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Xbox 360 users are getting a much anticipated update to the dashboard today, bringing among other things Netflix support, but it appears that the streaming service won't have (at least for now) quite as many films available as initially planned. Specifically, Netflix has stopped users from streaming movies distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The restriction only applies to Xbox 360 users – PC, Mac and other Netflix enabled devices can still stream Sony films. While this may seem like a cheap move on Sony’s part to try and spoil the day for Microsoft, Netflix claims this is simply a matter of licensing, and that a number of Sony-owned properties are still available for streaming.

Whether this was truly just bad timing and the license just coincidentally expired as Microsoft was adding Netflix support, remains anyone’s guess. In any case, there is no sense for Sony to block their content on the long run so hopefully they can resolve this issue soon.

Over a year ago, rumors began floating around that Deus Ex 3 was in the works. This excited some and horrified others, as a third installment for the Deus Ex series could end up being a disappointment to many like its predecessor or a great game like the original Deus Ex. Eidos didn't wait long to actually comment on the rumor, and in November of last year their Montreal office confirmed they were indeed going to develop the third Deus Ex game.

They've shed little details to date about the progress of development, other than saying the game is due for release in 2010 and some minor story elements. If you're dying for details, though, some more information along with some screenshots of a development preview have been released. The meager amount of information available looks and sounds promising – we'll have to wait more than a year to find out for sure, though.

Some of the flaws that Deus Ex 2 suffered were due to the cross-platform release, and the original Xbox having limitations that constricted game design. Modern consoles certainly don't share those downsides. We've seen many games released on console and PC side by side, with little differences between them, so at the very least they don't have an excuse to make the same mistake again. Whether or not they can recapture the immersion the original game brought is another question.

Microsoft's long-awaited New Xbox Experience dashboard is expected to officially launch tomorrow, but those of you who successfully signed up to preview program with a valid console ID number get to download it a bit early. Major Nelson explains that rather than simply adding another 10,000 users to the preview program like Microsoft did last week, the decision was made to allow all who applied to download the NXE today.

The New Xbox Experience features a host of upgrades, including a new interface that will replace the “Blades” system, party chat for up to seven people, the ability to save games to the hard drive for faster load times and quieter operation, customizable avatars, improved resolution support, and Netflix streaming.

The update is free for all so there's absolutely no reason not to grab it. Even those without an internet connection will have the option of either burning the update to CD from a PC or upgrading the next time they buy a game which contains the new firmware. Not enough storage space? Microsoft has a couple of solutions for you as well.

Following an announcement earlier this year that Microsoft planned to shut down Ensemble Studios, it was revealed that the company was working on a long-rumored Halo MMO. Few details were available at the time, but apparently the game had already been green lit and was well underway before Microsoft pulled the plug on the project.

Speaking to Shacknews, Ensemble director of technology Dave Pottinger shed a little more light on the matter, claiming the game was based on the World of Warcraft MMO model but was much more action oriented so as to keep it analogous to the forthcoming Halo Wars real-time strategy game. Pottinger also voices his disagreement with Microsoft’s decision to close the studio and suggests that Ensemble could have some form of successor.

If you’re already planning to buy the PC version of Left 4 Dead, you might be interested to know Valve is running a great deal on its entire back catalog with the Valve Complete Pack. For a mere $100, gamers can score all 22 titles released within the studio’s twelve years of development history, including every Half-Life game and Counter-Strike iteration, as well as Day of Defeat, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and the aforementioned zombie shooter.

Individually, that amounts to about $234 according to the company. With Left 4 Dead currently selling for $45, you’re basically getting all of Valve's previous releases for $55. Those who bought the Orange Box last year already own the priciest stuff in this bundle, otherwise this sounds like a deal well worth investing in. More details including the full list of games available can be found here.

EA’s casual online shooter Battlefield Heroes has been in closed beta for quite some time, and while the game was originally slated for a late 2008 release, it has now been confirmed that instead the beta will be closed down so they can move their focus on “polishing the backend” – their words not mine.

