"Our goal was to hit 10 million (Xbox Live users) in a year's time," Greenberg said, "and we've doubled it in less time. The majority of Xbox owners on a global basis are connecting to Xbox Live."

Another milestone the Xbox recently reached, Greenberg said, was that with more than 1 million copies of Rockstar Games' monster hit, Grand Theft Auto IV, having already sold on Xbox 360, the console has now reached 16 different titles with 1 million sales or more in the U.S.

By comparison, he pointed out, that's twice the number of million-plus titles that have sold for the Wii in the U.S. The PlayStation 3 has had just two, he said.

While the 10 million total Xboxes sold in the United States is certainly notable, it also must be noted that the console had a full year's head start on its competition.

"You'll be able to see who's gaining traction and losing traction," said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. However, Pachter predicted that the 2008 holidays will be even more competitive if the Wii is in better supply and if prices of all three consoles drop further.

The Wii, which sells for $250 and features a motion-sensitive controller, sold 13.2 million units worldwide as of September, Nintendo said. Microsoft reported that the Xbox 360 -- in models priced from $280 to $450 -- had sold 13.4 million units at the time. Then, in October, U.S. sales of the Wii exceeded Xbox 360 sales, according to the NPD Group. Combined with the Nintendo console's strength in the Japanese market, that effectively would bring the two into a dead heat in cumulative sales.

The PlayStation 3, which sells for $400 and $500, has sold 5.6 million units worldwide, a company spokesman said. Sony's PlayStation 2 dominated the previous console generation.

For many gamers, Halo 3 is the reason they bought an Xbox 360. As the biggest title in the 360's arsenal, Halo 3 is undoubtedly the most hyped game in existence. Notice, however, that we didn't say over-hyped. We've put in some serious hours reviewing this game, and after several exhaustive playthroughs both solo and co-op as well as countless bloodthirsty multiplayer rounds, we can announce that Halo 3 is everything that it needed to be to fulfill our wildest gaming fantasies... and then Bungie showed us The Forge.

In addition, people everywhere will be seeing yellow as The Simpsons takes Xbox 360 by storm later this summer in advance of the famous Springfield family's big-screen debut on July 27, 2007. Xbox 360 is partnering with FOX to help promote The Simpsons Movie, offering fans the chance to get their hands on one of 100 limited-edition "Simpsons" Xbox 360 Pro consoles through a series of special events and promotions. For anyone who is drooling like Homer about how to win, more details will be available at http://www.xbox.com.

Is Halo 3 beta registration closed?

Yes, phases one and two of the beta have already ended. If you haven't received an email by this point, then you were not one of the lucky few.

Is there no other way?!

If you didn't get in to either phase, then you can still get in by buying Crackdown, releasing in the US, on February 20th. Inside every launch copy of Crackdown is an invite to the Halo 3 beta.

How will the Crackdown invite work?

Once the Halo 3 beta has been activated (start date is still TBD) you simply go to the Downloads menu in Crackdown to download the Halo 3 beta. After that, you will need to launch the Halo 3 beta from within Crackdown. You will need an Xbox 360 with a hard drive and an Xbox Live Gold account.

Electronic Arts today announced its launch onto Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade with Boom Boom Rocket. The game is a hypnotic rhythm music game conceived by EA's Pogo.com casual games design team and developed by Bizarre Creations, the developer who brought Project Gotham Racing 3 to the Xbox 360, and fan-favorite Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved to Xbox Live Arcade. The game is scheduled to go live Spring 2007 and is EA's first title on Xbox Live Arcade. In Boom Boom Rocket, players trigger rockets to the beat of the music while traveling through a 3D cityscape. The better the player times the explosions, the more spectacular the fireworks effects. The fireworks are choreographed to 10 original tracks created by Ian Livingstone. Players can play in single player mode or go head-to-head against a friend on the same console. "As one of the worldwide leaders in game publishing, EA has long recognized the power of on-demand, online entertainment," said Chris Early, Product Unit Manager for Xbox Live Arcade and Microsoft Casual Games. "We're honored that EA has chosen Xbox Live Arcade as the platform for their first-ever downloadable game for console game players and are excited to make Boom Boom Rocket available to the millions of Xbox Live Arcade players around the world."

"Boom Boom Rocket is an addictive and original challenge for all types of gamer, and we're enjoying working with EA to create this unique Xbox Live Arcade experience", said Martyn Chudley, Managing Director of Bizarre Creations. "Our teams love both working and playing on Xbox Live Arcade, and we're looking forward to releasing another innovative title on this platform with Boom Boom Rocket."

