Major Nelson lets us know of this week’s Xbox Live Video Marketplace releases. Included in this week’s releases is Season 5 of Family Guy. Family Guy was added to the Video Marketplace only a few weeks ago. The Xbox Live Video Marketplace allows users to turn their Xbox 360’s into entertainment hub for the living room. As more shows and movies are added, it keeps getting better and better.

Here is the full list of this week’s releases:

Movies
We Are Marshall HD
Superman: Doomsday HD
Disturbia HD
Troy: Director’s Cut HD
Decadent Evil 2 HD
Lucky You HD
Borderline Cult
Acts of Death

TV
Family Guy: Season 5
Ty Murray’s Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge
South Park: Matt & Trey’s Top 10
Upright Citizens Brigade Season 2
Josie and the Pussycats
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Season 2
Chappelle’s Show: Top 10 Best episodes of Chappelle’s Show
Moral Orel: Season 1
Avatar Season 3
Ghost in the Shell
Gossip Girl

Major Nelson has posted letting us known Bungie has declared Halo 3 Gold! Halo 3 will be in stores on September 25th. I can’t wait to get my hands on this.

Already mentioned at Gamefest 2007, Microsoft is planning to launch a Games For Windows variant of Xbox Live Arcade. The digital distribution service will naturally be aimed at the gamer who’s more likely to be rearranging jewels on the desktop than snarling faces. A trusted source has furnished Joystiq with further details regarding the service, as well as a strange urge to refer to themselves in third person. The information has been confirmed by external sources, but not by Microsoft at the time of writing.

Internally labeled as “Vega” (possibly referring to the star and not the Street Fighter weirdo), the service is expected to launch in early November with 10-20 games. The portfolio of Live-enabled casual titles will match the taxonomy of Xbox Live Arcade and hopes to be bolstered by 2-4 new games every month following launch. Potential users will be funneled to the service from numerous Microsoft outlets, including MSN Games and the official Xbox website. Much like Live Anywhere, Vega contributes to Microsoft’s goal of spreading the Live experiencing across multiple linked platforms — and likewise aims to entice more and more people with Live subscriptions.

Developers, who will be responsible for costs associated with development, localization, rating and certification, will receive 60% of earned revenue, with Microsoft taking the remaining 40%. Game pricing will be similar to that of Xbox Live Arcade and can be set at either $5, $10, $15, $20 or $30. The 150MB size limit is also present, though developers will be allowed to exceed it when providing adequate justification.

The list of launch titles is currently unknown, a fact that will change once Microsoft’s marketing machine lights up Vega come this November.

More to come on this is the coming days….

Via Joystiq 

Major Nelson writes to tell us that 300 has hit the Xbox Live Video Marketplace! You can download both SD and HD versions of the film. The HD version is a whopping 5.3GB download but I bet looks absolutely wonderful on a HDTV. 300 did break HD video records when it hit stores at the end of July.

I’ll be starting my download later this afternoon on my Xbox 360.

Microsoft this evening has announced that the Xbox 360 will be $50 cheaper beginning August 8th. Here is the low-down of the prices for each SKU of the Xbox 360:

• Xbox 360 Premium (with 20GB harddrive etc) = $349.99
• Xbox 360 Core = $279.99
• Xbox 360 Elite (Black colored console with 120GB) = $449.99

And in September to celebrate the release of Halo 3, Microsoft will release the Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition Console for $399.99. The Halo 3 Special Edition console comes with a authentic Spartan green-and-gold finish with matching Wireless Controller, 20GB harddrive, Headset, and Play and Charge Kit. Click here for the low-down on the Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360 from Joystiq.

Despite owning a Xbox 360 already - the $50 price drop does entice me to seriously look at possibly getting a Xbox 360 Elite or the Halo 3 Special Edition consoles. Or maybe I’ll just go buy the 120GB harddrive instead. I am not sure yet.

WOOT WOOT!

“Prepare to break your 360 controller: Konami’s Track & Field is this week’s addition to the Xbox Live Arcade. In case you’re not familiar, the controls for the various sporting events in the game, like the 100-meter dash and hurdles, usually boiled down to timed button presses of the A and B buttons. And by “timed button presses,” I mean “whaling away as fast as you can until you thought you’d pass out and/or broke your controller.”

A friend of mine used to rub a pencil across his controller as fast as he could to spare his thumbs, but I’m not sure how well that actually worked. You can expect the usual enhanced graphics and audio that come with these re-issues, as well as the 400 point price tag.”

via Wired 

Since I am always hunting for the best price for you guys, and probably some of you didn’t get in on the $149.99 deal from best buy, so I figured I would serve this one up while it still lasted.

Over at NewEgg they are selling the HD-DVD player for $162.99. granted you

don’t get the instant gratification, and you have to pay shipping of $7.52. It is  3 day shipping though.

After going through that whole process I would still go buy it from Best Buy, but if are one of those ebayer types that never pays attention to shipping then hell your getting an HD-DVD player for $162.99, AWESOME!!!

Link to sale.

So I read this morning over on engadget that Best Buy was offering the XBOX360 HD DVD players for $149.99. Then Brandon my counterpart wrote about it here at The Geekery. Then a saw a counter post by engadget saying that they were wrong. So I hop on over to Best Buy’s site and I see them for $179.99. I was all like WTF govna! So I called my good pals at the local Best Buy and probed them with a good amount of questions. So in the end I am picking up an XBOX360 HD DVD player tonight for $149.99. He said he read $149.99 on the internal site. So I don’t think it was a mistake, I just don’t think they are ready to sell them in the wild yet for $149.99. But the nice gent stamped my name on the thing and took it to the front counter. Plus get this, Toshiba is upping the ante with the HD DVD give-away, the nice chap at Best Buy told me today that whenever you buy a HD DVD player from Best Buy you will receive a form, you fill out this form with your choice of 5 HD DVD movies you would like and Toshiba sends you those movies for free. WOW!

Now I am not sure if this is just the XBOX HD player and if it is just with Best Buy that you receive this offer from Toshiba, I didn’t want to barrage him with anymore questions. Hopefully he was not feeding me lines just to get into the store.

“So tonight we dine in hell!!”, because I am watching 300 in HD tonight!!!

Engadget is saying Best Buy is selling the Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player for $149.99. That’s after Microsoft had announced a price-cut for the HD-DVD Player too.

I want one. But I think The Geek wants one more.

While prices and release dates for Rock Band have been floating for a while now, it looks like things may have finally settled down, with the entire kit now available for pre-order at a couple of retailers. If you’re ready to go all out, you can snag a bundle for either the 360 or PS3 that includes the game, guitar, microphone, and drum set for $199, although you’ll still have to wait until November 20th to actually get it. The whole lot is also available individually, with the game running $60, the microphone $30, and the drum set $80. Somewhat curiously, the 360 version of the wireless guitar is listed at $80 on both Amazon and GameStop, while the PS3 version only costs $50, although GameStop still says that the prices are “subject to change.”