Jokes aside, senior producer James Salt explains that the beta has been of a tremendous help in balancing the gameplay and squashing bugs, but the studio is now entering the next phase of development and wants to concentrate its efforts on the unseen parts of the game, such as making sure the micro-transactions system and community features are all working fine.

The developer plans to get the beta up and running again early next year, with a final release now targeted for the first quarter of 2009. The cartoonish Heroes will be the first title in the Battlefield series released under EA’s new Play 4 Free model, meaning it will be an online-only free-to-play game financed through advertisements and micro-transactions for character customizations.

The NPD has released its sales data for October 2008 and it brings some familiar news that range anywhere from outstanding to discouraging, depending on your point of view. In a month where the Xbox 360 price cut was fully advertised, Microsoft managed to ship 371,000 units – slightly above September – whereas the more expensive PlayStation 3 slipped from 232,400 to 190,000 units sold.

Either way, Nintendo once again dominated the hardware scene with a whopping 803,000 Wii units sold, their biggest number since December 2007, and a further 491,000 units for the DS handheld.

On the software side, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 role-playing game Fable II topped the charts for the month with 790,000 copies sold, beating out other brand new releases such as Fallout 3 or Sony’s Little Big Planet as well as established hits like Wii Fit. Overall the entire video game market in the U.S. was up 18 percent from the same month last year, seemingly unaffected by the current economic downturn.

Exercise gaming is becoming ever more popular following the wild success of Wii Fit, but Electronic Arts is about to take the genre to the next level – or so they claim. The company today announced EA Sports Active, touting a more customizable and personalized fitness product endorsed by fitness experts (which apparently includes Oprah’s personal trainer) with exercises that will appeal to a diverse audience.

The game features twenty sports including cardio boxing and tennis, plus a bunch of calorie counting and fitness training tools. Gamers will have a 30-day fitness roadmap to accurately measure their progress, and 20-minute sessions that will provide a structured workout to target different parts of the body.

EA Sports Active should be priced at $59.99 when it launches next spring, and will come with a resistance band to help build strength and a set of leg straps that wrap around the upper thigh in order to track your leg movements. The Wii Balance Board is not required, but will add functionality to many exercises.

Microsoft has revamped its Games for Windows Live service today, marking the first major update since its debut 18 months ago, and it looks like the company is getting ready on Steam developer Valve. In fact, speaking in a recent interview with Shacknews, Games for Windows Live general manager Chris Early has confirmed that Microsoft plans to distribute full PC titles through its Games for Windows LIVE Marketplace in the near future.

Today’s release basically improves on the user interface, but a separate update scheduled for the coming weeks is expected to give users access to trailers, demos, and most importantly downloadable content. Microsoft hopes to exploit the latter to build a market presence by partnering with a number of studios such as Bethesda, so that they can offer exclusive DLC for high profile titles even if the game itself is being sold on Steam.

This is a smart yet long overdue move considering it already has the dominant PC gaming platform, its Windows operating system, but of course Valve has done a fantastic job at defining the way these distribution services work and Microsoft will have a lot of catching-up to do.

World of Warcraft is just big, 11 million monthly paid subscribers big. So you can guess that when Blizzard announced the second expansion pack for its popular MMORPG over a year ago everybody was paying attention. And now the day has finally come after three months of the opt-in beta, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King is here and more than likely those hardcore WoW players are already browsing through the fantasy world's new areas and building up their new 'Death Knight' characters rather than reading these lines.

The new expansion set costs $40 for the standard edition, while the collector's edition price has been set to a staggering $70. Many WoW fans have expressed their discontent about the expansion pack's cost, which will also extend your subscription by an additional 30 days. Nonetheless nobody seems to be complaining about the many additional features included in Wrath of the Lich King, among some of the most important: Characters level cap raised to 80, a new playable class called Death Knight, a new continent to explore (Northrend), an epic battle with the Lich King at the Frozen Throne, new Inscription profession, a slightly improved graphics engine, and of course new items, quests, dungeons, creatures, weapons, and the list goes on.

With some 60-plus percent of the MMOG market dominated by Blizzard and an estimated revenue of $120 million per month coming from subscriptions, World of Warcraft seems to be holding a long life still and should remain for some time the PC platform's most popular game, despite of being originally released four years ago.

