message or mail each other just like on Xbox Live," Citron said. "We've added in-game forums for players to share tips and tricks, level strategies, or whatever they want with each other. Developers will be able to have a direct conversation with their players from right inside their games too — in the forums, by sending in-app announcements, responding to player feedback, or via e-mail to players who opt-in."

While it may feel like a disservice to gamers now, the ability for publishers and developers to test the bounds of what works and doesn't work in terms of social play and online gaming could help the iPhone evolve its own online gaming personality.

Providing a consistent login for the basics of online gaming, like finding opponents and comparing scores, is a must, but pushing the envelope through social interactions and community building would in the long run help emphasize the iPhone's unique networking strengths.

The best solution would be for Apple to provide that core online experience and leave the experimentation and innovation to outside developers.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Said Stephen Toulouse (Stepto) over Twitter earlier today:

While IW works on getting the MW2 glitch fixed, people we catch using it will recieve suspensions from LIVE. Play fair everyone. :>

Stepto clarified that bannings for this sort of terms of use violation typically are 24 hours, but can go up to two weeks if they're particularly egregious.

For those not familiar with the glitch, which can be used on PS3 and PC as well as the 360, it enables someone carrying a rocket launcher to turn into a sprinting human bomb. While the player dies in the process, it's still a cheap way to get kills, including triples and quads. And an easy way to get yourself reported, cussed out, etc. You can watch this for more information but, remember, trying it subjects you to a day without multiplayer. Which is like a day without sunshine. Or something.

Stephen Toulouse on Twitter [Twitter]

The dispute is centred around BBC's iPlayer, a service that allows people in the UK to watch BBC programs from their computer, PS3 or Wii. There were also plans to include the iPlayer on the Xbox 360, but because Microsoft insisted on restricting access to the player to paying, Gold subscribers, the BBC are withholding it.

Why? Because the BBC can't charge the British public for access to BBC programs, as use of the iPlayer is already covered under the TV license fee the Brits have to pay (Americans may wish to read this before continuing).

"Microsoft only wants to offer its users access to platforms it can charge for as this is the model it is pursuing" a BBC source told The Telegraph.

"This does not fit with the BBC's model and Microsoft will not budge at the moment. It is really frustrating for those involved on the BBC side who want to make sure iPlayer is rolled out on as many popular entertainment platforms as possible".

A more subdued, official statement from the BBC reads "BBC iPlayer has been extremely successful on PS3 and we recently re-launched on Nintendo Wii, from which the public response has been fantastic. People clearly want the BBC iPlayer on their gaming consoles, and we don't think Xbox users are any different, so we've had discussions with Microsoft about bringing the service to the platform."

Xbox 360 iPlayer launch delayed indefinitely [The Telegraph]

360 Live automatically retrieves your friends list when you sign into your Xbox Live account with it; organizes and groups your friends the way you'd expect to see them on a console; lets you change and update your Gamer Profile info and, most usefully, allows you to send and receive messages over XBL, even to multiple recipients.

Left unsaid is how this fits with Microsoft's edict last year that all iPhone/iPod Touch apps pertaining to Xbox Live be offered for the super-low price of free. For now it's $1.99, a nominal-enough fee if you just have to have the capability. Otherwise, keep an eye on it, this might attract attention from Redmond. Or, if Microsoft insists that it go for free, it might get pulled. So then you might want to buy it now. Who knows.

360 Live [site via Joystiq]

I'm not sure how I can tie this together with Thanksgiving Day, so we'll just mutter incoherently about turkey or something and move on to the main event. Transformers heads - 240 Microsoft points apiece. You've got hideous Michael Bay Megatron, slightly less hideous Optimus Prime, and Bumblebee, which I don't have a picture for and will be too busy sleeping or eating by the time you read this to look for one. I'd imagine it is yellow.

Activision is also releasing a trio of t-shirts for both factions, along with a Transformers logo tee, each running 80 Microsoft points a pop.

Someone email me and remind me to buy a Transformer head tomorrow. This is something I believe I need.

Unlike recent Capcom re-releases like Marvel v Capcom 2 and SSFIIHD, these won't be completely overhauled for the current generation of consoles. Rather, they'll be the original titles presented with two graphics modes available, one upscaled to "HD", the other as nature intended.

Both games will be bundled in the one package, called "Final Fight: Double Impact", and will also feature online leaderboards and co-op play.

Final Fight: Double Impact Unveiled [IGN]

Square Enix and Microsoft set up the Register - Tweet - Win event earlier this month, and the retweeting goal has been reached, unleashing an Xbox 360 Final Fantasy gift for everyone to enjoy. Yes, it's a chocobo toy for your Xbox Live Avatar! Joy of joys!

Kicking yourself now that you didn't participate? It's okay, you don't have to participate to partake. Simply head over to the special Final Fantasy XIII splash page on Xbox.com, register, and watch for your chocobo code to arrive later in the holiday season.

Bethesda is bringing out a line of Fallout-themed avatar wear to the Xbox Live Avatar Marketplace on Thanksgiving day, giving players six new ways to show off their love for Fallout 3 and its creators, Bethesda Game Studios. There's three t-shirts priced to move at 80 Microsoft points apiece; the standard Vault 101 suit, complete with PipBoy, for 240 points; a Vault Boy suit for 240 points; and the pièce de résistance - a Vault Boy head that covers up your avatar's goofy cranium.

My advice? Just buy the head, and play Vault Boy dress up. It's simply the right thing to do.

Fallout 3 items hitting the Xbox Avatar Marketplace this Thursday [Bethesda Blog]

Estavillo's suing Microsoft for an RROD on his 360, claiming that a disability means he can afford neither a new console nor a "well over $100 fee to fix it." He's looking for $75,000 on that complaint, because of the "undue stress" he's suffered since the machine's failure, plus the "sadness he will have in the mean time of finding one he can afford." Allllllllright. Next.

Nintendo of America isn't so holy in this either. Estavillo complains that a Wii firmware update disabled his homebrew channel. Basically, he's bitching that it prevents him from unlocking a character in Super Mario Galaxy and for that he wants $5,000 for obstructing his "pursuit of happiness."

In his suit Estavillo says he depends on games for his emotional well being because he suffers from depression, OCD, panic disorder, Crohn's disease and agoraphobia, the latter of which you might recall was his basis for suing Sony after it banned him for being a jackass on PSN. A judge threw out that lawsuit, a judgment which he has appealed. There's obviously no stopping this guy.

Banned Resistance Gamer Targets Microsoft and NOA in Latest Suits [Game Politics]