Well, despite what I mentioned earlier, the rumor train has jumped the tracks again.

It appears that the Xbox 360 has secured an exclusive release of Beautiful Katamari. No wait, it's merely ditched the PS3 and is coming for the Wii? I'm confused. I mean, it'd better come to the Wii. I'm totally not effing around, Namco.

At any rate, the creator of Katamari has announced a new release for the PS3 called Nobi Nobi Boy. What's it all about? Will it be as satisfying as rolling magical balls around after being royally guilt-tripped by your drunken father? We shall see.

Microsoft has done a bit of nimble footwork lately to take some long-overdue and quite crucial steps towards fixing it's torrid Red Ring of Death (RRoD) issues with the Xbox 360. It's though (hoped) that when the next 65-nm process 360 (possibly included in the unit codenamed Falcon) arrives, that the lower heat production will fix this issue, but in the meantime there have been truly outrageous reports of 360 failure.

How outrageous?

Well, Brian Crecente at Kotaku is currently on his 11th Xbox 360, and not happy about it (to be fair, #10 died from a DVD drive, not RRoD). Justin Lowe also went through over 10 Xbox 360 consoles. People have made condolence cards suitable for the seeming inevitable occurrence, 360's are being refused by service centers that would formerly take a crack at repairing them, and most shockingly, two reports have pegged the failure rate of consoles sold via retail at 30-33%.

30-30%. 1 in 3. One third of all units sold.

Ouch.

Microsoft had (in)famously suggested a failure rate that was much lower than these actual figures, but fortunately they're all geared up to do the right thing. Now-departed Xbox chief Peter Moore has gone on record saying that MS is committed to doing the right thing (also noted in this Kotaku interview), and extended the Xbox warranty to a full three years to solve the RRoD issue.

In sum, they can break, 1/3 broke, they'll fix the ones that done did broke for 3 years, but I'm still waiting to get one.

Man.

Two 'lil 360 bits that fall on far opposite ends of the 360 user spectrum. Firstly, though Xbox Live had begun banning consoles with modded firmware, the evolutionary relationship between developers and hackers has taken the logical next step with the hackers have released new firmware that bypasses the ban checks. Neener.

Interestingly, the perplexing prevalence issue surrounding the red ring of death (as in, we still don't know how common it is, though failure seems almost guaranteed) took a step towards achieving some clarity, though the picture looks as grim as I suspected (everyone I know with a 360 has had it fail at least once...). The folks over at Joystiq have noted that shockingly, Microsoft is extremely low on Xbox 360 "coffin" mailers, which means either the nation's strategic cardboard reserves are depleted, or they're breaking consoles faster than they can fix them and keep their repair service running. Ulp.

Lots more news lately regarding rock-based-rhythm-games (RBRG, a new genre? anyone?), including the current national obsession Guitar Hero II and the upcoming Guitar Hero III, in addition to the coming EA-backed rival Rock Band.

First off, we've got recently released Rock Band screens and an in-depth interview at IGN. Truthfully, it's hard to tell what the gameplay will be like, but it sure looks pretty.

Meanwhile, to tide us over till GH3, the official site for Guitar Hero: 80's Encore Version, has launched, and more tracks are leaking out to my delight. I personally can't wait, since I'm cracker-trash.

Meanwhile, GH3 details are emerging as well. In addition to wireless guitars, the current tracks announced thus far are:

* "Barracuda" - Heart
* "Cherub Rock" - Smashing Pumpkins
* "Cult of Personality" - Living Colour
* "Even Flow" - Pearl Jam
* "Knights of Cydonia" - Muse
* "Lay Down" - Priestess
* "The Metal" - Tenacious D
* "My Name Is Jonas" - Weezer
* "Paint It, Black" - The Rolling Stones
* "Rock and Roll All Nite" - Kiss
* "Sabotage" - Beastie Boys
* "School's Out" - Alice Cooper
* "Slow Ride" - Foghat

So, in conclusion, hairspray, big boner axe solo, and kicksplits. Clearly.

Why? Well, for starters, you've got the biggest game in the universe, now complete with street date! Expect me to have mine (65 nm please?) all bought and set up prior to Sept. 25th.

Can't wait that long to drool? Kotaku has some amazing demo footage, and MAN those new weapons look fun. Here's some more in case that didn't completely bowl you over:

Additionally, those sick, sick little cuties over from Happy Tree Friends are also coming to the 360 via XBLA, Kotaku reports.

But, you know there's a darker side. First off, ever wanted to see the cocky, brilliant, brilliant-yet-cocky J Allard looking silly? Well, he lost a bet to N'Gai Croal, and now he has dreads! That's the daddy of the Xbox, in case you didn't know.

And the 360 continues to be plagued by crappy, crappy failure rates and customer service. Peter Moore went so far as to dismiss the failures as normal breakage, sort of (read the entire interview - he definitely stops short of saying its not acceptable). Now, with modded units being banned from XBL (opening the door for a flood of unusable-online consoles on eBay, buyer beware!), all eyes on are 360 repair service awaiting the first "my new Xbox is banned?" calls. But these calls usually go all wrong - check out this poor fella, who got yelled at, interrupted and insulted by the customer "service" rep. Ouch.

So yeah. Neat system, great games, lousy failure rate and even worse relief from the big Xbox repair center in the sky.

So one half of the team behind the brilliance of Guitar Hero II, Harmonix, is jumping ship (this is old news, not the focus of this post) to start a new venture with industry giants EA and MTV: Rock Band. It'll be a rhythm game, but with drums, singing, guitars... the works.

But how much will it cost? We already know they've signed up Fender as their digi-axe to power the game, which ain't cheap in real life. So, based on this price list, having a full band could be steeeeeeep. Then again, that's Gamestop - Harmonix is trying their best to do damage control, and I hope they're not just spinning. I'd love to get the band back together.

I don't own an Xbox 360. Yet. I want one like crazy. I still love/play my Xbox at least as much as my Wii and PS2, and will slap anyone who thinks it's either past it's prime (Exhibit A) or limited for games (Exhibit B). With the lack of FPS games on the Wii, and the boneriffic FIFA graphics on the 360, I really, really, REALLY want a 360.

But it's going to have to wait. Why? Well...

1) Halo 3 ain't out yet. Microsoft stopped to notice the white elephant in the room and pointed out that the title will help them sell consoles, and sure, it's going to probably represent my tipping point. Almost.

2) The Elite is neat, but not quite enough to break me down on the hardware front. No, this ain't going to do it for me either. I'm waiting for chips - smaller ones, to be exact. With the hellish BTU count and scary red-ring-of-death frequency of the old 90 nm cores, I'll be counting the days till the fall release of systems featuring the 65 nm cores. Then it's time to buy.

Microsoft will undoubtedly be grateful, since my late fall purchase will undoubtedly be their own tipping point, pushing them from the red squarely into the black: 2008 is thought to be the first time Microsoft will actually make money from their Xbox division. Remember, ever since the Xbox 1.0, Microsoft has taken a hundreds-of-dollars hit per console that still hurt with each sale only until just recently, so this is a big deal for them.

Even though I'm nowhere near beating expert mode on GHII, it's nice to know that III is coming down the pipe, according to this snippet on Joystiq. To learn more about the emerging battle-of-the-band-sims, there's a solid interview with the Guitar Hero team here, with plenty of bits worth pondering as we wonder if EA and MTV's Rock Band will dethrone the current king and sequel-to-king.

I'm just happy I can play the bass part in John the Fisherman. Claypool, I'm comin' for ya.

Oh yeah. 7 more months till my birthday kids...