Hyperbole comes in all sorts of different forms, but Microsoft’s new push going out today strikes me as downright silly. A press released entitled “A New Dawn in Home Entertainment for Everyone Begins Nov. 19″ was sent out today containing the objectionable comparison between the release of the New Xbox Experience tomorrow and the release of the color TV in 1954.

With the expectation of reaching 25 million consoles sold worldwide by the end of the month, Microsoft is trying to make a push into the realm of social networking. Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business VP Shane Kim explained to Forbes that the release of the NXE is “a big part of [Live's] transformation from a multiplayer matchmaking service to a social and entertainment network.” Microsoft plans on “investing more in social networking capabilities” that will allow them to “tap into is the growth of social networking and the disruption in the media industry,” according to Kim.

But are Avatars, Xbox Live parties, and Netflix streaming capabilities enough to turn the Xbox 360 into a social networking entertainment box that the whole family can gather around? Microsoft will be trying to appease a lot of demographics with a lot of different initiatives. It’ll be difficult to win on every front and not deliver a subpar performance to some of those groups, but if there’s a company with enough money to pull something like this off, it’s Microsoft.

It’s well-known to most everyone that the economy isn’t doing so well these days. But while most people are wondering how this will affect those forced to sell their homes or find new jobs, the video game companies would like you to know that they are doing just fine. Or at least, that’s what they say.

Recently, vice president and Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, Mindy Mount, commented at a BMO Capital Markets Interactive Entertainment Conference that the Xbox 360 is “recession-proof” (Via Softpedia). Her argument is that a slow economy means people will consider their personal spending more carefully and may try to find the a way to get more bang for their leisurely spending:

“In tough economic times, people tend to cut back on very high-ticket items like travel and automobiles, but they still want to be entertained. Video games already offer some of the most hours of entertainment per dollar than any other form of entertainment.”

I can see her reasoning, but the real irony of stating the 360 is immune to a recession comes when you find out Microsoft’s stock was at the lowest it has been in ten years just a few days ago (Via SeattlePI). The stock recently dropped to $19.19 per share, which is apparently the lowest it has been since 1998. That’s also down 43% from last year. Of course, those stock problems are most likely due to the PC side of the company, but you still have to wonder just how “recession-proof” the gaming industry really is.

Steam in its current form — a PC game store and Xbox Live-esque community service — does a lot of what Microsoft talked about doing years ago. But like the Live Anywhere concept, Games for Windows Live has largely drifted by the wayside. Yesterday, Microsoft released an update to GFW Live to improve upon the lackluster interface that has, so far, not come to be the unified PC gaming platform Microsoft hoped it to be. According to Shacknews, Microsoft will be releasing another update in the next few weeks that will add support for downloads of demos, videos, and DLC through a true GFW Live Marketplace application.

Microsoft has more in store than just that, though, as we learned in an interview that Shacknews had with GFW Live GM Chris Early. He said:

When we get to the place where we do distribute games digitally, will we have a digital rights management system? Maybe. Or maybe we’ll just continue to support the industry leaders in that. Because it is a hard thing to do. You talk to any of those companies, and that is their whole company, is doing digital rights management.

Asked about that first bit — regarding when Microsoft begins distributing games digitally — Early admitted, “Clearly it’s on our road map.” That initiative will come once they’ve fully rolled out their plans for allowing DLC through the Marketplace.Early believes this was the right order to release things in, claiming “this is something that you can’t do today on a PC, right? You can buy digitally through a bunch of places.” While that’s not entirely true — just look at Bethesda, who has offered DLC for games through its website — a unified place for DLC on PC isn’t a half-bad idea. Whether this means we’ll begin seeing more premium DLC on PC is unclear, but we can hope that the mod community will manage to keep that in check or, at the very least, make sure we don’t see any companies trying to sell us a set of horse armor.

Anyone who’s bought a new copy of Gears of War 2 was lucky enough to receive a code that unlocks five maps from the original Gears of War’s multiplayer mode. Epic did more than simply copy and paste them into the game; they’ve redone any number of aspects of the levels including the color palette and various parts of the environment, like changing Canals’ water to ice.

As the video above demonstrates, the theme in Gears 2 — so far as multiplayer level design goes — seems to be clarity (and possibly better weather). The rain from several of the levels has cleared up and it’s now much easier to both navigate and find enemies in these redone levels.

