The contest is now over and the winners have been chosen. Thank you to everyone who participated. We have contacted the winners by email and they will be announced on the site soon. The 1st place winner’s design will also be displayed on the site when it’s completed. Please be sure to check back often, as we will have more contests in the future.

-JENNI CHASTEEN

My 360 (or more accurately a replacement unit) finally returned from it’s long journey across the country on Friday January 5th. For anyone that’s counting, that’s 24 days after the first phone call. That’s a week and three days longer than support suggested it would take, however, the turnaround time did include both Christmas, and new year’s day. All in all it’s been a fairly painless experience. I did hit a snag with the shipping, however, a friend of mine was able to take it to UPS for me the day after I called MS regarding the shipping issue. It’s a good thing too, because I never did hear back from the auditing department as Mel Gia (a supervisor at the support center I contacted) suggested I would.

I’m still in the process of tying up a few loose ends. My girlfriend no longer has access to any of our downloadable content due to Microsoft’s DRM. For anyone who doesn’t know, when you pay for a piece of downloadable content, say an XBLA game, it is tied to both the gamertag it was downloaded under, and the console it was downloaded on. My girlfriend and I both had access to the content on the old system, but since everything was purchased under my gamertag, she is now locked out of everything. I called the support line, and after ten frustrating minutes of explaining the situation to a woman named Tara who couldn’t hear a word I was saying for some reason, I was transfered to a supervisor named Yonika (spelling?) who made arrangements to credit all of the necessary points to my girlfriend’s XBL account so that the items could be repurchased. It will take five to seven business days to get the points. As far as my Xbox Live downtime, a helpful customer service rep on their forums told me that, unfortunately, they don’t offer compensation for downtime, but he did say that he is periodically given codes for XBL time, and the next time that happens, he’ll pass one on to me.

I went into this experience expecting to go through one of the horror stories I’ve heard about Microsoft’s support. While the experience wasn’t perfect (I was hung up on by a rude Indian woman who was allegedly transferring me) it wasn’t terrible either. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Were all of my problems addressed? Yes. If your 360 breaks, just take a deep breath, and take it one step at a time, and chances are you’ll be ok in the end.

-MIKE KURZ

It’s impossible to deny that a prototype for an Xbox 360 with an HDMI port exists. Pictures and video of the Xbox 360 v2 (codename Zephyr) have been circulating for a couple of days now, yet Microsoft still refuses to make a public statement, and I have a theory about why. I see a price drop coming for the 360. They’ve already dropped production costs far enough that they’re making a profit on the 360. I suspect That in March of this year (you know, when the PS3 launches in Europe) we’ll see a price drop on the premium and core Xbox 360’s, as well as the launch of the Xbox 360 v2. The price will most likely be cut by $50 usd, making the core system $250 (competition for the Wii) and the premium $350. This leaves room for the new 360 to clock in at $450 - $100 more than the premium unit, which is pretty reasonable for an HDMI port and a 120 gb hard drive - and it’s still cheaper than a PS3.

The motivation behind this move would be to put just a little more pressure on Sony when they make their European debut.

Bear in mind this is all speculation, and only time will tell for sure.

-MIKE KURZ

Sony’s broken a lot of promises regarding the PS3. When they promised a million units by the end of the year, I didn’t believe them. It seems I was wrong, they did it. However, it would seem that merely shipping consoles is not enough. Reports have been coming in for the past two weeks of PS3’s sitting, waiting for someone to take them home and show them some love…. but it’s not happening. We want to know why. Why haven’t you bought a PS3? It’s a powerful gaming machine, as well as the most reasonably priced blu ray player, so why is it just sitting on store shelves?

[update] Photo courtesy of Kotaku. They also deserve credit for being the first place I heard that PS3’s were sitting on store shelves.

-MIKE KURZ

Why haven't you bought a PS3 yet?

• Price - $600 is too much.
• Content - I'll get one when a game I want comes out
• There are PS3's in stores?!? I've got shopping to do!
• I already got one

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We’re back! How was your holiday? Did you miss us? We missed you.

Anyway, just wanted to remind you all to comment on any post made after this one for your chance to win a hand painted Xbox 360 faceplate. We will pick a winner randomly on January 15th, so be sure to check back to find out who won.