Wanna play Gears of War before everyone else? If you live in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or San Francisco, you can have your chance. Microsoft is partnering up with New Line Cinema and together they are bring you GOW and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. On Wednesday, Oct 4 if you are one of the lucky gamers that get to see the pre-release screening of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right after the movie you will get you chance to play Gears of War. All you need to do is register online today at XBox.com or at TexasChainSawmovie.com for your chance to play the game and see the movie. And for those of you that don’t live in those 4 cities, I’m being told that you should check back at the Texas Chain Saw movie website for future events.

Wow, this is pretty cool, I just wished I lived in one of those cities so I could try this game out.

As reported on Kotaku, Microsoft has owned up to all the faulty consoles that they were shipping. If you have bought a console with a manufacturer date before Jan 1, 2006, which would make your Xbox currently out of warranty, Microsoft will repair your console for free, thats right, free. And for those of you that have paid for a repair, Kotaku is reporting that you can get a refund for the repair amount. Wow, this is really cool to see, and its about time. Mine was one of those systems that would have been in this date. So if you have had any problems with your Xbox be sure to call MS up about this.

Alright everyone I recieved my Vision Camera today. I was going to do a video review for it, with everything from hook up to changing settings to video chatting BUT Major already beat me to it. So instead I will do a review for you and let you know some of the good and bad. Ok, to start off, this thing is the easiest to setup.

All you have to do is plug it in, thats it, nothing more. Once you do that your up and running. You can tell its working by looking at your dashboard background, you should see a watery type of effect, thats because its taking the what your camera see’s and applying it to your background all faded out and with special effects.

Now to do video chats, all you have to do there is look at the person you wanna video chat with and send them a video chat invite, its that easy. While in video chats, the bumbers change special effects, X goes to the options menu which will allow you to change the lighting and color settings, and the triggers vibrate the other persons controller. You can also select zoom which will allow you to zoom in on a section of the screen at you can pick up to 2x. And thats it for video chat.

To send pictures, all you have to do is select the person that you wanna send a picture to, you go to send message, take picture and from there you can zoom in and take a picture. After you take a picture it then will allow you add special effects. Once your done you can throw in voice, text or nothing at all and send out the picture. Again its that simple.

As for videos while in games, ie uno, spades ect. it seems on by default and so far you seem to be able to zoom in 4x in games (probably do to the smaller amount of screen space you have while in games)

Now for the bad stuff, no auto focus, so you have to manually get up off your ass and rotate the ring on the camera, that kind of sucks. If you wanna video chat, you have to end whatever game your in, you can not video chat in the background like you can do with audio chats, and that really sucks. Where is Totemball, it was suppose to be out of the 19th for those who have the camera but its not, I really wanted to try that. And last but not least, you can not save your pictures, I don’t know if this was overlooked or they just didn’t wany you to do this but this is not an option.
I do have to say the positives by far out weigh the minus and I would recommend to everyone I know, to pick one of these up, its a really cool addition to the Xbox 360. So if you get one and wanna video chat with someone, go ahead and see if I’m online, I would be happy to videochat with you.

-Steve519

And for those of you with kids, Major Nelson posted a Vision Camera post that involves the family settings that I think you really should look into to help protect your kids. Here is the link.

BTW, stay tuned to the XBLRadio.com website because we will be giving another one away shortly

Alright you can win an Xbox 360 Live Vision Camera for free. Its really simple, all you have to do is win a XBL Radio sponsored Texas Hold’em Tournament. It will start this up coming Saturday, continue Sunday, and then again next Saturday so as you see it will just go during the weekend. One round a day, starting at 5pm PST. So if you would like to enter, all you have to do is reply in the Xbl Radio FORUM post about this topic with your gamertag. Its that simple, be sure to read that post fully though because it has all the rules for the tournament. If you have any questions feel free to ask, you can ask here on this blog or you can email me at Steve@xblradio.com BUT don’t email me your gamertag, I want them all centerlized, that way I don’t lose anyone’s gamertag that wants to enter. So good luck to ya, and don’t forget to get our latest XBL Radio show buy clicking the “Get Our Podcast” link at the top of the page, because that is the reason why we are doing this contest, to inform new people about our awesome show.

