This chunk of an arcade machine really is just that, with the stick, buttons and components coming from Seimitsu, a company that supplies the guts to the actual arcade machines that get worn down with teenager sweat. Hell, this thing weighs nearly six pounds!

Combine that fact with this being a limited edition object, and you get a $151 pricetag (plus import costs, as this is Japan-only). But if you want arcade quality in your living room, there's not much else out there to match this. [Kotaku]

It's a pretty staggering figure, but I'm willing to bet that figures on the power consumption of things like refrigerators and washing machines are even worse. Any serious appliance is going to suck up a lot of juice, but that doesn't mean we should throw them all out.

However, those folks who leave their consoles on all the time aren't doing their energy bills any favors. With the Xbox 360 consuming 119 watts in active mode and the PS3 consuming 150 watts, turning these systems off when you aren't playing is kind of an obvious move. But apparently a lot of people just leave them on all the time, leading to one very basic question: why? Both systems have features that'll shut down automatically after a certain amount of idle time, seems like a no brainer to turn that on if you're too damned lazy to turn them off yourself when done playing. [NRDC via EcoGeek]

As examples, Kim mentions watching pro sports games on the Xbox while chatting with your friends, and reveals that they're thinking about adding a music service. (Zune? Hopefully not another service.)

Here's where it gets interesting—Kim says they're not planning on a browser or anything that completely busts open the Xbox. Rather, Kim says "“We are about delivering higher quality experience, not having the most varied experiences." Bits (unfortunately) paraphrases the next part:

He argued that while there may be hundreds of video sites, most of the activity is concentrating on a handful of sites like Hulu and YouTube. So his first instinct is cut a handful of deals that integrate the Xbox more deeply into such sites.

Hulu on the Xbox 360 totally would be a "higher quality experience"—one that would blow our mind. The deal would make sense for both parties too: It's no different than the integrated Netflix service on Microsoft's end, and it would turn the system into the most serious, fantastic video box around (important, since PS3 has the Blu-ray advantage on the video front). For Hulu, it would be a huge opportunity to blow up their audience and advertising revenue.

Of course, it's entirely possible, if not probable Kim was just spouting off examples and no Hulu deal is in works. But, if Microsoft really is looking at every good option, surely they're looking at Hulu. They've already done tons of deals with Hulu parent NBC, and they've never been afraid to pay up to get what they want. We know it's what we want, so we hope where's the smoke, there's hot, streaming fire. [Bits]

Essentially, the M.I.C. is a nice microphone for Rock Band/Guitar Hero, but it also has all the necessary Xbox 360 buttons built in. This means you don't need to use both a mic and a controller to play. Awesome! Is it $60 worth of awesome? Eh, probably not, but if you're a seriously hardcore Rock Band singer with some extra coin to toss around, you'll probably like the functionality. Head over to Kotaku to read their full impressions. [Kotaku]

If you're here reading Gizmodo, there's a good chance you have a hard drive full of video somewhere. And you also probably have a PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii. If those two things aren't working together for you in beautiful symbiosis, allowing you to watch all of your downloaded or ripped video on your TV instead of hunched over a laptop screen, well, this is the guide for you.

Now there are two general strategies you can take: physically copying your files to a USB drive, memory card or CD/DVD, which is pretty straightforward, or streaming your video over the network, which is where things get more fun and interesting. So let's dive in.

First things first, codecs. Now that you're all learn-ed on the ways of video encoding thanks to Matt's Giz Explains from this week, the issue of codecs will make a lot more sense. Thankfully, it's not something you have to worry too much about here, because all three consoles can handle a large number of the codecs you will find commonly: AVI, MPEG (1, 2 and 4), H.264, DivX/XviD, and WMV—and if a particular format you want to play isn't supported, it's often possible to convert it to work on the fly. The PS3 also supports AVCHD, a format used by many HD camcorders. Not all formats are supported with every streaming method though, especially in the 360's case, which we'll get to in a second. Now, for getting all those files on the TV.

Note: if you need to re-encode a video in a different format because it won't play, nothing beats VLC's transcoding wizard. Here's a guide.