Take a look at the intro trailer of Wrath of the Lich King and some gameplay footage using the new Death Knight class, after the jump.

Ubisoft may be tooting its own horn for hitting the million-sale mark within three weeks of launching Far Cry 2, but Epic Games has a much more impressive figure to share with us. Not only their Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War 2 sold over 2 million units within its first weekend of release, it also had a major impact on Xbox Live with 1.5 million people playing online over the weekend.

Assuming all copies were the standard edition that's a minimum of $120 million in sales in three days. Impressive, indeed, but not enough to match other major releases such as Halo 3 – another Xbox 360 exclusive – which moved nearly 2.5 million copies on day one totaling more than $170 million in sales, and the multi-platform GTA IV which sold 3.6 million copies and raked in $310 million in the same timeframe. Anyway, it’s good to see all these great games being released lately.

Microsoft is cleaning house once again by banning from Xbox Live those users who have modified their 360 consoles to play pirated games. According to Major Nelson the banning has been carried out to “keep game play safe and secure” for the 14 million community members, noting that any modification to an Xbox 360 is also a violation of the Xbox Live terms of use.

This comes just days after the release of Gears of War 2, which many gamers illegally downloaded and played on modded consoles before the game was available at retail. Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: World at War are also prime examples of recent big titles that hit the torrent sites way before their actual release dates.

But as usual with this sort of things, you have to wonder whether any “false positives” may have slipped through the cracks, especially since a number of users on the official Xbox forum are already complaining that their accounts have been banned without just cause – which, if true, could be a big nuisance for paying Xbox Live subscribers.

Ubisoft is congratulating itself today proclaiming that their critically-acclaimed shooter Far Cry 2 has sold over 1 million copies worldwide, in less than three weeks of availability at retail. Of course this includes multiple platforms – PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 – but it is nonetheless a pretty good start considering the amount of high profile games currently competing for your attention.

Far Cry 2 is an ambitious open-world shooter set in a war-torn Africa, complete with warlords, destructible environments, dynamic weather effects, and a 24 hour day-night cycle. The game is a sequel of sorts to the Crytek-developed original released for PCs in 2004, and has been getting pretty good marks from reviewers across the web. Check out our in-depth performance report here and a few reviews at Gamespot, Metacritic and CVG.

Developers and manufacturers make absolutely no money from the second hand market, which is usually the norm for any sector from used cars to used computers and other gadgets. For the games industry, however, this is a “huge issue.”

In a recent interview with gamesindustry.biz, Epic Games’ president Michael Capps talked about this problem and predicts that the future of DLC (downloadable content) may be geared towards consumers who rent games or buy them used. He goes on to explain that Epic's primary retailer makes the majority of its money from second hand sales despite being a specialist games store, and while he refuses to blame gamers for this, it’s understandable that they want to compensate for missed revenues.

This is all well and good but later on he claims some developers are toying with the idea of charging a $20 fee to those who buy used games in order to let them unlock the full game – basically reducing it to a demo if they don’t. Capps isn't necessarily advocating this kind of move, but it shows how keen developers are growing on taking a cut of the lucrative used game and rental markets. The full interview with Michael Capps is available here.

Those of you who pre-ordered Valve’s new co-op zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead, from Steam will have probably already played through the demo. For everyone else, however, now is the chance to give it a try as the demo has officially gone public.

Left 4 Dead is Valve’s first major single title since the release of Half-Life 2 and it promises to redefine the co-operative genre, much in the same way that Half-Life and Counter-Strike changed the single and multiplayer action genres. The demo features two full levels from the final game, playable either solo or online, and is available for both PC and Xbox 360 users via Steam and Xbox Live Marketplace respectively.

The final game will be made available on November 18, but those of you who have been enjoying the demo since late last week can let us know your thoughts in the comments. A trailer for the game and detailed system requirements are available at the official website.

After getting censored in Australia, it looks like Bethesda’s multi-million selling Fallout 3 will undergo some changes for its release in Japan. Specifically, the non-playable-character Mr. Burke has been removed from the game entirely along with the “Power of the Atom” side-quest to detonate the nuclear bomb in the town of Megaton.