"Gears of War clearly has won the battle for the title of the must-have game of the year," said Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft Corp. "Its phenomenal success is one of many reasons why Xbox 360 is the ultimate place to get together with friends to play this holiday."

"We've always held high hopes for Gears of War, but we never expected such an overwhelmingly positive response from critics and gamers all over the world," said Michael Capps, president, Epic Games. "I can't describe how stoked our team is right now. Our fans can absolutely count on Epic to keep delivering new gameplay through Xbox Live."

In addition to being the must-have video game of the holiday season, Gears of War continues to rage on the Xbox Live battlefield as well, with more than 1 million unique gamers engaging in 10 million online gameplay sessions and unlocking an impressive 7 million achievements.* On top of being the No. 1 title on Xbox Live, Gears of War has driven new members to the network; paid registrations per day have skyrocketed more than 50 percent since the game's launch.

Now to the business at hand – There's some juicy Halo information to absorb and process. First up is the announcement of an exclusive worldwide Halo 3 TV commercial set to air during Monday Night Football on December 4th. Naturally we don’t want to spoil the fun but we did want to clear the air on a few points up front to set your expectations appropriately. As the press release mentions, this ad will feature CG scenes that are being built by a 3rd party agency (known as Digital Domain). Now you may be thinking to yourself - "CG!? But Bungie doesn’t do CG!" - and you would be correct... until now.

For the purposes of this holiday commercial and knowing the tight timeline with which it had to come together we decided a long time ago that utilizing real, final, actual gameplay just wasn't the right thing to do. As you know, we're very protective of our baby and we will only show it when we feel it's ready to be shown (and even then it's sometimes pried from our protective fingers). We all agreed that a cooler thing to do would be to move as far away from gameplay-style footage as possible, and make something more movie-like. Let our fans see what the Halo universe looks like in a photo-realistic fashion.

We didn't want folks to think we were trying to pull the wool over their eyes, when we had such a great opportunity to do something cool and worthwhile.

Now don't get me wrong - just because this ad isn't gameplay doesn't mean it's not really cool. In fact, we provided the folks at Digital Domain with all of our new in-game models and assets. They then polished them up to movie CGI standards, animated them and rendered them to a degree of stunning beauty. There will be a lot to like in this ad and we're happy with how it's turning out. Just because you're seeing a kind of "real-life" representation of Halo 3 doesn't mean you aren't seeing real gameplay elements from Halo 3.

Of course you'll also hear Halo 3 as well, with new music composed by our own Marty O’Donnell. We'll leave it at that for now. After the commercial airs on television, it will be available on Xbox Live Marketplace in full 720p glory for you to dissect and discuss.

Perhaps the biggest bomb that was dropped today, the MOAB of press announcements, was the indication of a public beta for Halo 3 coming next Spring. What exactly does this mean? Well, again we can't really get into the details quite yet (notice a theme here?) but we can confirm that our fans will have an opportunity to play Halo 3 multiplayer over Xbox Live BEFORE the final game is available. You'll be playing a little multiplayer and simultaneously providing us with some valuable data to help our development team. We're still working out the details on timing and scope and there will be a lot more info coming in the weeks ahead. We can confirm that you will absolutely be required to have an Xbox 360. Probably not a huge surprise.

In the first incarnation, games developed using the free tools will be available only to like-minded hobbyists, not the Xbox community as a whole. Those who want to develop games will have to pay a $99 fee to be part of a "Creators' Club," a name that is likely to change. Games developed using XNA Game Studio Express will be playable only by others who are part of the club.

Next spring, Microsoft hopes to have a broader set of tools that will allow for games to be created that can then be sold online through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft will still control which games get published, and it'll get a cut of the revenue.

Down the road, probably three to five years from now, Microsoft hopes to have an open approach, where anyone can publish games, and community response helps separate the hits from the flops.

That would mark a major shift in the gaming world. While people have long been able to create their own PC software, console game titles have historically been created by a far more limited set of developers.

Battle of the Gods (abbreviated as BOTG) is an unreleased console video game by Classified Productions. It is categorized as a 'fighting game' along with titles such as Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken. In BOTG one can choose to play as selected gods and goddesses from all major religions and mythologies including: God, Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus, Zeus, Aphrodite, Ganesh, Shiva, Xenu, Xipe Totec (Aztec god of suffering and growth), Pele (Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes), Ra, Anubis, Isis, Buddha, Mother Nature, Yhi, Thor, Odin, and Satan. These are the known selectable player characters. A complete player character list has not been released.

