Major Nelson has announced that by next week, all Xbox Live users will be able to start enjoying the new social networking apps being added to the Dashboard. More after the jump.

Microsoft has completed another system update, and those connected to Xbox Live should be prompted to accept the mandatory update any time now, if they haven't gotten it already. Hold yer horses, though, young'un, this ranch ain't ridin' them fancy Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and Zune features just yet.

After being defeated in the format wars last year, it looks like Microsoft is finally adopting Blu-ray. In an interview published today by tech site Gizmodo, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed that Blu-ray will eventually come to Xbox 360 as an add-on drive.

There's no stopping Microsoft from facing the competition head-on. Later this week, you will now see a brand new Microsoft retail store opening its door in Scottsdale, Arizona. Yes, imagine an Apple Store, only with a Microsoft sign.

Barely a week after Microsoft released the Zune HD, a company called Foundation42 has announced that they have successfully ported their upcoming iPhone game, called WordMonger, over to the device in as little as twelve hours.

It's been a hectic week for Microsoft, what with the big game Halo 3: ODST coming out to the market pre-maturely than they would have wanted. They also had one of their top execs, Shane Kim, move out, and in his stead were two Xbox execs. No time to wallow indeed, especially when you have new hardware coming out, like the new Zune HD. Let's see how they fare in the coming days. But for this week, I'd have to say, MS did a pretty good job holding up to the stress. Read on after the jump to check out the full Xbox 360 Weekend Warrior.

Anybody get the chance to try out any of the Zune HD games yet? Microsoft has released a few internally-developed free games and apps. You won't need to pay for them, but you will have to sit and stare at some ads first before you can play the games.

It's conceptual, but no matter - it's brilliant! This here is a conceptual handheld for Microsoft's gadgets, Xbox and Zune. The creator, Carl Archambeault, dubs it as the Xbox 1080. His goal: to combine the gaming power of Xbox 360 and the music and video power of the Microsoft Zune.

Microsoft has officially jumped aboard the mobile gaming platform bandwagon via their latest Zune HD handheld, which features gaming functionality. The announcement was made through a press release sent out today, introducing their new Zune HD touch-screen media player. This answers the "matter of when" question posited by Shane Kim previously.

Ohoho, what's this? It seems Microsoft is starting to get into the handheld gaming business with the Zune HD. A video spotted by Zunited clearly shows a racing game running on the new handheld. Heck, the voice-over lady even says outright that you can play games on the thing. So is this the portable Xbox Shane Kim was talking about? Check it out after the jump.