Microsoft E3 Conference Xbox 360 Snippets

In case you're unaware between 11th - 13th July E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is being held in Santa Monica, California. Although it is now fundamentally different to previous years and gone is the huge central location and now in it's place are smaller individually organised events that are invitation only, all the big players are still in attendance. Yesterday Microsoft held there E3 conference which highlighted some interesting news

The Xbox 360 Elite will be released in Europe on 24th August, although a price has yet to be announced.

A new Xbox 360 Halo 3 Special Edition will be released to coincide with the game.

There are now more than 7 million subscribers to Xbox Live and Microsoft expect this to increase to 10 million before next years E3. More than 45 million games have been downloaded from Xbox Live Arcade to date and more than 100 games will be available for the service by end of the year. Highlights include games such as Bomberman live, Undertow, Hexic 2, Sensible World of Soccer, Wing Commander Arena, Feeding Frenzy 2. Track & Field, Golden Axe, Space Giraffe and Super Puzzle Fighter.

Sonic the Hedgehog and Golden Axe have been added to Xbox Live as of yesterday and will cost 400 Microsoft Points each.

Europe and Canada are to be added to the video marketplace download service (which is US only at present) later in the year.

Project Gotham Racing 4 now includes motorbikes (Honda, Suzuki, Ducati are signed up) and more than 120 cars are to be included in the game when it is released in September.

It was stated that the footage shown for GTA IV was captured from the 360 and there will be two exclusive downloadable chapters available for the Xbox 360 version next spring.

Mass Effect is now scheduled to be released in November but no definitive date has been firmed up.

A beta of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will be made available and it will be exclusive to 360.