Putting together the required silicon to offer an Xbox experience on a handheld will be a difficult task for whoever designs this portable console, not because of a technology barrier, but because of prices. With the Nintendo DS costing as low as $129.99, and the Sony PSP selling for $199.99, Microsoft will have a hard time bringing the Xbox console to a handheld device at a price lower than $300. The only way people could pay for an Xbox Portable more than what the DS and the PSP cost would be if Microsoft offered with the XP something its competitor can’t; not hardware specs so much as software and services.

Team Xbox envisions a system with a QWERTY keyboard, directional pad, trackball and four action buttons. The article then goes on to examine a wide variety of handheld devices on the market (Sidekick 3, QTek 9000, OQO 01+, etc.) and describes what features that Microsoft could possibly emulate when coming up with its own portable gaming unit. As for the hardware choices, there are a number of possibilities for a processor including Transmeta's Efficeon and XScale (which Intel recently sold off to Marvell). Here's Team Xbox's take on the graphics for the XP:

Of its entire technical specifications, it is worth highlighting that the nVIDIA GoForce 5500 is the first handheld GPU to playback and encode H.264, WMV9 and MPEG-4 video up to 720 X 480 (NTSC) and 720 X 576 (PAL) resolution at 30 frames per second with 24-bit surround sound, making the GoForce 5500 compatible with major mobile TV standards, and capable of both recording and decoding video at DVD-quality. The GoForce 5500 also offers digital photography features, including multi-shot capabilities with support up to 10 Megapixel resolution digital still images.

THQ launched a lawsuit against the company last year, alleging breach of contract which prevented the publisher from releasing a Nintendo DS version of the classic puzzler. According to THQ, all requirements of the deal had been met, and the licensing agreement should have been renewed until 2007.

Now the company's financial filings have revealed that a settlement was reached at the end of 2005 - and that as part of the deal, THQ will publish Tetris for the Xbox 360 in territories outside of Japan, where a next-gen version was launched alongside the console last December.

Wolverine has been in virtually every X-Men title ever developed. Even so, the developers have failed to make Logan's badass-combat style come through in the game. Iceman will mainly be used during race 'n chase levels where Bobby is constantly in motion dodging hazards and using his powers for ranged combat (the levels are time-restricted, which plain sucks). Nightcrawler presents the most gameplay appeal. It is easy to control his teleport powers and comes in handy when evading groups of enemies.

With no real appeal other than the X-Men title stamped on the front, X-Men 3 should be quarantined before the terrible mutations it underwent infect other games and the industry collapses. X-Men fans must now wait with their fingers crossed, hoping that the beloved film franchise does not fall the way of its video game counterpart.

"By opening the Xbox Live entertainment network to the entire universe of Windows and mobile gamers, we're creating unparalleled gameplay opportunities that will drive incredible growth of the online community," said Gates. "Our vision is to deliver consistent, compelling experiences that make it easy for consumers to jump in and play, from any device at any time. It's a vision that only Microsoft can deliver."

Gates, making his first appearance at E3, joined Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division, on stage to announce a barrage of new game titles coming to the Xbox 360 and Windows Vista platforms.

Microsoft announced that it will have 160 Xbox 360 titles by end of 2006. The stunningly smooth high-definition graphics and sophisticated level of gameplay in these titles are proof positive that the development community is hitting its stride with the console's powerful hardware and programming tools.

3- Mimic your characters moves and get really into your game! After a few hours: you have completely forgotten the BODYPAD sensors... you just have "kata" and techniques that you fight your adversaries with... You can launch any blow by mimicking the gestures on screen!

Of course you are not obliged to make a somersault or to be an expert into martial arts: starting up a move is usually enough to trigger it in the game.

The new CPU will be built using technology that can reduce heat and power consumption, as well as potentially increasing speed. It will also help Microsoft cut the console's cost.

The improved Xbox 360 CPU will be manufactured using 65 nanometre technology starting in the first quarter of 2007, Chartered Semiconductor of Singapore said. The existing CPU uses 90nm technology.

Although the launch of the Xbox 360 last November was generally hailed as a success for Microsoft, the console has been troubled by reports of overheating causing games to crash or freeze.