Additionally, an unspecified weapon has been given a name change as it was deemed inappropriate – presumably the mini-nuke launcher “Fat Man.” The decision has obvious consequences for the overall gameplay, but it is not completely unexpected given the country’s cultural sensitivity to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. According to Kotaku, however, the reaction to the changes among Japanese gamers seems to be “largely disappointment.”

When Call of Duty's previous installment made it to the PC it had somewhat of a hard time competing with the hype that other titles like Crysis had built behind them. Nevertheless, CoD 4 proved in the long run to be the better overall game, and not only for the gameplay, but because it presented a wider range of PC gamers the best package in terms of graphics and playability, no matter how slow or fast your graphics card was.

Call of Duty 4 also furthered the genre in a number of aspects like digital distribution (through Steam despite of not being a Valve property) and a top notch multiplayer campaign that ultimately made it worthwhile to bring the game to the Mac platform as well.

With that kind of background you can imagine hype and expectation is going through the roof for Call of Duty 5: World at War that also got boosted last month by a multiplayer beta in the PC and Xbox 360 platforms.

The game should be available in the North America starting today for the following platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, and PS2. Australia and Europe will receive the game a couple of days later. Expect our usual graphics card performance review of the game in the coming days.

But before you go to pick the game up from store shelves, you may want to leave your computer downloading the 1.1 patch that was made available just today. Also watch the teaser trailer after the jump.

EA boss John Riccitiello has previously voiced his own personal thoughts on the SecuROM DRM protection used in some of the company’s PC games, saying the majority of gamers don’t care. Well, it appears that at least a few of them care and are doing more about it than just complaining – they are filing class action lawsuits.

Following the news in September that the company was being sued for keeping the installation of SecuROM a secret, Gamepolitics is now reporting that two similar lawsuits were filed against EA in October. In the first case, a man from Pennsylvania alleges that the Spore Creature Creator Free Trial Edition secretly installed SecuROM on his computer, while a second suitor from Missouri claims that installing DRM-protected The Sims 2: Bon Voyage has caused major issues which could only be resolved by reformatting the system.

The company has come under considerable fire for its DRM practices, particularly for the use of SecuROM in high-profile games such as Spore. The technology is being described as unfair and even oppressive (to which I agree), but I'm not sure about it actually causing computer problems. What are your thoughts on the SecuROM DRM? Had any problems with it?

Nintendo may be king when it comes to the current-gen console race, but developers and manufacturers also care about something else called “attach rate,” which is essentially the number of games sold per console. According to Gamasutra, which recently pooled data from official numbers published by Nintendo, the Xbox 360 is leading the way in this regard and looks to continue its success in the U.S. with a strong holiday season.

The numbers show that the Xbox 360 currently enjoys the highest ratio at 8.1 games per machine, though of course Microsoft’s console has been on the market for a year longer than its rivals. Comparing all three over its first 23 months on the market, however, the 360 still comes ahead (albeit slightly) with a software tie ratio of 6.5 compared to 5.3 and 5.5 for the PS3 and Wii respectively.

It’s hard to say who is doing best just by looking at these figures, though, so you should take them with a pinch of salt. For example, a system could boast a high attach rate by selling lots of software titles but few hardware units, whereas another can sell just as many games but triple the hardware units and come out with a lower attach rate. Still, the report offers other interesting pieces of information, such as the tie ratio for both first and third-party games on each console.

The PC version of Far Cry 2 has just received a patch, bringing the game to version 1.01 which includes all sorts of improvements and fixes. In single-player mode, Ubisoft has repaired a few inconsistencies such as the fixed health not changing with the difficulty level, a bug where players get stuck when healing a buddy, and the mortar pushing a player through a wall.

There's a huge host of multiplayer fixes too, fixing crashes and freezing problems, and a handful of improvements to the game in general and to the map editor. The patch is 42MB in size; you can download it or check out the full list of fixes and improvements here.

Likewise, the first Fallout 3 patch has been released, updating Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic role playing gaming to version 1.0.0.15. It’s a much smaller file at just 6.6MB and basically addresses some occasional crashes and problems with restarting the game after title updates finish installing.