It was about two weeks ago that Halo 4 developer 343 Industries warned gamers that any Halo 4 sites offering access to a beta were fake. One such site, Halo4beta.net, is now feeling the wrath of Microsoft's legal team, according to Fusible.

Microsoft and Datel have decided that it would be in both companies' best interests to settle their Xbox 360-related lawsuits against each other. The two companies have been locked in a legal battle since 2009, when Datel accused Microsoft of engaging in "predatory conduct" after an Xbox 360 update rendered all unauthorized storage devices and third-party memory cards unusable. Datel's Max Memory line of cards were among the devices affected by the update.

On Tuesday Microsoft revealed an app store for Windows 8 apps. Some of the features being touted by Microsoft's Antoine Leblond at the time included an app discovery system inside and outside of the online marketplace, built-in app trials, support for x86 and ARM-based hardware, and a flexible business model. What he didn't talk too much about were the store's new terms of service. A section of it informs users that the company reserves the right to remotely "kill" or "remove" access to apps for security or legal reasons.

Microsoft has released its My Xbox Live App on Apple's App Store. The free app lets Xbox Live users access their profiles on the go much like the Xbox Live hub on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. The app features the Metro UI style that Microsoft has deployed across all its current products, including the recent Xbox Live dashboard update and Windows Phone 7. The app also links to a browser-based demo of the Windows Phone 7 OS.

As we mentioned in a previous post, the new Xbox 360 Dashboard has been quickly making its way to users today.

As with any new product, you get the fine print of Terms of Service, and Microsoft is following on the heels of Sony and Electronic Arts with their own "no sue" provision in their updated wall of text.

Microsoft announced this week that it is taking part in next year's Independent Games Festival, the annual celebration of all things indie game-related that runs in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference. The new partnership with Microsoft adds a new prize to be awarded to the winner of the festival: a first-party publishing deal through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service. The news is part of a multi-year partnership between the Independent Games Festival and Microsoft.

Uh oh!  Looks like one popular games retailer may be getting a lump of coal in its stocking this Christmas.

Consumer Reports has released its 2011 Naughty & Nice Holiday List.  First introduced last year, the list examines various companies’ shopping policies and gives them a thumbs up or thumbs down depending on how consumer friendly they are.  Consumer Reports notes that the list merely comments on specific policies, not “everything else the company does or how it treats its customers.”

EPIX, the premium entertainment service that is a joint venture of Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM, will soon be on some pretty familiar devices. The premium programming is already available on a number of platforms including Android and the iPhone. Emil Rensing, Chief Digital Officer for the company, says that the service will be available next month on Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Apple's iPad.

Microsoft has launched a new program that gives $20,000 in investment and support to developers who want to build programs that use its Kinect motion sensing technology. The new initiative is called Kinect Accelerator, and will select 10 applicants to work closely with Microsoft. Those companies selected get an impressive range of support and products to help them bring their projects full circle including cash, mentoring, and lots of development tools.

Edge Magazine, citing an anonymous source, is reporting that "Xbox 720" development kits will be in the hands of developers by the end of the year. They claim that .developers like Ubisoft Montreal are already using 'target boxes' based on Microsoft's intended and expected specifications for its new console machine. Those that already have them will get new ones by the year's end.

In a recent talk at GDC China (as detailed on Gamasutra) Microsoft's Brian Prince said that cloud-based streaming services such as Onlive and Gaikai are leading the way into the future of the industry. Prince, who some call a "cloud evangelist" for Microsoft, claims that these services provide a roadmap for where gaming is headed.

According to a Computer and Video Games report, the next Xbox 360 - which some have been calling the Xbox 720 - is codenamed "Project Ten," will be released during the 2012 holiday shopping season, and will be "going the Apple route." All this comes from technology reporter Paul Thurrott, who says he's been told these things, but doesn't specify any particular source. Thurrott made the claims on the Windows Weekly video show.

If you somehow managed (by hook or by crook) to get a copy of Modern Warfare and are trying to play it online via Xbox Live, you'll be treated to a ban. The game officially launches November 8, but apparently Microsoft has noticed that some Xbox Live users have the game and are trying to play it online. Those people are having their accounts banned.