Xbox 360: Streaming (PC)
In typical Microsoft fashion, there are tons of different ways to pull of streaming your video to the Xbox 360—and the only one that's truly comprehensive, in our opinion, comes from a third party. TVersity is a free UPnP media server that can manage your video and music files anywhere on your PC and stream them out to your 360 over the network. It will also kindly transcode just about any video you can throw at it into a codec your console can definitely read. You might have to install some additional codec packs here and there for Windows but for the most part, you can forget about worrying about codecs with TVersity. This also allows TVersity to handle files not officially supported by the 360, like MKV containers.

1. Grab TVersity here and install it.
2. Click the giant plus sign in the top left corner to "Add Your Media Source" - namely, the folder on your PC with all of your videos.
3. Under advanced options, set your transcoding preferences: "When Needed" will make sure most all of your files play.
4. In the main TVersity menu, select "Start Sharing"
5. On the Xbox 360, TVersity will now appear as a source in the Media blade or under My Xbox -> Video Library in NXE.

The other three options via Microsoft's own various software solutions all have their own drawbacks, which we'll cover here briefly. Our advice? Use them only if you already use the Zune software, Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center to manage all of your video.

Windows Media Player 11: WMP 11 can stream out to the Xbox 360 pretty easily. Here is an in-depth guide. Drawbacks? Somewhat clunky format support. In our tests we could not stream Quicktime video at all, and had inconsistent experiences with MP4 files. MPEG-4 and H.264 support are technically supported via third-party WMP codec add-ons, but even with those, we still had trouble—MP4 files tended to play fine on the WMP 11 end, but not show up as browsable on the 360. Somewhat unbelievably, the Xbox 360 team actually recommends you manually rename your unsupported MPEG-4 and H.264 files, adding the ".avi" container extension to fool WMP into playing them. This worked occasionally, but not for every file and was generally inconsistent.

Zune Software 3.0: Zune offers a much nicer interface than WMP (Settings -> Sharing -> Add is the extent of the setup), and thankfully supports MPEG4 and H.264 much more consistently. Drawbacks? No DivX or Xvid support, which means a huge chunk of your Torrented video probably won't work.

Windows Media Center Extender: If you already have a Media Center setup honking on your network, there's a good chance you won't need this guide, but the Xbox 360 can of course stream your MCE content to your TV seamlessly (a complete guide is here). The interface is really fantastic. Drawbacks? The gimpiest codec support of the bunch: only MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and WMV are supported. So unless you're converting everything you have into those formats, you'll still need something like TVersity to play most files you'll find up for download.

So, in the end, TVersity wins hands down as the easiest and most elegant streaming setup for the 360. But do keep in mind—if you're playing a format that your Xbox can't handle (MKV being the most common of these you'll find), TVersity will have to transcode, which means you will lose a bit of quality.

Xbox 360: Streaming (Mac): UPnP support—the networking standard used by both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in various flavors to play network-streamed video, music and photos—is not natively supported by OS X yet. And unfortunately, there isn't a stellar all-in-one free package like Windows' TVersity.

Nullriver, however, makes an incredibly slick piece of software called Connect360, which easily streams all of your iLife libraries or any folder full of video on your Mac to the 360. Unfortunately, it'll cost you $20. There is a free trial version that supposedly shuts off after 30 minutes of sharing, but sometimes it seems to forget and lets you play longer. But even so, $20 isn't bad for the convenience factor here. No transcoding, but it will handle every codec the console itself can play back.

1. Download and install the Connect360 preference pane.
2. In System Preferences, start up Connect360 sharing. Here you can also add folders for more sharing.
3. Access the Connect360 source on your Xbox in the usual way. Done.

Xbox 360: Physical Media
1. If streaming isn't for you, and you don't mind hauling a storage device back and forth between your computer and Xbox, then this is super easy: Insert Flash disk/USB/CD/DVD and browse it with the Media blade or the Video Library section of NXE (under "My Xbox"). Enjoy.