These have come despite the unit using a pair of powerful fans, together with heat pipes, to carry heat away from the CPU core.

Hamburger flipper Burger King is considering a promotion that offers 3 exclusive BK-branded games. Each would feature their own characters (in this case, the actual Burger King) in "popular" genres (fighting, action and racing). The action game is apparently similar to Halo, while the fighter combines Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Just tack on a "with hamburgers," and you get the drift.

The PNP service will allow gamers to play a game and have simultaneous video chats on-screen with friends and gamers through a translucent HUD. This same display also allows Web browsing, e-mail and other online functonality all seamlessly while in a game world. PNP will also allow gamers to buy new cars and tracks for a game while in that game world. Customized shops within games will allow gamers to purchase new digitally distributed content seamlessly. The fact that these virtual stores can appear in the game universe (something that Xbox Live Marketplace does not currently offer) really shows off the convergence potential of the future of digital distribution.

Harrison alluded to the future of videogames and digital distribution when he said that Sony currently makes games on discs inside boxes in stores, but in the future Sony will be creating and servicing a network of gaming communities. Sony expects to make revenue not just from game sales in traditional packaged media, but through other communities like mobile gaming, in-game transactions, episodic game content, game subscriptions, and game object auctions (something that's huge with MMO games today on PCs). Sony is also launching an international e-distribution network that will provide content that's only available online.

Harrison even referenced MySpace.com as an example of how PNP could bring social-network functionality to PS3 for gamers. Gaming is a community experience, as Sony's online games like "SOCOM" and SOE's games like "EverQuest" have shown. The PC has already built communities around games, but PC gamers constitute small numbers compared to what console gamers can generate. Harrison said that Sony has sold 100 million PS2s and its 6,732 games had sold over 1 billion units worldwide. Sony owns 60 percent of the gaming industry today. Couple that wil online communities and there's a huge audience to tap into.

Now Nintendo is adding fuel to the digital distribution fire. Nintendo President Saturo Iwata said at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA this week that in addition to offering Nintendo classics from the NES, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and GameCube library, Revolution's virtual console will allow gamers to download 1,000 classic Sega Genesis games and an undiclosed number of Hudson TurboGrafx 16 games. Back in the day, Nintendo battled aggressivley with Sega. This fall, the two former rivals will work together to bring digitally distributed content to gamers.

Nintendo also confirmed that game developers would be able to create smaller, innovative games that can be downloaded to Revolution through the virtual console. It's likely that Nintendo will have a system in place similar to Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace and Sony's PlayStation Network Platform that allows developers an avenue to sell smaller games directly to consumers.

"In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation," Ballmer told FORTUNE in an interview on Thursday afternoon. "Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did."

But Microsoft will not formally revise its projected market share for the Xbox 360, and it will not speed up production to capitalize on Sony's delay, because it's already producing the Xbox as fast as possible. "We've been saying 'make them faster' before yesterday," says Ballmer.

When the Xbox 360 launched last holiday season, Microsoft had its own missteps. Shortages led to sales of only 600,000 systems from the debut on November 22 through December 31, far fewer than Microsoft and market analysts expected.

There is still a production bottleneck because of problems with a component vendor, whom Ballmer declined to name, but he expects Microsoft to sell 5 million systems by June. "We're sort-of on track," he says, "though it would've been nice at Christmas to have one for everyone who wanted one."

"This is the first property that we've ever created that has this comprehensive of an approach from the start," said Shane Kim, general manager of Microsoft Game Studios.

The characters in "Viva Pinata" are animals inspired by Latin American papier-mache figures, called pinatas, which are stuffed with candy and baubles and then broken by blindfolded, bat-wielding children.

The Saturday-morning animated "Viva Pinata" television series is set for a fall U.S. premier on Fox's 4Kids TV, the producer of television shows such as "Pokemon," "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

Microsoft's Rare is responsible for the concept and the video game, which will be available exclusively on its next-generation Xbox 360 in time for the year-end holidays. Rare's other video games include "Perfect Dark Zero," a mature-rated shooting game for the Xbox 360.

In one of the biggest partnerships to date between a vidgame publisher and a studio, MTV Films and Paramount are developing Midway Games' "The Wheelman" as a feature film.

Plan is to release the pic and the game simultaneously; Vin Diesel is signed on to star in and produce both.

"Wheelman" is an action-adventure title about an expert driver who comes out of retirement to protect a woman from his past.