When you have an account for a service that keeps your credit card information on file, you hope that the company in question would provide you with some security, and when security fails, you pray that they will do what's right for the customer, but that doesn't always happen. In fact, sometimes companies do nothing at all to help you.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft plans to withdraw its patent infringement claims (337-715, U.S. International Trade Commission - Washington D.C.) against Datel Design & Development Ltd. over controllers for the Xbox 360. In response to the patent lawsuit, Datel took it upon itself to simply redesigned its controllers and stopped importing earlier versions of the TurboFire2 Xbox 360 Wireless that were the at the center of Microsoft's complaint filed with the U.S.

Guillaume Martin's puzzle/platform game Blocks That Matter has been honored with the grand prize of $40,000 in Microsoft's annual Dream.Build.Play XNA game development competition. Astronomical's Solar 2 won first prize and $20,000, followed by the action-adventure title TIC: Part 1, which won a lovely $10,000 second prize, and rhythm-game/RPG Sequence winning $5,000 for third prize. Honorable mention awards were given to Alien Jelly, for production quality; The Bridge for innovation; and Ninja Crash for fun factor.

If you were hoping to drive a Porsche in Forza 4, you can forget about it, according to developer Turn 10. The developer of the popular racing series published by Microsoft says that the fancy car brand couldn't be included because of a licensing deal Electronic Arts already has with the company. While Turn 10 or Microsoft could have sub-licensed Porsche from EA, Turn 10 decided against it. In a post on the official Forza 4 site, Turn 10 community manager Brian Ekberg explained the absence:

Despite posting a decline in sales in July, the Xbox 360 still leads the U.S. console market and Microsoft said this week that it is still on track to have the biggest year in the system's history. For the month of July, the Xbox 360 held the top spot for the seventh consecutive month, despite posting a 37.6 percent drop in sales compared to July 2010. Last July, Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox to clear out inventory and make room for the new console. This obviously gave the company a huge boost in hardware sales.

Reuters is reporting that Microsoft has "demanded" that Samsung pay $15 USD for every handset it makes that uses Google’s Android operating system. Reuters posits that Samsung will likely seek to reduce that price to $10 per handset in exchange for a better relationship with Microsoft and its windows mobile operating system. That is based on comments made by an "unnamed industry official" to the Japanese Maeil Business Newspaper.

Microsoft holds a number of patents related to Android, and is using them to help earn millions of dollars each year. In April 0f 2010 Microsoft reached a licensing deal with Taiwan's HTC Corp, under which it would receive royalty payments of $5 per handset. Since 2003, Microsoft has secured licensing agreements with more 700 companies.

According to a report from Develop Microsoft is now offering support for free-to-play titles on Xbox 360. Several sources close to the situation tell Develop that Microsoft is asking developers to discuss future free-to-play game deals. This is being done "behind the scenes" for the time being, according to Develop. Microsoft is looking at games that can be monetized by in-game item purchases or premium upgrades.

Last night Microsoft hosted the second annual Capitol Hill Family Game Night, bringing its games and technology to the nation's capital where policymakers and their families learned more about Kinect, Xbox 360 and various games. The event was presented in cooperation with congressional hosts Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.).

The event, which took place in the Rayburn House Office Building, and featured the controller-free Kinect for Xbox 360 and such games as the upcoming games Kinect: Disneyland Adventures and Dance Central 2. Picturing lawmakers shaking their stuff in front of a camera or flying through the sky like Peter Pan is kind of scary, but apparently all involved had fun.

While many might think that Microsoft took great delight in Sony's month-long downtime after being hacked, Microsoft said that it was saddened by the entire situation and that the attack on PSN in April was a bad thing for the entire industry.

"It’s bad for the industry that this has happened to Sony," said Xbox COO Dennis Durkin in a recent interview with Industry Gamers. "It’s very, very bad. It’s very damaging."

"So we don’t wish that upon anybody and you’ve seen we’ve been actually pretty quiet on the subject because we don’t want to appear to even be looking to be taking advantage of somebody else’s situation like that. That’s just not in our DNA."

The only good thing to come out of the situation is that it was a wake-up call to the entire industry - particularly those services that live or die by their continued steady availability and their level of security.

Perhaps stripping the navigation out of its E3 demo for the Kinect-only Fable title, Fable The Journey. was a terrible idea.. In retrospect, Lionhead Studios boss Peter Molyneux thinks they should have left the navigational features of the game in the demo. Because it was stripped to keep a tighter control on the presentation, many media types and viewers believed the game to be an "on rails shooter."

This, Molyneux has claimed in multiple interviews this week, is not the truth, but he blames himself for that perception. Speaking to OXM after his part in the Microsoft E3 briefing, Molyneux actually apologized for the game's debut, calling the whole thing a "horrendous mistake."

