Our pals at Joystiq just got word straight from the horse’s mouth about the forthcoming Xbox 360 Dashboard update, and have posted the deets along with lots of screenshots. The biggest — and most expected — news is background downloading, which includes a queue with six slots for all your Halo 3 trailer and pricey Oblivion horse needs. Downloads will pause while you play online to minimize lag, but otherwise will run in the background while you go about your Dashboard business. Other improvements include a boot to Dashboard function, improved media playback and controls, full USB keyboard support, and an improved Marketplace layout to handle the influx of available content. The update will be available to Xbox Live users “in about a week,” and will be eventually be available bundled with retail game discs for those without an Internet enabled 360 (all four of you).

Assuming the Xbox 360 Core pack price stays the same at around $300 US, that gives Microsoft a $200 window to play with in order to make a next-gen optical capable 360 competitive in price with Sony's Blu-ray toting PlayStation 3. Of course by this November the Xbox's price structure could change drastically, as they have stated many times their intentions to drive down price and cost. What GamesIndustry heard from a UK retail source, however, is that the 360 + HD DVD (which may or may not come bundled together) will still weigh in lighter on the wallet than the PlayStation 3 by a significant margin -- however, that margin is pending British pounds, with the Xbox and HD DVD being £339 ($640 US), and the PS3 at £399 ($750 US). So what isn't immediately taken into account here is the effective price differential in currency conversion between nations; in the US that same PlayStation 3 will debut for $499, about $250 less than it will for our British counterparts, thus making the window for pricing the drive competitively much larger in overseas markets. If you ask us, we'll vote for a US price window of $200 to $250 (depending on the going rate for an Xbox at the time of launch), but any more than that and it'll be a hard sell being that it's really only a movie add-on to gaming platform.

We're not suggesting you try this, since, in addition to voiding your warranty, you run a real chance of bricking your Xbox 360, but we just thought we'd mention it: a new firmware hack for the 360, known affectionately as "Xtreme firmware for TS-H943 Xbox 360" by its creators, can apparently mod your 360's DVD drive so that it'll work with just about anything you can put in it, including "backup" discs made for both the original Xbox and the 360. According to about seven pages of posts on an Xbox forum, the hack does indeed seem to work, but only with 360s that have a Toshiba/Samsung DVD drive, and only if you're willing to take the time to follow the instructions very carefully. We'll pass -- at least until there's a version that lets the 360's HD DVD drive output 1080p video from protected discs over component cables. Make that work, and we'll happily risk bricking our 'box.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

There were two things that we thought would be a lock for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 lineup last week at E3: their HD DVD drive (which they delivered on, insofar as a mockup can), and an accompanying HDMI cable for actually watching those movies without fear of the deadly image constraint token. We assumed the latter would actually make it to market first, being that there’s already an obviously pent up demand for a 360 HDMI cable, but we thought wrong — Microsoft announced no such thing. Then along comes Lik-Sang, claiming they’ve got the skinny on the “official” MS HDMI cable, which would also feature component HD, and Dolby 5.1. Now, what are the chances that this is actually the real deal and not just a product stub in anticipation of an accessory that may or may not yet actually exist? Probably pretty slim, but it is Lik-Sang, after all, and they’ve been known to raise a few eyebrows.

[Thanks, GhostDoggy]

It only seemed appropriate to finish off our booth tours with (one of) the biggest at E3 — Microsoft’s. We heard from a little birdie the figure on this thing was well into seven digits, and it’s really no wonder. Similar to last year’s, the giant two story building they installed on their huge spread of land in the south hall was nothing less than enormous, and that’s to say nothing of the mammoth area they had for demo pods, their trailer theater, and the mini-booth dedicated to their newly rebranded Games for Windows initiative. Make no mistake about it, Microsoft showed at E3 and they weren’t kidding around.

Logitech showed up at E3 with a steering wheel of their own, the G25 system. And let us say, this thing is probably nicer than the wheel on our own automobile -- well, when we still had it. Their $299.99 rig features a leather-wrapped 11-inch wheel with 900° rotation, paddle shifters, dual-motor force feedback, and a very nice external clicky six-speed shifter. This'll be ready to roll in early October, long before the July launches of the force-feedback equipped DriveFX Wheel (shown after the break) for the Xbox 360, which will go for $99, and more entry level G-series devices Logitech's rolling out, such as the G3 laser mouse and G11 keyboard (which is basically the G15 with no display).

 

Here’s a juicy morsel for you: in his new book, Xbox 360 Uncloaked, gaming industry author Dean Takahashi claims that half of Microsoft’s original Xbox 360 development team began work on a portable console immediately after the home system launched, while the other half was tasked with driving down the 360′s production costs. Takahashi goes on to say that the big M plans to follow Sony’s lead and release the handheld Xbox halfway through the 360′s life span, which would help offset hardware cycle costs and maintain buzz about the brand. The supposed Xbox2Go (that’s what we’ll call it for now, anyway) would likely be released into a competitive landscape filled with PSP2‘s and who knows what kind of crazy Nintendo portables, but Microsoft has certainly shown that it’s in the videogame, uh, game, for the long haul, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see them pump these kinds of resources into the project if it does in fact exist. Oh, and before you start commenting on the device’s “design,” please note that the above picture is simply an artist’s conception created before any word of this got out.

If you’ve been following this story even a little bit over the last few months, you probably won’t exactly be shocked to hear that Microsoft is going to roll out a USB HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360. But if you’re tracking the ongoing format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, you should check out Microsoft’s announcement anyhow. What’s unusual about this release is that you won’t find any rhetoric about HD DVD being superior to Blu-ray — or even a ghost of Bill Gates’ earlier comments that the latter format was “anti-consumer.” Instead, Microsoft calls the quality of the two formats “a wash in terms of video quality,” and declares that the main difference between the two is pricing. We assume that means the 360′s HD DVD drive will be a bargain. Unfortunately, that’s one detail Microsoft has skipped, preferring to “save that good news for another day.” Like maybe the day after the PS3 — which will have a Blu-ray drive built in — gets its official price?

[Via Joystiq]

So word on the street is Microsoft's all set to announce the Xbox 360's external HD DVD drive at E3 -- which makes perfect sense, in all reality. They did, after all, claim it would be released "this year" when Gates unveiled their plans at CES, and since they launched the 360 at E3 last year, they've got to have something to show off this year while Sony and Nintendo get closer to their respective impending PlayStation 3 and Revolution launches. Chris Lewis, Microsoft Regional Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa sat down with Spiegel Online and let them know that we'll more than likely be seeing an HD DVD announcement at E3 (in addition to that Xbox camera we heard would launch next month), and alluded to the inclusion of HDCP compliance for the Xbox, which could only imply they'll finally release that freaking DVI cable. On the PS3 and Blu-ray, Lewis even volunteered that "Blu-ray right now reminds us of another technology from Sony: Betamax." without even being directly asked. Oh, this war is on, friends, make no mistake about it, and we'll see you at the battlegrounds of E3.

[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

That 12GB partition on your Xbox 360 not doing it for you? Datel -- the company that's carving out something of a niche with console storage peripherals -- has what looks like a unique solution. The XSATA connects to your 360 and your PC, letting you back up your console data to the PC, freeing up space on the 360. Once your 360's content is on your PC, you can also email unlocked files. Oh, and it has a blue glowing LED base, just 'cause. Expect to pay about $40, which is a lot less than you'd pay for an external drive for your 360 (though if you must have one, Datel would be happy to oblige).

[Via Gadget Review]