ParPar and MTV Films bought the rights from Midway, which is already well into development on the game for next generation consoles Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Budget is believed to be north of $15 million -- on the high end for videogames.

There is a reason the developers describe Black as "gun porn".

In this four-course feast for the explosion-starved, players fill the hobnails of Jack Kellar, part of the world's most brutal strike force, as he hunts down an ex-CIA operative in the Eastern Bloc.

But just as Burnout threw realism to the wind in favour of pulse-pounding carnage, so Black is devoid of any real strategy, puzzles or needlessly complicated plot.

Instead it favours the most lethal cocktail of weapons ever seen in a game and with the emphasis on blowing up anything that moves.

In fact, even if it does not move, you can pretty much reduce it to rubble, as in the Red Faction game.

Deciding to make the best-selling Halo 2 Xbox game a Vista-only title is likely driven by Microsoft's desire to get people upgrading to the new version of the Windows.

Minimum specifications for Vista (formerly called Longhorn) will be released in the summer but information gathered from reviews of pre-release versions have given clues about its hunger for computer power.

With Vista, Microsoft has made big changes to the way it handles graphics. Unlike other versions of Windows, it will need an advanced video card to get the most out of it.

It is also likely to demand a lot of computer memory and a sizeable hard drive. While these requirements are likely to be met by dedicated players who want to get the most out of games, many less keen players could struggle to comply.

But we're not idiots and we're not jerks. We realize that the underlying sentiment here, is that there are a lot of XP (and Mac) users out there, who feel like something has been wafted under their nose and then snatched away. Well, that's simply not our intention. We want as many people to enjoy as good a version of our game as possible, but the fact remains that when Microsoft publishes Halo 2 for PC - it will have released its new, bigger, better operating system and our game will take full advantage of that fact, and Microsoft will take full advantage of our game.

"Now we're starting to cook. We're building a vibrant, rich and profitable business model for the future," Moore said.

He admitted that the problems were also caused in part by the fact that the console launched in North America, Europe and Japan almost simultaneously, but said while this strategy was controversial, "It was the right decision."

"It's what we needed to do to bring next-gen gaming to a global audience. There have been short-term shortages, but we're driving a clear advantage as we go forward," Moore said.

He went on to highlight the success of the Xbox Live service, stating that more than four million pieces of content have been downloaded since launch. While only 10 per cent of original Xbox owners have used the service, 54 per cent of Xbox 360 owners have connected to Xbox Live - and Microsoft intends to "maintain that all the way through Xbox 360's life cycle."

Nissan is looking to capitalize on the Xbox craze by showcasing a prototype vehicle with an integrated Xbox. The Urge has two seats that are modeled to like a cockpit, so the passenger will get to pretend he's driving while the driver hopefully isn't too distracted to do the real thing.

Yes, this is a concept car, so it remains doubtful that a car would ever sell with an Xbox integrated into the dashboard. However, since DVD players and entertainment systems are already standard fare for the rear passengers on some SUVs and minivans, adding a game console would be a logical progression.

Ballmer commented to the Citizen: "In these new consumer electronics devices based on new chips, there's always the question of what yield will you get out of the manufacturing process of the new chip. We're getting a little less, but not much less than the yields we expected, and we know that the yields we expected will probably outrun supply."

However, Ballmer noted: "We decided to go ahead and launch rather than wait until post-Christmas and get a few million units out into the hands of users. We're doing our best."

In addition, in remarks at a technology executive conference reported by Reuters, Ballmer quipped, in an apparent attempt to defuse some of the frustration over limited stocks of Microsoft's next-gen console: "The Ballmer children do not have their Xbox 360 yet. I'm in the same boat as many of you. Thanks to the wonders of [financial regulation act] Sarbanes-Oxley, management does not get a free Xbox 360."

But those who actually got the system in hand are breathing easy and living it up, right?

Some of them are. But others are posting a plethoral of problems with their brand-new 360s, from game crashes to hard drives that simply don't work.

One reasonable gamer lays it out like this: "Between my friends and I, we bought six machines at the Zero Hour event. Of the six, my machine has a dead hard drive, another machine is working but is rather flaky (seen some strange behavior-the drive may also be scratching discs, as my friend's copy of Condemned is now unplayably scratched, but we don't know if the drive caused it-the machine has also had problems booting games and being turned off...), one seems to be good, and I haven't heard yet about the status of the other three."

