While I admit that the phenomenon commonly known as the "Red Ring of Death" is hardly a news flash, it's a subject I've recently had to deal with. It is also referred to as the "3 Red Leds of Death", and can be shortened to RROD or 3RLOD. There have been some successful repairs out for a while now, but I finally got motivated to fix mine. It has been sitting there sulking on the shelf with those three red lights, blinking steadily, mocking me. It broke a couple months ago, but now that Halo3 and BioShock are out it couldn't wait any longer.



Now that I've gone though the process of breaking and repairing my blinkin' 360, I've decided to take some time away from my two new favorite games long enough to explain clearly what is going wrong with all these fried 360s and how it gets fixed properly.



Looking for an explanation in simple English? Keep reading... Continue reading "The Red Ring of Death: A Full Circle Explanation"

Well it seems Ben is up to his usual mayhem again, and has modded something interesting indeed. This time, it's an Xbox360 wireless controller stuffed into an old Xbox Duke (also referred to as a "fatty") controller. After receiving several requests, he got one of those wild hairs like he does every so often and decided it might be fun. As always, he makes this stuff look easy.









Keep reading to see his story, with nice large clear photos and a movie clip of him using it to play Stranglehold... Continue reading "Another Ben Heckendorn Mod: A 360 Duke Controller"

At a recent conference called D5, there was a comment made by Bill Gates about Video Recognition. Bill seems to think that this will be the future of game control input. Shortly after this, there was a flock of bloggers commenting on the potential of "Motion Controls" coming to the 360. I have no idea why people hear what was said, but fail to listen or understand. Hmm it could be because bloggers flock like sheep and don't bother thinking for themselves. Anyway, here is the comment made:



Quote from the D5 transcript:

Bill: And as we get natural input, that will cause a change. … Software is doing vision and so, you know, imagine a game machine where you’re just going to pick up the bat and swing it or the tennis racket and swing it.



Walt: We have one of those.



Kara: Yeah. Wii.



Bill: No, that’s not it. You can’t pick up your tennis racket. And swing it.



Bill: You can’t sit there with your friends and do those natural things. That’s a 3D positional device. This is video recognition.

Now it is very clear that Bill was NOT talking about Motion Control. So what does he see for the future of gaming input? What does Video Recognition mean? Continue reading "Is Video Recognition the input device of the future?"

If any one character could represent all that is the world of Xbox, it would have to be Halo's Masterchief. If you want to sell a product to a bunch of Xbox fanboys (or fangirls) the easiest way is to drop an image of Masterchief onto it. Team Xtender has done just that, or as close as they can get without needing a license from Bungie. This appears to be an artists reproduction of the character, changed just enough to avoid the phone call from the lawyers. Of course they don't call him the Masterchief either (for the same reasons) but we all know who he is anyway.











As far as I can tell, this product has not been officially announced yet but is in a pre-order status at the wholesale level. I guess it pays to be observant, huh? There is no sign of it on the official Team Xtender website yet, but I found a photo on this site marked "XCM custom case (Sample)", as well as a product description on their wholesale website:





Continue reading "Masterchief meets Team Xtender's XCM Line"

Well it seems that Microsoft is the only company that decided not to use motion controls in their console this round. Was that a mistake? It's hard to say, but everyone else seems to think thats the right direction to go. The PS3 has tilt sensitivity in the Six-axis controller, and the Wii-mote takes motion control to new extremes... should the 360 controllers support tilt control too?



Spare a couple clicks for me here, and lets see how many 360 gamers want to tilt:







Well, we'll see how the poll goes, but right now there are plenty of people betting you want tilt control so badly that you'd hack your beloved 360 controller apart to get it. Apparently this is a popular thought, because now there are three different aftermarket hacks coming to stores soon.



Let's have a look at the choices, should you want to tilt:



Continue reading "User Poll: Does your 360 need tilt control?"

I just found a professional painting shop called Colorware that does scratch-proof paintjobs on consoles. These look awesome, and you can either send in your 360 or buy a brand new Premium in any color you want.









They offer 28 color choices, and a paintjob on your 360 starts at $99! They had their paints and scratchproof coating created for them specifically to look the best on plastic. They claim that their special stratchproof coating also blocks 99.8% of the sun's UV rays, preventing the color on your console from ever fading due to sitting in the sunlight.



They have several options for painting a 360...



Continue reading "Colorware - Professional Console Painting"

I ran across this item, it's supposed to be a replacement case for the 360:













Ok I'm not sure what kind of interesting mind-bending drugs someone was taking, but this couldn't have been designed straight and sober. I think it looks alot more like a UFO than a console, and I'm not sure how many kids are going to want one.

Continue reading "OVO 360 = UFO WTF?"

There is a new problem for the exclusive features of the PS3... because the 360 is getting tilt control soon. HDMI, check. Large HDD, check. Tilt control, almost there. I'm not sure what will be left for PS3 fanboys to gloat about, except possibly a free online service that isn't worth what you pay for it. Ok, so the tilt control isn't a Microsoft feature, but whatever.



There havn't been many details released on this mod yet. The official website here just has a release date of "End of April" and these two screenshots of what appears to be a pc-based configuration app.







The guys over at xbox-scene received some additional information from the inventor "GreenGiant", who is the same guy that put out the XIR mod for the original xbox.

New generation of Tilt Mod.

There will be two versions, Xilt Advanced and Xilt Lite.

Written from the ground up to allow for the maximum user configuration, flexible for virtually any game type.



Features:

- Works with Wired and Wireless controllers

- Only 7 wires needed

- Install in 10-15 minutes

- Easily Enable/Disable tilt mod without an ugly switch

- Easily change tilt threshold in all four axis

- USB Configurator for changing any settings

- FW is upgradable (not end user)

- Xilt Advanced: Full configuration of Tilt angle to Controller Axis direction



Expected availability, last week of April.

Educated guesses: Well, the screenshots show buttons for "Read from Xilt" and "Write to Xilt" and they claim it installs with 7 wires. I'm going to assume that this is a small programmable chip that installs inside the controller, and it will some type of unobtrusive plug to hook the controller to your pc. Since they claim it has no ugly switch, they probably have it set up to enable/disable with a button combo like Back+Start.



So... who's up for some tilt control on your 360? Any suggestions on which games would be more fun with this mod? Maybe some driving or flying action?



Official XILT Website



Check out the full size photos after the jump. Continue reading "XILT - 360 Controller Mod"

There are many modders in the world, doing all kinds of awesome projects. However, nobody even seems to come close to the next generation of awesomeness that consistently comes out of Ben's workshop. Now, just in case any of you happened to be under a rock last September, this is the guy that stuffed a 360 into a custom fabricated laptop case complete with HD monitor. It turned out like this:







Ok, now either he must have gotten really bored or someone offered him a boatload of cash because he made another 360 laptop and it's even more awesome than the last one. He hasn't released many details on it yet, because Engadget will be doing a 3 part "How-to" on it soon and they want to get as much attention as possible. Anyway, what did get released is a handful of external photos and a hillarious video of Ben with the laptop.







I've got all of the photos and the video posted after the jump.



Engadget's post on the laptop

Ben's website(Warning: much awesomeness to be found here.) Continue reading "Another Ben Heckendorn 360 Laptop!"