Aside from that, don’t expect the levels to play much differently. The overall geometry is largely the same, so chances are that most viable strategies for these maps in the first Gears is still going to work here. It’s surprising how Epic managed to find a middle ground between completely remaking these levels and porting exact copies. Regardless, the lovers and haters will no doubt be swarming in flocks to tell us how awesome/broken/worse/better these versions are. There’s never any pleasing everyone, but do let us know what you think of the remakes and if Epic did too little or too much.

With all of the big releases lately, Microsoft apparently felt you don’t deserve a new Xbox Live Arcade game this week — unless you’ve preordered Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, in which case you’re likely enjoying the original Banjo-Kazooie right now. For the rest of you, the only updates to the Xbox Live Arcade this week include a new Street Fighter II-themed table for Pinball FX and three additions to the Arcade Hits line — which means cheaper prices. All three games can now be had for 400 Microsoft points ($5 in real money).

The first of the bunch is the original Feeding Frenzy, a game where you lone goal is to gobble up fish. As much as I’d like to make fun of the premise, I won’t, because I know plenty of people who enjoy the game and for $5 it’s a pretty good deal to keep your child occupied for a bit while that demo of Left 4 Dead downloads.

Next up is something much further away from the kid-friendly tag you could slap on Feeding Frenzy: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. All of the people disappointed with the lack of excessive gore in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe when it releases on Sunday will be right at home here with UMK 3’s classic violence. Just be wary of playing on the 360’s godawful D-pad — it can make things tricky.

And finally, we have Worms. Featuring prettied-up graphics and online support, it’s a very solid iteration of the classic series. It doesn’t bring much new to the table and doesn’t include every feature you’d want (namely, the omission of a number of weapons), but now that it’s just $5, it’ll be hard to complain.

Epic Games president Michael Capps’ complaints about the rental and used game markets cutting into company profits sound a bit hollow today considering a recent report from Microsoft stating that the Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War 2, had opening weekend sales of over 2 million units worldwide.

To top that off, over 1.5 million people logged into Xbox Live during the weekend, racking up 15 million gameplay hours in Gears of War 2, which set a record for concurrent Live players. Gamers who joined in the fray collectively unlocked over 19 million Achievements.

These huge numbers on both sides of the spectrum are thanks to Cliff Bleszinski’s wish to launch the game on the same day worldwide so that everyone around the globe could log in and share the experience simultaneously:

“We were so excited to launch ‘Gears of War 2’ on the same day all around the world, something virtually unheard of in the games business. We wanted our fans, no matter where they live, to have a shared experience on day one, and that’s exactly what’s happened.”

If those figures were just actual sales in America, you would be looking at over $120 million dollars–and that is not taking into consideration the limited edition version of the game. If you incorporate the current exchange rate of non-U.S. dollars, the numbers get even higher because Gears of War 2 costs $59.99 (£44.99) and the limited edition costs $69.99 (£49.99)–so the British Pound to U.S. Dollar exchange rate is a benefit, meaning it will convert to more money for Epic.

Considering that the Holiday Shopping Extravaganza is only a scant couple weeks away, you can only expect these sales numbers to skyrocket across the globe. Kind of makes Capps’ complaints sound a bit like a child’s temper tantrum now, doesn’t it?

The release date for Halo Wars got a bit more specific today as Microsoft announced the Xbox 360 exclusive RTS will be released worldwide in February. Naturally, given that it’s a Halo game, you’ll get to dish out some extra cash for the Limited Collector’s Edition which is full of Halo goodies. Just don’t expect anything quite as substantial as a helmet for a small, cat-sized animal of your choice.

Among the contents of the collector’s edition is Halo Wars: Genesis, a graphic novel detailing a mission involving the Convenant’s interest in Harvest; a unique Honor Guard Wraith for use in-game; early access to the three new Halo 3 maps that comprise the Mythic Map Pack; and two other slightly more ambiguous items. One of them is the Spirit of Fire patch, which the press release explains lets you “start the journey as an official Spirit of Fire crew member.” The other is a collection of six Leader cards — that’s not a particularly clear description. We know Leaders are essentially the game’s Hero units, but it’s unclear if these are simply trading cards with the Leader units plastered on them or something more significant. We asked Microsoft and they let us know they’re simply trading cards and that they won’t have any impact on the game.

This package will run you $80 — not a terrible deal if this actually gives you the actual Mythic Map Pack, since that’s likely to cost $10 on its own. As an extra incentive to preorder, certain retailers will offer a download for a unique in-game Warthog sporting flame decals. That seems a bit out of place in a Halo game, but people do love them some flame decals.