Playstation 3: Streaming (PC)
TVersity: Again, Tversity is your friend. It works just as well for the PS3 as it does for Xbox 360 (see above for setup).

1. With Tversity set up and sharing turned on, just browse to COMPUTERNAME: TVersity in the XMB and you'll see a listing of all your shared files.

Windows Media Player 11: Just like for Xbox 360, you can use WMP11's built-in DLNA/UPnP serving capabilities to stream to the PS3, too—but with the same codec funkiness as noted above.

1. In the Media Sharing preference box with your PS3 powered on and connected to the network, select "Unknown Device"—that's your PS3.
2. Your library should now show up in XMB.

Playstation 3: Streaming (MAC)
Mac: Nullriver didn't just hook up 360 owners—Media Link is the version especially for PS3. It costs 20 bucks, but will give you totally seamless and painless streaming of all of your iLife libraries (photos and music too) as well as files in any folder you can access with your Mac, whether it's on a network or local.

1. Operation is just like Connect360—with sharing enabled in the Media Link preference pane, just browse through all your files under the "Media Link" source in XMB.

Playstation 3: Physical Media
1. Easy as pie. If you're using a USB flash or hard disc or an SD or CF card, just dump all of your videos into a folder named VIDEO on the root of the drive and they'll show up automatically in the XMB.
2. You can also browse the entire drive or disc by pressing triangle and choosing "Display All" to find videos that aren't in the VIDEO folder.

Wii: Physical Media
For playing video on your Wii, physical media is the way to go, which is easy to pull off with some homebrew hacking. There are lots of services that will transcode your video and ouput it in a Flash player that you can view through the Wii's Opera browser (like Orb), but you'll take a hit quality-wise and it's not as easy as just playing the source files directly with Mplayer.

1. Install the Homebrew Channel and Mplayer on your Wii. We've got you covered here with our complete Wii homebrew guide—but hopefully you haven't installed the latest System Menu update. In that case, you'll have to wait for a workaround, but it probably won't be long.

2. Install Mplayer via the Homebrew Browser (also covered in our guide).

3. Now, you can use Mplayer to play files off or even an attached USB drive (as long as its formatted in FAT16 or FAT32, which most are). The interface is not nearly as nice, but it gets the job done.

4. Mplayer for the Wii covers a ton of codecs, but sadly, the Wii's processor chokes on HD content. If you've got HD files, you'll need to transcode them into a lower resolution with VLC.

And that's about it. Now, no more huddling around your laptop screen or fiddling with TV and audio-out cables. Welcome to the good life.

Additional reporting and testing by Seung Lee. See more Giz how-to guides here. And as always, if you have anything to add to our findings, please let us know in the comments.

I WARNED YOU, WHY OH WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN? [Hawty McBloggy via Kotaku]

It also comes with two t-shirts! And a couple recharge kits! And a gig bag! And nothing else! That's right, $50 for a bunch of crap you'll never use. All for $240, more than the cheapest version of the console it's meant to be played on.

Seriously RedOctane, I know that deluxe editions are all the rage these days, but you can't really think your customers are so stupid as to drop $50 on a couple of shirts and a keychain, can you? [RedOctane via Kotaku]

[XBMC]

Blackwater recruiter James Overton is working on packing a Microsoft Xbox video-game console, modem, TV projector and "Guitar Hero" video game into a kit that can be kicked out of a Blackwater cargo plane and dropped to troops in Afghanistan.

Why not Army of Two, Blackwater?

Honestly, I don't even know how to feel about this. On the one hand, it's great that the troops will have fun games to play on their down time. On the other hand, Blackwater is one of the most reprehensible companies on the planet. What a world. [GamePolitics via Kotaku]

It all makes sense to us. Dropping prices will move the older units, while a 60GB model will better compete with the PS3 on specs, filling and rounding out that gap between the 20GB Premium and 120GB Elite. [Hollywood Reporter, Ars, Kotaku]

Since Trouble in Paradise is essentially coming out for both the Xbox 360 and DS (the DS version is called Pocket Paradise), Rare played with the idea of having the 360's optional camera take shots of the DS screen. This would allow DS gamers to transfer or view pinatas on their 360 (a la Pokemon).

