Microsoft announced today that the next update for the Xbox 360 dashboard will arrive on August 11, 2009. Among other features, this update will bring Netflix movie parties and queue management, an Avatar Marketplace and the new Games on Demand service that will let Xbox Live users buy Xbox 360 games, including Mass Effect, BioShock and Assassin's Creed. Below is the complete set of features that will arrive with this update:

It’s called Historic Battles and it will be available July 21st for 800 points and it has four new maps and four new Achievements. Here is a breakdown of what Historic Battles for Halo Wars will contain:

Map Pack 3 for Call of Duty: World at War has been announced for an August release day for the Xbox 360 and the PS 3.

Map Pack 3 will feature three multiplayer maps (“Battery,” “Revolution,” and “Breach”), and one new Zombie map (“Der Riese”).

Great news for those of you urgently awaiting the next Xbox Live dashboard update featuring Twitter, Facebook, and other integrations: Major Nelson has officially announced that the Xbox 360 System Update Preview program is now taking beta applications at the Microsoft Connect website. What does this mean? This means that if chosen, you will be able to help test the new features as soon as July 31! Now from the Major himself:

There are a couple of updates in the world of Grand Theft Auto, in both Liberty City and Chinatown, on both the 360 and the PSP.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (the highest rated game ever for Nintendo DS) will be making its way to the PSP system this fall as both a digital download (via PLAYSTATION Network) and at retail. Specifically built for the PSP platform with

Never before has horror, sci-fi, drama, and action been combined so well to create a truly great cinematic experience!

I do not usually like to give any game the higher ranking scores of 9 or 10, nor do I like to express with titles of instant classic, masterpiece, or revolutionary. However, there is that every once in a while spark that deserves all of the attention that equal to GREAT.

Feeling burnt out by horror themed game titles without ambition (left 4 Dead) or titles that feel like remakes as opposed to new original titles (like comparing Dead Space to Doom 3), I hardly have any motivation to want to play another horror based story line. But thanks to the game play videos, and the praise from may game review communities, I have decided to see what all of the hype was about myself. And I am damn glad that I did.

What I discovered is that Prototype delivers all of the hype that it was built to deliver, to be possibly the best cinematic gaming experience I have experienced in a long time, if not ever.

When the hard-drive-less Xbox 360 Arcade succeeded the Core model last year, it initially came with a detachable, external 256MB memory card to store the New Xbox Experience firmware. Later models of the $199 console featured 256MB of internal flash memory attached to the newer-model "Jasper" motherboards, which were redesigned to be less susceptible to the hardware failures that prompted a billion-dollar warranty extension in 2007.