Xbox Live Turns 5 Today. To Celebrate Microsoft sent me a swanky little pack of swag!

Also, if you want to read a great article about the 5 year experience, check out Ozymandias’s blog.

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Microsoft is setting its sites high for Halo 3, shooting to have a $155 million dollar debut of the game. To put some perspective on it, Halo 2 launched with over 2 million copies sold in 24 hours for around $125 million.
While one would think the 155 Million dollar number might be a little high, especially considering the 360 install base is about half of what the original Xbox was when Halo 2 launched, there’s a few things to consider.

1) The majority of Xbox 360 owners right now are the hardcore gamer, and are typically the gamer that will buy Halo 3.

2) The base price of Halo 3 is $10 higher than Halo 2 was.

3) There are a $69.99 version and a $129.99 version of the game. All signs right now point to some incredible sales numbers for the $129.99 version, known as the Legendary Edition.

When you add up some of these things, you can see Microsoft doesn’t even need to sell close to 2 million copies and easily achieve the $155 million dollar mark. Microsoft is already guaranteed AT LEAST 60 Million Dollars in sales from pre-orders alone. And that would be if and only if they preordered the original version.

So will Microsoft hit the $155 million dollar target? My guess is they break $160 million.
Variety.com – High ‘Halo 3′ hopes

technorati tags:halo3, microsoft, money, lots, of

According to ArsTechnia journalist, Ben Kuchera, there’s a strong indication that all Xbox 360’s will begin to have the HDMI port standard. The rumor goes back to E3 where Microsoft announced their special edition Halo Xbox 360 unit. The unit was a traditional premium model with a Halo paintjob and an HDMI port.

The rumor goes that once all existing inventory is cleared out, you’ll begin to see specially marked boxes of Xbox 360 units on the shelves showing that it comes with an HDMI port. On top of this, these new boxes will be using the cooler running 65NM processors as well as quieter DVD drives. Good news all around!

Update: This is now officially confirmed. All models will begin to have the HDMI port. The HDMI cable is not included in the package, but Microsoft will be offering an “official” HDMI Cable for $49.99 which will include the adapter to split the audio out via Optical. Systems that include the HDMI version will have the HDMI logo on the package. The HDMI models should hit Europe “in a few months.”

27,200 Microsoft Points. That’s how many I’ve purchased since 11/29/2006.

So doing some math at 80 points per dollar that comes out to be… $340.

I do have 43 purchased Live Arcade games. So that’s not bad. $340 isn’t even 6 “regular” games. Plus I’ve purchased a few songs and albums through the Zune Store on PC which shares the MS Point system with Xbox Live. I think I’ve maybe purchased 2 themes and 2 picture packs total.

But wow. 27,200 MS Points. That was more than I expected.

I’ve decided to start my behind the scenes E3 coverage today with some news.

As you may or may not know I’ll be attending the brand new E3 Business and Media Summit this year representing Evil Avatar.com. The ironic thing of this is the exclusive nature of the event this year, being invite only. While in the past the staff at EvAv.com had a bitch of a time getting official access.

The first event of the show will be Microsoft’s Press Conference on Tuesday July 10th. I just confirmed my registration for the event, and they decided to ask some odd questions. Confirming involved telling them my favorite game, favorite achievement, favorite band and my gamer zone. Odd. But the bottom line is I’m going.

Next up is Nintendo’s Press conference on Wednesday morning. The big 3 Press Conferences are Invite only (like the event) so I’ve been trying to gain access. Nintendo responded with a “We’ll do our best, but won’t know until closer to E3″. Um…ok…gee thanks.

And then last of the big 3 is Sony. Sony. Dear Sony. What the fuck are you doing? I’ve sent out no less than 5 Emails to 4 different people without even the courtesy of a fucking response. Either they don’t have their shit together, or they just don’t give to shits about EvilAvatar.com. Ah well.

The good news this years is James Young aka Fitbabits from EvAv will be coming as well. This should help us provide better coverage. I’m looking forward to finally meeting him, hell we’ve been working together for over 3 years now.

More as it becomes available…