The Dashboard Fall Update for the Xbox 360 goes live today, as promised by Microsoft. Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) mentioned that the big MS is currently in the process of deploying these updates to Xbox Live.

Furthermore, Microsoft mentioned that there are a total of 300 individual changes that came with the Dashboard Fall update. More on this and some reminders from Microsoft after the jump!

After unleashing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance's new heroes and villains on the Xbox Live from Activision, let's get to know them a little bit more, one by one. We have here today the Character Bios for each of them, so this ought to give you a lot of help with dealing with them.

The Hulk:
His real name is Robert "Bruce" Banner, and he is known for a lot of aliases, including Annihilator, Captain Universe, Joe Fixit, and Mechono to name a few. This mean, green machine used to be a nuclear physicist. Depending upon the levels of his emotional stress, his powers grow in proportion. Yep, the greener he gets, the more angry he is. So, no weapons needed for this guy. Just disposition and emotions.

Hawkeye:
He's yet to come out of the superheroes closet, but Hawkeye's human personality is named Clinton Francis "Clint" Barton. He used to be a carnival performer, security chief, and also had his time being the bad guy as a criminal. Actually, he's got no superpowers to boast of, but he does use gasses designed by Hank Pym so he can stretch his height, and proportioned to that, increases in strength and toughness. He is also considered to be a world-class archer, as well as an excellent marksman. Unsurprisingly, his weapons of choice would then have to be the bow and arrow.

Cyclops:
We all know Cyclops to be the boyfriend of Jean Grey. Scott Summers, as he is known in the human society, is the co-headmaster of Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. For those of you who don't know, he is actually a former radio announcer. Of course, as you may all know, he possesses the ability to project a beam of force from his eyes. Measuring the beam's effective range will give you the distance of 2,000 feet. Cyclops has to have his special eyewear made of ruby quartz lenses as he can't shut off the beams, so to speak, due to a head injury.

The complete characters profile await after the jump.

A group called InFeCtuS (yes the alternating caps is part of their identity) has announced that they are planning to release a modchip on the market that has support for Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii, and Sony's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2.

For the X360, the chip is said to allow access to the Xbox 360 flash driver, so that (their claim) you can read and write the internal flash of any X360 DVD reader in the market. It also promises FLASH ID realtime patching, Globe Modchip 360 emulation, and NME 1.2 firmware emulation. For the PS3, InFeCtuS promises that the chip will allow users to flash directly to the PS3 BIOS by USB. Here are their words:

The first work to be done is to allow our users to flash directly the PS3 BIOS by USB. So no more problem with firmwares, you can install everything you want, when you want. All the complications due to firmware versions that cannot be downgraded will not bother you anymore.

This solution will be released in the next 4 weeks!

Another new feature that we want to add is a REAL TIME patching of the firmware part that you want to be emulated from the chip. Being the 512Kb flash not enough to store a real dual firmware, we'll have to wait for the first hacked firmware to understand if a "realtime" patching will be possible. In case we won't be able to find more ideas, a new version of Infectus with a memory expansion bay will be released.

For the Wii they promise that the chip should be able to do Wiikey and Wiifree emulation, which means that you'll be allowed to play what you want on your Wii. As for the PS2, they promise complete O2 modchip emulation.

For more info on their potential product, feel free to head to their site via our read link below.

EA's Def Jam: Icon teaser trailer left us all praying for March to come sooner. We've seen the trailers and screenshots. How would you like to get to know the "gentlemen" involved in the game?

We have head renders of your favorite Def Jam icons, plus real life photos and bios. Sound nice? Your fave artists get ported to the 360 and the PS3 and get a rumbling to the sound of music. And you know we're not talking about the Julie Andrews type of music.

So, feast your eyes on the game versions of your fave artists and you can download the link below for the pics and the bios.

Download: [Def Jam: Icon RL photos and Bios]

Buy: [Def Jam: Icon (Xbox 360)]
Buy: [Def Jam: Icon (PS3)]

More renders plus the character bios and pics await after the jump!

Japan-based research firm Fujiwara releases today the results of its study concerning the controversial single-sided double-layer discs. In case you are wondering why these discs are controversial, be informed that they are currently being used for making backups of Xbox 360 software. Anyway, as we have said, Fujiwara releases the results today and the numbers are not in Microsoft's favor.

"Global DVD+R/-R DL disc shipments are expected to reach 100 million in 2006 and should double in 2007," says the Japanese firm. This is rather alarming as the sales of the said disc had not been impressive prior to the attack of the hacks. DVD+R/-R DL discs have as of now limited applications and a high retail value. Given that, manufacturers are more optimistic saying the disc is not used purely for pirating purposes. Accordingly, the demands are also coming from the extending penetration rate of DL-support recorders.