A fraction of the Xbox 360's that are being sold have problems which could cause graphical errors, freezing or even corruption of the Xbox's drive. Some of the consoles are uncapable of playing any games, and just shut off or show graphical messes when they are used.

Microsoft's report said that these bugs are in a "very minor fraction" of the Xbox's sold. Microsoft expects to have sold up to 3 million Xbox 360's before the end of the year, while Sony doesn't intend on releasing their Playstation 3 for almost another year.

"We are making sure that the people that are having problems are getting their issues resolved quickly," said a spokesperson from Microsoft’s Xbox department.

But many gamers were furious that they didn't get their Xbox 360s this week, despite preordering months in advance or waiting in line outside stores all night. And a small but very vocal percentage of new owners are flooding gaming websites with reports of overheating hardware and crashing consoles.

Few things suck more than getting your new toy home and finding out it's already broken. But every recent console launch has been plagued with technical problems - disc read errors on the Xbox, overheating circuit boards on the PS2, random resets on the Dreamcast and original PlayStations that would only work properly while upside down.

Microsoft claims the Xbox 360 failure rate is on par with any other piece of complex consumer electronics, but since we don't have access to their figures, we have no way to tell.

Whatever the case, the company is offering free repairs or replacements to those whose issues can't be resolved with a call to customer support at 1-800-4MY-XBOX.

They gathered in the rain in Manhattan, where a Best Buy opened its doors at midnight. They stood in line all night at chain stores like Target.

Mr. La, a car salesman in San Francisco, had preordered one Xbox 360 from a local EB Games store, which he picked up at midnight. Then he waited in line to buy a second one at a nearby CompUSA store, after deciding not to wait at the Target.

He said he was hoping that stores would sell out of their initial supplies and he could make a profit selling his second machine.

"I think I can get at least $800 for it," Mr. La said of the system, which costs $399 in stores.

The final shipment of the US Consoles on the 22nd is 1,098,200.

Microsoft plans on selling 4 million 360's within the next 5 months worldwide.

There are currently 2,190,876 accesories being shipped on the 22nd to the US

There are currently 29 Games that will be available BEFORE the end of the 2005

There are current plans for sequels to NEW franchises that arent even out on the 360 yet.

Microsoft plan on expanding there Xbox Live user base to 14 million users by the end of the 360 lifespan.

What's really intriguing about this (other than we now have a numerical value for how many people are going to be riding the short bus home from Best Buy) is the number of accessories. How many accessories do YOU want for your 360? At minimum I'm buying an extra controller, a Charge and Play pack, and two rechargeable batteries. That's four.

What's two million divided by one million? Two. Is four more than two? Yes.

The rumors, apparently, are true. According to retailers in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Miami and Houston, there will be mass shortage of Xbox 360 units on the targeted launch date of November 22. IGN contacted dozens of stores around the country, including Gamestop, EB Games, Electronics Boutique, Target and Walmart. One short-tempered clerk at a Gamestop in New York estimated that Xbox 360 units will not be available for walk-in customers until April. That's right, April.

April is obviously the worst-case scenario, but every retailer we spoke with that accepted preorders estimated that walk-in customers will have to wait until January for their new system. And since none of those retailers are accepting any more preorders, there may be a lot of disappointed little gamers this Christmas.

Capping off a November of expanded horizons that has him making his big-screen acting debut, 50 Cent will also star in his own video game. "50 Cent: Bulletproof" for PlayStation 2 and Xbox will let players blast bullets through the streets of New York, with G-Unit at their side. Written by Terry Winter, whose credits include "The Sopranos," "Bulletproof" depicts what the game's creators say is a scenario that could have played out if 50 hadn't gotten into music. The action is full of enough brutal kills that the game easily racked up an M rating.

But aside from letting players indulge 50 in his less gentle side, the game will serve as the closest thing 50 has released to a box set. Topped with three tracks recorded exclusively for the game, "Bulletproof" will also include 10 exclusive remixes to songs that have only appeared on 50's mixtapes. Also in the game are songs from 50's official albums and more than a dozen 50 and G-Unit videos.

The official track count is 53 songs from 50, 20 from G-Unit, 10 from Lloyd Banks, 10 from Young Buck and four from Tony Yayo, plus 47 tracks from DJ Sha Money XL and 15 videos from 50 and G-Unit. The entire collection is available to players at any point in the game; all gamers have to do is have 50 access