The Internet is boiling with reports of game killing bugs for Fable 2. The Lionhead RPG premiered last week with seemingly more than its fair share of glitches. As Microsoft and Lionhead work to get a patch out soon, a source that claims to be one of Sony’s Lead Quality Assurance Testers has a suggestion to cure some of players ills.

Rodney who uses the handle Rod_Five on the Lionhead Community Forums asserts that many of the bugs and glitches players are experiencing are caused by the hastily created online co-op patch.

“Now as many of you know it wasn’t until a few days before the release if it was known whether or not online co-op would make it. Now a game goes gold (off to be made into the retail version everyone plays) at least three weeks before… release… on a larger release like Fable 2, I’d bet that it went gold five weeks before release because of the larger scale of its release. So that means while the game was out of Lionheads hands they were working on the patch to add the online co-op feature, which I doubt they had time to properly test since they were on such a crunch to get the patch out by day one.”

“So, my big point is that it’s very possible that the online co-op patch created these game-breaking bugs.”

Rod_Five goes on to give specific instructions on how to remove the patch which is set to download and install as soon as you go online with Fable 2.

Forums are tricky in that it’s hard to confirm the identity and experience claimed by any poster. If Rod_Five is a QA guy for Sony, it’s ironic he posted on an Xbox 360 game and goes to show some games can cause loyal console fans to cross lines.

There hasn’t been an official response from Lionhead or Microsoft to this suggestion. Many players have responded to this thread and have recommended removing the patch in many other other threads on the forums. Although it hasn’t helped everyone, many players report they’re happy to have found a solution. One poster also pointed out that it allows you to exploit the pub game glitch again.

Microsoft has actually managed to accumulate some semblance of success in Japan recently with the Xbox 360, thanks to titles like Tales of Vesperia. Early in September, Microsoft held a media briefing in Tokyo where they outlined goals for the 360 in Japan, announcing price cuts and showing off a number of games. From what we’re piecing together, however, it seems like Gears of War 2 won’t be one of those games releasing in Japan — which is utterly bizarre considering that even Madden NFL 09 was released over there.

A recent entry on a user blog at unofficial Gears of War website Gearheads of War by Michael “3Suns” Guenter claims that a local retailer in Japan didn’t have the game listed in its computer and an employee managed to only find the game on Xbox.com with no announced release date. But that’s not all:

“The story isn’t over. As I am walking out of the store, I notice the Xbox 360 2008 Autumn Catalog (Take Me I’m Free). So, I thought, this is great! At least maybe I can get some info out of the promotional literature. Guess what? Gears of War 2 is not listed ANYWHERE in the book. NOWHERE! Not even in the back index. They have games ranging from Too Human (old), Infinite Undiscovery (released a couple of weeks ago), to Star Ocean (2009). Even Gears of War the original is listed in there, but no Gears of War 2.”

It’s a peculiar omission, regardless of the location we’re talking about. We contacted Microsoft regarding this issue, but they didn’t have much to say: “We have no announcements to make about Gears of War 2 releasing in Japan at this time.” Depending on how you look at that, you could simply get the impression of your typical ‘no comment,’ or or you could read it as a suggestion that there are no plans to release Gears of War 2 in Japan.

You’re free to draw your own conclusion, but based upon what we currently know, Guenter probably summed it up best: “I guess Japan is just SOL.”

There’s big news today for the industry’s biggest trade show — Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association will announce tomorrow that E3 2009 will be undergoing some major changes from its current incarnation. The event will take place during the first week of June at the Los Angeles Convention Center and will be open to the public on Friday, June 5th and Saturday, June 6th. The event itself will begin on Tuesday, June 2nd, with the majority of the announcement filled press conferences from Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, and company coming on that first day. Attendance to the event will be capped at 40,000 people, 20,000 fewer people than the attendance of this year’s PAX and nearly half the amount that attended E3 2005, the last year before the event changed to its current, scaled-back ‘Media & Business Summit’ form.

Newsweek’s source told them, “After vehemently opposing a bigger show three years ago — to now go back to the board, admit a mistake, and advocate for a bigger show. It reflects well on the organization and the board to recognize they made a mistake and, regardless of how it would look publicly, go ahead and fixed.”

This is certainly a major change that bodes well for the event, which many believed was becoming increasingly irrelevant and superfluous. The attendance cap will likely make it a tricky affair to get into, but avid gamers should be pleased that they have another major event that seems to be catering to them.