A Rare employee explained, "We got it to work, but it was too late in the development cycle..." On the plus side, it looks like they do have the trick working for transferring Zune and iPod content to the 360 (via "card cordes"). But obviously without a full game behind either of those platforms, the experience will be more of a novelty. [MTVMultiplayer]

At this point, I can tell you we have LG plus three additional partners actively working on integrating our technology into their products. Three of the four partners are major companies which each sell millions of devices per year and will enable the Netflix functionality in some of those devices likely in Q4 of this year. The fourth partner is a small company with which — which will likely launch sooner than Q4.

Rumors have been floating around about the XBox 360 for awhile now, so that makes Microsoft one likely contender. Naturally, that could also mean that Sony and the PS3 would be included. Other major company players that naturally spring to mind are TiVo and Apple—but the fourth "small company" is anyone's guess. [Seeking Alpha via Hacking Netflix via Zats]

We asked Beth, his mom, what happened, exactly, and here's what she had to say about what went down.

My 13 year old managed to break the vacuum....thinking it would release him from that duty. He also has a list of other chores that were TYPED up for him to do Friday afternoon....one thing on the list was done...mind you these are simple things...empty the trash, clean your room, etc. Then I go thru the cookies on his computer and find out he has been checking out porn sites. Now there is a password so he can't even get on and his my-space page has a picture of snoopy on it now. Apparently I'm the meanest mom in the world, were his words.

I'm a single mom. I can't let them walk over me or I might never get up.

The score is now Beth - 1, her kid - 0. If you want to increase that score for Beth, go ahead and pick up a slightly used Xbox 360 for $250 and all of his games for $15 each, with bitterness from a 13-year-old coming along with them free of charge. [UPDATE: You guys killed Craigslist! Check out the new auction on eBay]

Well, today that's true, but what Sandy was talking about was cluster computing, the idea that down the line, all the brainpower for game consoles will be located remotely. Consumers will have low-power local units that'll just hook up to a display, which a huge, beefy server farm will run the games themselves and pipe them to you over a high-speed internet connection.

It's certainly an interesting idea, as it would stop requiring people to upgrade their PCs with the hottest graphics card and would allow developers to create games as demanding as they're able to power. However, it seems to me that we might still be a bit far away from the bandwidth that would be required for such a setup.

Is super-high speed internet really going to be widespread enough in 5 years for us to ditch local consoles altogether? While I think this idea will take hold and become the norm eventually, I'd be shocked if we didn't have one more generation of high-powered consoles that eschewed physical media. It'll be a stepping stone generation, but with current console lifespans looking to be pretty long and the bandwidth requirements for cluster computing gaming still pretty steep, that whole idea seems to be 10 years away at the very least.

What do you guys think? Are consoles doomed, or do we have a good long time to wait before they become obsolete?

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Releasing a statement about a survey? Sounds like someone's trying to jockey a better negotiating position while talks are still underway. On a similar note, Netflix's online site seems to have been down for most of Monday, which makes the case for streaming media even stronger. [Reuters - Thanks David!]

"We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace. As we've long stated, we believe it is games that sell consoles and Xbox 360 continues to have the largest next-gen games library with the most exclusives and best selling games in the industry. We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room along with playback of the DVD movies they already own."

But, for everyone but Toshiba, HD DVD was just a stepchild they let into their house. The drive and consequence just wasn't there, even with its second biggest backer, Microsoft. (What would they have gained if HD DVD prevailed? What have they lost now?) We still think it'll be a while before you see a Blu-ray player from them—not as long as it'd have taken Sony to pump out an HD DVD player, but we wouldn't pick up a 360 w/ plans to use it as BR player anytime soon. [Microsoft]

Why make a big to-do about this? Well, tomorrow the NPD numbers for January come out, and buried in the missives about overwhelming demand is this bit: "We think this will have an impact on our sales," Bell said. "It may cause the overall industry number to be down a little bit." We'll let you guys do the math on this one. [Reuters]

So just when is HD DVD dead in Microsoft's eyes? It's "over when Toshiba says they're not doing HD DVD anymore." And despite the typhoon slamming their sails this week, we're pretty certain Toshiba is staying on on the boat until it hits the sea floor. [Giz's HD DVD Coverage]

Specific details on the deal are coming in a few weeks, though fingers crossed we'll have some choice in the game that'll occupy space on our hard drives, 'cause a lot of the games are crap I'd never play, and getting one of those would weirdly annoy me more than just receiving a nicely worded apology. Which, coincidentally, is reproduced below. [Major Nelson]

Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records. This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service.

