Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has been defending the price of its $180 120 Gig hard drive for Xbox 360, from consumer criticism that it is too expensive.
Image The company's group product manager for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live says the drive is comparable in price to plug-and-play external drives for PC, adding that Microsoft carries extra testing costs for the drives. He also says it’s consistent with the firm’s pricing across Xbox 360 hardware.

Speaking to weekly podcast Game Theory he said, “We know it is expensive and we have definitely heard that feedback but it is a little apples and oranges to compare it to internal PC hard drives because those are off the shelf drives that you have to install yourself. You have to format those and figure out how you are going to move your content over. There is a lot of work there for your average consumer it is not a plug in and play experience for them.

“What we have done is release a smaller laptop size drive. If you compare what we are offering with a real plug-and-play drive the closest thing would be to take a 120 gig self-powered external PC drive and in that case we are seeing those retail at anywhere from $160 to $200 for comparable laptop sized external hard drives.

“I know it sounds expensive to a lot of consumers but we are comparable to those types of drives and also we have to go through a lot more testing and security. When we buy from suppliers we require a lot more spec reports and tests because that drive has to be able to perform at specific speeds all the time in order to support our environment and our gameplay experiences. Those are not the same specs that they are able to deliver to with off-the-shelf drives.

“We do hear consumers but we pay a premium for these drives. That’s just the nature of it. If you started with the core $299 SKU, everything we have done is based on adding storage. If you had the $100 hard drive that gets you to $399. If you added the $179 hard drive to the $299 SKU that gets you to $479 which is the Elite SKU so there is consistency in the way we think about this.”

SOURCE

I don't care what way they slice it, $180 is way too damn expensive.

Burnie Burns of Rooster Teeth announced on their forum two nights ago that their infamous Red vs. Blue series of Halo machinima will be concluding with its landmark one-hundredth episode. The series that for the past four years has made it worth living through the weekend, brought the concept of machinima to the masses, as well as gave a wildly different perspective of the Halo universe.

Now this is a REAL disappointment! I've been a sponsor for quite some time and I loved the series. Saying I didn't see this coming would be like saying I never saw the sun set. Lately they have been slow to update and a lackluster posting about the episodes, has made me wonder. I hope they continue to make stuff as I know a lot of people enjoy machinima. Oh well, it'll be $20 less a year I'll be giving to them once RvB is over.

Sony's handheld pricing drops starting tomorrow.
By 1UP Staff, 04/02/2007
Edit: 1UP has confirmed that Sony intends to make a significant announcement tomorrow, further lending credence to this report.

Original Story: According to Kotaku, Sony's PlayStation Portable will drop from $199 to $169 tomorrow. Previously, we speculated that something, anything had to happen with Sony's handheld, with a price drop and/or redesign being the two most likely scenarios. Last month, we reported that major retailers were considering pulling the system from store shelves if there wasn't a price drop -- whether or not retail had to play hardball with Sony, now stores (and consumers) have their price drop.

They are just trying to get me to buy a PSP for Castlevania aren't they? Dirty, Dirty Sony!

Epic Games has announced that a title update is coming soon as it is going through the certification process. A post in the official Gears of War forums revealed that the update will include a brand new multiplayer gametype:

The next title update for Gears of War is currently going through the certification process. We'll have more detail about the update next week but I can tell you that in addition to fixing a whole bunch of glitches, and providing 720p for VGA users running at 1280x1024, it will contain a brand new multiplayer gametype called Annex.

Some folks who got to play it a few weeks ago said they think it is our best multiplayer gametype yet but I'll leave it for you fans to decide what you think for yourself when it shows up soon on Xbox Live. More details next week.

As to what to expect from this new multiplayer game type, its name suggests it could be a territory based game mode.

Epic clarified it will be free.

Anyone else excited to see this movie?

TLB reader Lawl has sent me quite the conspiracy theory. I emailed him back calling him crazy as usual, and told him to I need proof. Minutes later he hit me back with something I wasn't expecting to see - the image above. Where the fuck is the PS3 graphic? If you search Rockstar Games' support database, you'll only find an Xbox 360 version of GTAIV listed, not a PS3 one as well. It's been established that Grand Theft Auto IV is coming to both PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360, but that each will have original downloadable content over time, so why wouldn't each be listed on their support page?

Has Microsoft worked its money magic yet again and stolen away another game from Sony's PS3? Well, Take Two Interactive, the publisher for the GTA series, isn't doing so well right now financially. In fact, they even postponed a financial meeting until tomorrow, where they're probably going to get a lot of shit from shareholders. That's where Lawl's theory kicks in - tomorrow is also the day that the GTAIV trailer is revealed, as well as the other half of Microsoft's big announcement - the first part of course being the not so surprising Xbox 360 Elite. Coincidence?

Thanks to Lawl on Arrogantics for the rumor tip. Has Microsoft really gained GTAIV as an exclusive title? This is obviously a huge rumor, and could be written off as simply careless site updating on Rockstar's behalf, but with the big puzzle pieces still missing in tomorrow's puzzle, it's time to play the speculation game. Your thoughts? Entirely possible? Pissed? Meh?

1UPs comparison

So the way they break it down is that the two are only $8 different in value. Kinda makes you look again at buying a PS3 eh?