And for those who didn’t see the forum link above here it is again

You know all those great ideas you have to make the Xbox 360 dashboard design better right? Now is your chance for your voice to be heard. Head over to WildChicken’s blog (head’s a designer that works on the Dashboard) and sound off accordingly. He’s looking for feedback, and he knows that my blog readers are VERY vocal audience.
from Major Nelson

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What’s that? XBL Radio is giving away a free Xbox 360 vision camera? Yep that’s right, XBL Radio is giving away a free vision camera to the winner of the XBL Radio Texas Hold’em Tournament. Next Tuesday, Sept 12 ONLY on the podcast, we will give out the “secret” password to enter the tournament. The tournament will go down Sunday, Sept 17 at 7 PST and it will continue ALL day until we have a winner. So first then, if you are unable to make it, please don’t enter it only to be fair to those that can make it, but don’t let that stop you from listening in to the XBL Radio show.

Here are the rules/setup:

It will be in multiplayer, tournament game, player match, create match, $50/$100 blinds, and all assigned seats set at private.

If you’re not there, sorry but you’re not in the tournament, I have to be fair to all others.

The last 2 players remaining on the table at the end will advance to the NEXT table the very SAME day.

You must check XBLRadio.com for updates on this tournament, last tournament I tried to message all the contestants about this but Xbox live has limitations so I am not going through that again, its up to YOU to find out who you play.

You must let me know if you wanna be in the tournament by Friday, Sept 15 at midnight PST so I can have the first matches up by Saturday evening.

And finally, I don’t care who hosts or starts up the room, but you must use the options I listed above and the last 2 players standing must message me about who won or I won’t know and you won’t advance. I must have the winners in my inbox or on the forums as soon as the match is over.

I will post the matches here in the XBL Radio forums (brand new by the way!).

And an absolutely huge thanks goes out to Tony from Microsoft and Xbox Live for hooking up XBL Radio with the Vision Cams.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at Steve@xblradio.com

(all rules are subject to change so make sure your checking out the site)

DON’T FORGET: You must listen to XBL Radio Podcast v26.0 (available Tue 9-12-2006) to get the “secret password” to enter the tournament.

UPDATE (9-5-2006):

Alright, I went to Costco today after work, and now I have a brand new Xbox 360, no questions asked and almost a full year after I bought it. Wow how cool is that, I recommend everyone shop at costco, I know I am from now on, for all my big purchases.

ORIGINAL POST (9-4-2006):

Steve519’s Xbox 360 has bit the dust, I called Microsoft today, $138 dollars to send it off to repair down in Texas. Oh that hurts, After all I’ve done for my system it had to do this to me. So, I won’t be online for a little while, it sucks. But I do have to say that the support line, was very quick and the lady that helped me was very nice. I now have to call Costco tomorrow to see if they cover it. If not, I’m out $138. I do have the audio of the help line. I don’t know if I should put it up or not, nothing bad from it only good stuff, it shows that they are at least nice. But no matter how nice they are, I still have a broken Xbox 360, its a bad bad day. I will keep you all posted about how this turns out and what becomes of my system.

For some more very disturbing pics he ya go

http://entertainment.webshots.com/album/553810365ScYsgJ

Whats that? NBC is releasing things in the Xbox Live Marketplace? Wow, how cool is this! Soon full tv’s shows will be coming our way (minus the one that has already hit the market place). Well here is the rest of the story as reported by Major Nelson.

Xbox Live members in the U.S. will find a few new pieces of free NBC TV content on the Xbox Live Marketplace:

NFL Kickoff Weekend on NBC
NBC’s NFL Behind the Scenes

And available Tuesday:
30 Rock Trailer (720p)
Kidnapped Trailer (720p)

This content is only available in the U.S.

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Alright, Outpost.com has Lego Star Wars II for only 39.99 for the Xbox 360, thats 10 dollars less then anywhere else. Here is the link, click here.

And! Incase you missed XBL Radio’s interview with the Development Director of the game, check it out.

The backwards compatibility list grew a lot today thanks to Microsoft. And not only were older games put on there, but newer and UNRELEASED games as well, like Lego Starwars 2. So for all of you that thought MS was done working on this, here ya go. And for some more good news, they are continuing to work on this. Props to MS for continuing the BackCompat project.

Thanks to Gamerscore Blog for the heads up, click their link for the full story. And no Rusty! Midtown Madness 3 did not make the list this time! So keep playing GeoWars.