While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance. I would like to take this moment to thank you each and every one of you for your patience and understanding as our team has worked around the clock to return the service to a stable state.

At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service. And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge. In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you.

Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today!

Sincerely,
Marc Whitten
General Manager, Xbox LIVE
Gamertag: Notwen

It's US residents only (plus the site is a little busted up in Firefox 3 so I couldn't login 'til I fired up IE). If your friend's getting a Zune for Christmas, they'll work in the Zune Marketplace too. Just take note that if you actually give someone a bundle of points for Christmas, since the program just launched yesterday, it's a red-and-green neon sign that you're a mediocre-to-crappy friend. [Major Nelson]

The quick conclusions, followed by a more in-depth breakdown w/ fun charts below: A huge proportion of gamers have gone HD, with PS3 owners leading in higher-end setups—71 percent gaze at some sort of HDTV, and 54 percent are enveloped by surround sound, with the 360, and surprisingly, the Wii not too far behind on either front.

That the 360 barely trails PS3 HD rates with 66 percent isn't mind-blowing—it and the PS3 are geared toward HD and higher end gamers, and have bigger pricetags to match (so if you can afford 'em it's more likely you can afford HD). Plus, both support an HD disc format, so it's no wonder they blow the Wii out of the water in movie watching (which managed 14 percent despite not officially supporting DVD playback). But a certifiably surprising 65 percent of Wii owners in this survey have HD setups, just 1 percent fewer than the 360.

You see the same thing with surround sound—48 percent of 360 owners have surround, and 43 percent of Wii owners. There is a bit more of a stratification, since the PS3 leads hard in 7.1 adoption, with the Wii trailing most visibly here and shooting way ahead in stock TV speaker usage.
One big blind spot in the study is that (or at least in this report of it) is console cross-ownership. My feeling is that owners of multiple consoles are much more likely to have HD setups w/ surround sound since they've likely got more coin and are more serious about their home theater setup, as well as consumer electronics generally. Like, I would bet that a big chunk of the Wii HD adopters also own a 360 or PS3, though it's clear gamers all around want to see prettier pictures and hear bigger booms. [CEPro via Max Console via Kotaku]

"It's been the longest, hardest transition in the history of the industry...Last Friday marked one of those points where you can say something's changed...Around the world, based on the data I've got, it was pretty clear that the transition is now over.

Really though, part of the reason the transition yawned into a two-year stretch is because Microsoft decided to jump the gun on everyone by about a year. It gave them an edge, true, but it also made the shift seem longer and more difficult than it really was because its own launch window was problem-ridden.

If you take last year's launch of the Wii and PS3 as the actual starting point, with all three on the market, the player with the most consistent difficulty since then has been Sony, but things are looking up for them post-$399 PS3 launch. (Nintendo and Microsoft have had their own share of problems, for sure.) Riccitello thinks it's all good now, anyway:

It looked like it might have been a two-horse race, but it's clearly a three-horse race...I think from this point, pleasantly for me, it's sort of fat city in the game industry.

As Ars points out, Microsoft's been pretty public and all apologetic about the rampant Red Ring plague, dumping a billion dollars into seriously (and appropriately) extended warranties for repairs multiple times, and beefing up hardware to take the heat. More importantly, the Xbox 360 was killed by Halo with the candlestick in the living room connection is a thread that hasn't exactly lit up the internet or the media, and they (we) love jumping on that kind of stuff.

