Whew!  It is not true that Electronic Arts (EA) is banning gamers from playing their games if they  get banned from the forums, as one moderator threatened players with. EA's official statement on the matter can be found at the full article.

You'd think that a publishing company will fight tooth and nail just to maintain a game title. Apparently, that's not sound business practice, as we learned from John Riccitiello. If something's not meeting quality expectations - which should be high - then there should be no qualms about dropping it off the cliff -- for good.

Welcome to the Xbox 360 blog's Weekend Warrior section, where we tackle the many important things that have happened in the Xbox 360 scene in the past couple of days, as well as discuss the highs and lows behind Microsoft's console in general. Find out all the interesting things that have happened in the past week after the jump!

It used to be impossible to transfer Xbox Live content from one Xbox 360 to another with Microsoft's DRM policies. That's now a thing of the past as the company introduces the License Transfer Tool which loosens up the restrictions and lets you share the hot contents from one hard drive to another. How to do it? Find out in the full article.

A lot of us may be expecting a hefty Spring update for the Xbox 360 - thanks in no small part to that rumored list of new stuff we reported about a couple of weeks back - but it looks like this year's update might be a bit on the smaller and less easy to spot side. Details from Xbox Live manager Marc Whitten at the full article.

Motion-sensing options, increased privacy settings, and game installation. These new features and more are included in a list of rumored additions that will be coming when the Spring update for the Xbox 360 console comes around. Hit the full article for the complete list.

Grand Theft Auto IV will be arriving in only a few short days so you better get yourselves prepared. Are you sure you can keep up with Niko Bellic? Here's some brain food from us to you: Everything you need to know about Rockstar's upcoming GTA game. Head over to the full article for the second of our two-part feature on Grand Theft Auto IV, where we talk about the game's combat system, missions, multiplayer modes, and more!

 With Grand Theft Auto 4 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360) speeding full throttle into our consoles, the details on it just keep pouring in. This time, we're informed that the game will feature a music download system to enhance the in-game radio experience that the series popularized. Amazon is behind Rockstar on this one, and the alliance seems to herald a lot of good stuff. Know more by reading the full article up next.

Some downloadable media are free, but that just means we don't pay for it. Some of those media - videos in particular - are only free because they come with ads, and if no one watches those ads, the system becomes ineffective.

This reasoning might explain why Microsoft has filed for this patent: a system that "enforces advertisement playback for downloaded media." More in the full article.

When we have problems with our electronics or consoles, we always turn to the product's customer service hotline for help. But what happens if customer service proved to be too...unhelpful? One of the moderators of the Xbox 360 achievement listing site, Achieve360Points, just went through what could be one of the most harrowing experience with customer service.

He's got a long laundry list of problems, but here's the gist: Speaker Ender (the gamertag of said customer) had problems with the DRM on his premium Xbox Live content. To be fair towards MS's customer support staff, the problem was promptly solved the first time he had the DRM issue by having his MS points refunded by Microsoft. However, it was an entirely different story when he got the problem the second time around.

Speaker Ender provided a breakdown of his experiences with Xbox 360's customer support staff:

• Number of calls to 1-800-4MY-XBOX since March: 22 calls
• Number of callbacks promised: 15
• Number of callbacks received: 3
• Most Number of times I was asked my name and phone number during a single call: 11 times
• Number of times I was told "Microsoft will contact you when the investigation is complete": 40+
• Number of times that I ended up on the Spanish language hold line: 8
• Total spent on Xbox 360 related products: $3120.78
• Amount of XBL content not working properly: 25,600 points ($319.87)
• Total time spent on the phone with 1-800-4MY-XBOX: 1 day, 2 hours, 55 minutes
• Total time spent trying various remedies*: 1 day, 9 hours, 55 minutes
• TOTAL TIME TRYING TO RESOLVE ISSUES WITH MY XBOX 360s: 2 days, 2 hours, 50 minutes

Indeed a sad story, and we hope that Speaker Ender manages to get the resolution he clearly deserves.


Check out the entire article in the Read link!