While Microsoft is yet to take some serious actions, the corporation on the other hand has always maintained its anti-piracy policy. On one occasion, it even noted that, "the health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive, both from manufacturers and the local companies that support them."

Currently, shipments of the said discs are mainly coming from Taiwanese manufacturers like CMC Magnetics and Ritek. The former, reportedly, has market share of 30% while Ritek has captured around 60%.

Ryanmp31 has announced that v2.0 of the Toshiba Samsung 360 Auto Flasher is now out. This tool makes a bootable USB key including all the files needed to backup, flash and recover your Samsung Xbox360 firmware, all in one simple automatic process! This version has been updated from v1.1 to work with C4E's newest v2.0 firmware.

Installation:

1. Extract the archive to your hard drive
2. Insert your USB Stick
3. Format your USB Stick with the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool included (HPUSBFW.EXE), select FAT32 and "Create a DOS Startup Disk" using the files included in the folder. Check the Pictures folder for visual assistance!
4. Copy the contents of the archive to the root directory of your USB Stick (if space is an issue, or you are using a floppy, simply copy the autoexec.bat and firmware + command folders over. If you know which card you have, you may copy only the neccessary folder within the firmware folder, e.g. Via or Nforce4.)
5. Run Bios Agent to find your chipset (see pictures folder)
6. Adjust Your BIOS Settings to boot from the USB Stick
7. Boot to your USB Stick
8. Run autoexec.bat to start.

If you want to use the tools on a floppy, all you have to do is copy over the necessary autoexec.bat, command folder, and needed firmware folder onto the floppy. Here are a few extra notes from ryammp31:

A few changes from the v1.1 patcher.... It doesn't need the -p or -u, it only needs the p or u (I took the - out of the program). Second of all, instead of writing the orig.bin to a new file, in hopes of getting the flasher out quick, I took that part out as well and now the program just overwrites your orig.bin with the correct values to make it the xtreme20.bin (although the name remains orig.bin. If you dont trust me, use a command prompt, and throw a copy of your orig.bin file into the same directory as this autopatcher, run the patch, then compare the newly created version of orig.bin (which will be xtreme20.bin, only diff is that it is still called orig.bin) to the xtreme20.bin from c4e with a hex editor. You will find that the only diff is in the area of your DVD drive key, as that is the entire reason for this patch instead of the previously used KDX tool that tended to botch some firmware. Finally, the PPF files that were included are not needed anymore, as it was used to apply the patch to create the xtreme0800. This is no longer needed as C4E'sv2.0 firmware has this 0800 function built in.

Italy-based Open Team has created a modchip called Open 360 that allows you to use two BIOS without having to flash the reader everytime. The translation from Italian to English is pretty bad, but here are two things that are clear, they strictly advise you to make an emergency copy of your original firmware before making any installations and not to be online, you know just in case.

You can use in any of these configurations:

1. Original BIOS - BIOS Xtreme (for the start of copies of your originals)
2. BIOS Xtreme (start of copies of backup) - BIOS Xtreme0080 (for the acknowledgment on PC and dump of the Security Sector and backup of the games.)

Choose between the original BIOS and the Xtreme one through an external switch. Imagine it as click and double click. Fast pressure would bring up the original bios (fixed LED) and extended pressure for the external BIOS (LED blinking).

Here's a crappy translation. I don't really speak Italian, so if there's anyone out there who could do a better job than Google, please help us thru your comments.

The dual bios for these readers, he concurs to load a copy with just bios originates them on the flash external (2), through hotswap electronic in order carrying out test on firmware (using flash external anzichè the flash originates them, qualifying it like for the Samsung version), so as to not to risk to damage the content of flash on board (the 1) being compromised the drive.
He advises himself before making quasiasi tries and installation of the modification to make a copy of emergency of firmware originates them present on the reader (1)

If a Samsung reader uses itself, to connect present contact SEL on the modification to contact VCC, if a Lg/Hitachi reader uses itself to connect SEL to pit EJECT (sees photo) present on the reader, so as to to qualify the HotSwap modality.
Once mounted the modification on LG/Hitachi not to ignite the consul through the push-button eject, poichè controls the modality hotswap. E' obviously possible to use the push-button eject to ignited consul in order to open and to close the space of the dvd-rom.

The methodologies in order to take advantage of this modality will be available in detail to short.