Paul Thurrott, co-host of the popular podcast Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte, mentioned the new 360 in the latest podcast, specifically at time marker 27.55. He clearly states things such as (from article on Xboxic):

• A new 360 will be released in late 2007
• The new 360 is the only way that you can benefit from the upcoming IPTV service
• A bigger Hard Drive will be bundled with the new 360
• The new 360 is pretty likely to be quieter

Now this is sure to piss off a lot of people. They announce this huge IPTV service and you need a new version of the console to use it? Take this as rumor for now, although it should be noted that Thurrott DOES work for Microsoft.

No matter what anyone says, it’s pretty hard to deny that a new version of the Xbox 360 is coming with an HDMI port and a larger hard drive. It’s just a matter of when.

So after about 3 years of not having surround sound, I’m finally having the wires run today. I had surround sound while I lived in Delaware, then when I lived on Long Island I didn’t even bring my stereo up. Then we moved upstate, and couldn’t run the wires in the house we were renting. Now that we own a condo, I’m having the wires run today. I would have done it myself, but the moldings in here are literally so fucking intricate that I don’t want to touch them. The molding around doors is literally 10 pieces of molding for each side. I shit you not. The level of craftsmanship is insane. But anyway, we came up a couple ways to get the wires run so we don’t have to see them. So by the end of the day, I’ll have my surround sound speakers wired up. GIGGITY GIGGITY GOO!

[Update] So after pulling the floor molding off, we found that the people who built this place fucked up in how the installed the molding, meaning I can’t run speaker wire that way. FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK. I’m beyond pissed. Has anybody used any wireless speaker systems or any of those simulated surround systems? I need something. Anything at this point. FUCK

Apparently this press release was completely fabricated. Boo on that. I got excited for it. Read up on the fake story anyway.

In a Press Conference early morning 1/11/07 in Osaka, Japan (for those who don’t understand world time, it just happened), Konami announced (fake press release) a development team called “Konami X Productions”, headed by Hidea Kojima himself, will be developing games EXCLUSIVELY for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft platforms. They’ll start by developing Metal Gear Solid: Trilogy for the Xbox 360. The game will include remakes of Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Substinence. Also being developed is Metal Gear Solid: Fluid Ac!d for the Zune.

This would be HUGE news for 360 owners, if it was true.

I’m still having ranked match issues in Gears of War. I can search for a quick match or custom match, but every time I try to join one, I get a message that “You have lost connection to the host.” So I still can’t get into any ranked matches. Didn’t feel like player matches last night, not too many people from my friends list were on. So I haven’t had a chance to test the new maps. Maybe Jmel, Loot Ninja’s resident Gears fanboy, can give some impressions.

Apparantly, the patch messed up VGA for SD resolutions. Text is overlapping, everything looks washed out, and resolutions seems to be dropping to 640×480 no matter what you set it to in the dash. Hopefully Epic will fix the issue for SD users.

So today I woke up early and wanted to see if the Gears of War patch was out, but was greeted with an auto update for the dash when I signed into live. I didn’t update because the last time I did, it killed my system slowly over the following week.

There are a few threads on the xbox.com forums speculating what might have been included in the update, but as of 11 a.m. there is still nothing solid.

I will try to post back when I have more information.

UPDATE:: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2007/01/09/today-s-dash-update.aspx

Major Nelson posted about the dash update with enough information to satisfy a 2 year old. When will ms start giving us some info when they fix or break something? Oh, and by the way, NEVER use 1up for your xbox 360 news. They really screwed the pooch on the news of the udpate.

Personally, I think the update did something to fix either vga issues, or something video related as well as possibly fixing whatever clusterfuck they started with the nov 30th update (gpu clock? anyone?). I noticed right away after updating that now my background doesn’t cover as much as the screen as it did. I’d love to find out more.

UPDATE (from drunk pandas): They didn’t fix VGA. Mine still sucks donkey balls.

So Bill Gates keynote just ended at CES. All I can say is… what a fucking waste of time. No announcement of HDMI enabled 360 or larger hard drive. They announced more about Live Anywhere, which we all already knew about. They just said UNO and Halo 2 will be playable as cross platform. Cool and all, but where’s the good shit? No fucking where. That’s where it is.

With the recent news from Sony today that they’ve sold 1 million PS3 units (Xbox 360 sold 600k in that same time frame), Microsoft better capitalize NOW on whatever they can, meaning HDMI and a larger hard drive. The longer they wait, the more they’re going to piss off their user base.