The announcement of the coming of Silverlight to the XBL brought about a rapid discussion on the pros and cons of having them on board, with most of the folks not wanting their dashboards covered with advertisements. Now, we have Major Nelson giving his two cents on the matter.

Major Nelson's latest podcast has some good news for Xbox 360 gamers. A new update scheduled for later this year will increase the dashboard's speed as well as introduce new features.

After making his "new Xbox 360" announcement at The Executive's Club of Chicago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer personally makes the clarification for his confusing statements, complete with an apology. Even after Aaron Greenberg's quick rescue, it seems that the clarification must come from the guy who made the faulty comments. Speaking to IGN, Ballmer admitted his poor choice of words and apologizes for what it caused. More in the full article.

Oh that was certainly quite a ruckus Steve Ballmer stirred up this week for Microsoft, wasn't it? Even after Aaron Greenberg came rushing to the rescue to clarify that there will be NO new console by 2010, even Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) has spoken out to express that a new console is out of the question cos the Xbox 360 is all set with the company's support "long into the next decade."

Everything's unfolding for Microsoft at LA. Apart from their successful E3 2009 Press Conference, Microsoft had another party in LA as the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition awarded the Xbox Live with the official record for the Most Popular Online Console Gaming Service.

It's been rumored before, and now we finally have a release date for the XBLA version of Rare's Perfect Dark. Hit the full article for more details.

What's the deal this week? It's the XBL Deal of the Week for May 25, and frontlining the discounts is Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Major Nelson reports that 50% is being slashed off for the game.

As Major Nelson announced on his blog, the Xbox Live section of Amazon is holding a sale. The download coupons for some Xbox Live Arcade Classics being offered by the online retailer have gone for as low as three bucks! Not a whole lot of a price slash from the original US$ 5, sure. But if you buy it by bulk and do the maths, you'll surely get more bang out of your buck.

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.

No, Epic's not making a game about chairs. The "Chair" in the title refers to Chair Entertainment Group, a Utah-based developer that Epic acquired last year. They're the ones responsible for the XBLA game Undertow. Chair's currently working on "very, very cool" product which, according to Cliff Bleszinski, will be announced soon.