And the crackdown is far from over. After resetting the Gamerscores to a full, round zero of Gears of War 2 Achievements cheaters, Stephen Toulouse is adding that Microsoft will be naming and shaming the offenders with Xbox 360 Gamercards.

Cheaters beware! Microsoft is getting set to cast some epic-scale voodoo on you if you keep right on hacking, glitching, and cheating to get those Gears of War 2 Achievements you're so proud of. If voodoo doesn't scare you off, they'll just whip out the banhammer.

Straight from Microsoft's E3 conference comes official word regarding the fabled avatars. Yes folks, these avatars are real, and they're coming to the Xbox 360 in the fall. Learn more after the jump!

A couple months back, Major Nelson spoke about Microsoft's stand on Gamerscore cheating. It's only now that the company has taken definitive steps on this anomaly. How exactly? By resetting Gamerscores to zero. Read more on this in the full article.

After a few days of not commenting about his termination from GameSpot, former game editorial chief Jeff Gerstmann finally speaks out about his controversial Kane and Lynch: Dead Men review ( by Eidos Interactive for Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC) review, as well as his future career options. More details inside.

Aside from the opponents that get fragged in game, there's another casualty in the midst of the raging Halo 3 frenzy. Some Microsoft Xbox Live GamerCards are now inaccessible, and the Xbox site's error message even points to Bungie's much-awaited game as the culprit.

The exact error message reads as follows:

Sorry, this page is unavailable.

The page you tried is unavailable.

ALERT: Due to high traffic related to the launch of Halo 3, some site features may be currently unavailable. Please try again later.

GamerCard errors are not the only Xbox Live-related problems brought about by Halo 3's launch. As we have reported a few days ago, many Xbox Live subscribers were not able to start finishing the fight due to the massive number of gamers trying to update their consoles, as well as gamers logging in for online multiplayer games.

It may be too much to wish for the massive Halo 3-driven activity to subside, but we do hope that Microsoft will be able to do something to alleviate the problem without affecting the goodness that is Halo 3.

The title says it all. With online now a mainstay for all three next-gen consoles, this'll be a comparison of the major features on the Xbox 360's Xbox Live, and the PS3's Playstation Network. Starting off with the newcomer, the PS3:

PlayStation Network

• Price: Free.
• Online play: Observed to be smooth - 20 vs. 20 games in Resistance: Fall of Man showed no major slowdown. Might slow down due to excessive people online, though - "error 80710D23" incidents aplenty.
• PlayStation Store: Carries downloadable PSOne games for remote play to your PSP.
• Purchase Currency: Your country's currency. Stay aware of the exchange rates.
  
• User Interface: PS3 default browser handles like its PC kin, albeit the hassle of using the SIXAXIS for typing. Getting a USB/Bluetooth keyboard and mouse is highly recommended.

Xbox Live:

• Price: $ 50.00 per year.
• Online Play: Carries favorite features like voice messaging, private chat, customizable personal profile, and unified friends list.
• Xbox Live Marketplace: Carries rentable movies and TV shows for rent, and Xbox Live Arcade titles.
• Purchase Currency: Microsoft points. Good idea, but minimum purchase requirements (400 points, was it?) may give complications.
• User Interface: No browser, but does carry the "gamercard", which carries your online bio-data (name, location, past gaming achievements, etc.)

For now, Xbox Live's the solid favorite thanks to all the cool features it's got onboard. But given that the PS3's browser has only been out for a month, we'll have to wait and see what sort of perks will be popping up by next year.

And who says that you can never be a celebrity by sitting in your living room and happily playing video games? Well, in the case of the Xbox 360 gamer StripClubDj, it looks like he WILL become a celebrity soon enough - just by sitting in the living room and happily playing video games.

All of this fanfare can pretty much be credited to a fair investment of time and effort, as this guy has already managed to get his gamerscore up to 99,224 which is a mere 776 points away from the ever-so-big 100,000-point mark (as of this writing). Now, that's a lot of gaming right there!

As we can see from his gamercard, the guy is currently busy with Eragon, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance, as well as Defender, Civil War, and Cabela's Safari. See? It's always better to achieve something through your own effort instead of, you know, buying the prestige.

Just a little more! Stay tuned as we see just how soon he'd reach that mark.

(And thanks to Projectionist for the heads up!)

Yves De Pryck also known as YLA G has released the update to his GooMGC. GooMGC is a google project that allows a gamer to place gamecards (plus up to 16 friends), a custom chart, a marketplace converter and the latest Xbox voice blog on his or her Google homepage.

The changelog GooMGC v2.0 includes:

• Automatically adjusts adding of up to 16 friends
• Added 20 colors/themes for gamercard
• Added Finnish, Irish Gaelic, Welsh to language support
• Option for adding the chart or not. Users who that to want to place it elsewhere, can install Goo360chart.
  
• Added custom chart specification
• Added local currency convertor added for the MS Marketplace points. Users who prefer to hide this can install Goo360converter.
  
• IE users will see a fade from there gamercard into the results

GooMGC also includes Goo360voice gadget for uploading the latest blogpost but users need to register with 360voice here. To install GooMGC v 2.0 and any or all of its components, please click here.