Our verdict? Bogus and unnecessary. We sentence you to death by Needler. Before they put it on steroids. [Ars]

Guitar: Vs Guitar Hero 3's Wireless Axe, the Rock Band wired guitar has far better neck action, feeling less like a toy, a set of closely placed buttons up near the body that function identically. The neck is slim as a real guitar. The button presses happen with little throw, and don't click. The strum bar doesn't click either, but there is a notch at the end that feels more like strumming a guitar string than the GH3 guitar. I like it a lot better. If you haven't heard, the GH1 or 3 guitar can be used with Rock Band but not vice versa—that's important for your bass player. Kotaku confirmed that the PS3 Guitar Hero guitars don't work with PS3's Rock Band. Also, I just noticed a switch on the guitar for switching between effects: Wah Wah, Flange, Delay, Echo, Etc. Very cool. (BTW, in the photo, I have two guitars, this kit only comes with one.)

Drums: These things are huge, but as something you have to assume emo gamer teens and slightly overweight Chinese American bloggers are going to beat on without much pause, it strikes the right balance between being sturdy and compact. I just wish it had a folding mechanism for throwing it into the closet when non-gamer friends come over. Pads are coated with a nice rubber surface, and the kick pedal doesn't mind if you rest your feet on it. There's a controller in the middle of the setup, so you can navigate menus before sets. The drum sticks are cheap, but whatever. (Here's a post we did that shows you how big the set is and how you can take it apart for storage.) P.S. I suck at drums. P.P.S. Drums are way better exercise than Wii Tennis.

Mic: Heavy enough to please me. Don't like the dongle at the other side. I'd like a headset so that I can be like Cher or play guitar/drums while singing. Tip, you might have problems getting the mic to detect. Either a patch for the game or restarting the console with the mic in it, and switching to the console from the USB hub fixed it. (More on the hub in a bit.) BTW, this looks identical to the mic included with Karaoke rev for PS2. That one seems to work with Rock Band.

I neglected to mention the included powered USB hub the guitar and drums plug into. Really annoying that you need another AC adapter, but what USB doesn't have, USB doesn't have.

Even though the Zune and Xbox product brands are separate, they are ultimately meant to connect to the same central network. The online services for Xbox, Zune and future products will merge. Video will be a key part of this service.

"Fast forward a little bit," and there'll be an all-in-one setup stratified "like DirecTV," where there's a "basic, there is enhanced, there is movie pack and NFL Sunday ticket," so it's like Xbox Live Gold and Silver, but with more customization. Customization, in fact, appears to be a core selling point of the service.

Maybe the J in J. Allard stands for Jesus:

What I want to do at E&D [the entertainment and devices division] is build an entertainment service that can connect, that has a screen and buttons and a speaker, so you can watch what you want, where you want, how you want. Maybe you are a commuter, and what you are all about is ESPN. I'll give you ESPN your way.

But as much forward looking as Allard did during the interview, he also took a look back, to the early days of Zune:

I'm a big believer in failing fast... If we skipped last year, we would have never come out with the product we did this year... We learned that because of the shortfalls in the PC client [software], the device was less useful... People hated that there was no podcasts, that they couldn't fill their cultural cache [the Zune] with the stuff that was meaningful to them.

A cellphone operator is not best positioned to decide how to lay out a menu. I think the iPhone came out and showed people a great experience, and in some ways got everybody to check their ego at the door.

What you will see from us is more of these signature experiences. When you see the Zune, you'll say say, I want my music experience on the phone to be like that. Hey, I want my telecommunication experience on the phone to be more like that.

When the update hits December 4th, current Xbox 360 owners will be able to download original Xbox games for $15. Initial titles will include Halo, Fahrenheit, Fable, Crimson Skies, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex and Burnout 3. There's not a bad game on that list...hopefully those of us with 20GB hard drives can find the room.

Also, Europe will finally get Video Marketplace downloads, though we're not certain how localized the content will be (we're guessing there will be some difference in what's offered). But in the interest of full disclosure to our fine European readers, we have no sympathy that it's taken this long considering the endless piles of great tech you get before we do. And no, we are so not even now so don't even play that card. [kotaku]