"I made a horrendous mistake on the press demo on taking out the navigation allowing players to move," he stated. "I'll state on record now that Fable: The Journey is definitely not on rails."

Microsoft's Larry Hryb offers some new details on Microsoft's Cloud Storage solution for the Xbox 360 on his official blog. Coming "later this year," the cloud-based storage solution will allow Xbox Live members to store game saves and their Live profiles. From the blog post:

Apple announced this week that its head honcho and lord overseer Steve Jobs will reveal the iOS 5 operating system, the new OS X operating system Lion, the iCloud suite of cloud computing-based services, and more at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6. Interestingly enough - and probably on purpose - Jobs' keynote address will take place at the same time as Microsoft's E3 press event.

Microsoft's pre-E3 press presentation is scheduled to take place at around 10am Pacific time in Los Angeles.

There is a lot of interest in Apple's cloud-based services, but not much in the way of details at this point. Some believe Apple will allow users to store apps, music and other content remotely. This would be a great fit for those wanting to buy a low-end iOS device because the difference in storage (per model) is often hundreds of dollars.

We'll have more on the relevant Apple announcements here next week.

According to Microsoft's corporate communications Vice President Frank Shaw, 40 percent of all Xbox Live activity is non-gaming. Discussing the evolution of the platform as an entertainment brand rather than a pure gaming console - a theme that will be emphasized through the company’s E3 press event later this month - Shaw mentioned how much Xbox Live users are using the system for non-gaming entertainment such as music and movies.

He says that Microsoft MS intends to market Xbox 360 more "as an entertainment brand this year." Microsoft claims that it is seeing 30 hours of video consumption per month per system.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said earlier this week that piracy costs his company 95 percent of potential revenue in China. Ballmer made the comments in a speech at the opening of the new Asia-Pacific R&D Group headquarters in Beijing. Ballmer rejected the notion that software piracy is rampant in China because PC Software costs too much. He claimed that if someone can afford to purchase a PC in China, they could afford to buy the software to run on it. Most people in China can't afford to own a computer, let alone Windows 7..

Ballmer went on to say that Microsoft earned six times more per PC sold in countries such as India compared to China, and that if Chinese IP protection were as strong as India's then the market would be worth "billions of dollars."

Microsoft has a nice deal for students who buy a Windows 7 based computer with a retail price tag of $699 or more: a free Xbox 360. And although the company's new promotion to sell Windows 7 based PCs does suggest buying Samsung's new Series 9 portables, there are no restrictions on buying the brand you want. If you are buying a PC anyway and you are in college, this is a pretty decent deal.

Students can take advantage of the deal by purchasing a PC from online stores at Dell, HP and Microsoft using their .edu school email address. For those that don't want to shop online, students can simply bring their school ID to Best Buy or a Microsoft Store to purchase their computers in person. The offer runs from May 23 - September 9. Of course the Xbox 360 isn't that high end but it's free: It's the 4 GB version of the system (retails for $199).

Source: VentureBeat

Yesterday Microsoft announced that it had purchased Skype for $8.5 billion. The company announced plans to integrate the popular VoIP call provider into Xbox Live (including adding Kinect support), Office, and Windows Phone, but emphasized that it does not plan to make it a Windows only application. In other words, it will be available on all the platforms it is available on now.

"Products and services that Skype users know today will grow and be enhanced," Ballmer said at a San Francisco press conference to announce the deal. "We will continue to invest in Skype for non-Microsoft devices."

It's smart for Microsoft to emphasize that point, because Skype has a massive user base on platforms that Microsoft competes against such as iPhone, Android, PSP, and more.

Skype has 170 million active users, and is registering 600,000 new users each day, according to Ballmer.

Microsoft’s Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) announced via his official blog that military personnel will now have an easier time when conducting commerce on Xbox Live. One of the biggest requests from soldiers serving in the military is to have the ability to use "Military States" as billing addresses. Today Microsoft is allowing just that. As of today Xbox Live now accepts AA (Armed Forces of the Americas), AE (Armed Forces Europe) and AP (Armed Forces Pacific) as options for credit card addresses. To make changes to these addresses, simply makes changes to the billing section on Xbox.com.

"We hope this makes it easier for the men and women in the United States Armed Forces to stay connected to the Xbox LIVE community," said Hryb in the post announcing the new changes.

"Thank you for everything you do," he added.

Indeed, anything that makes it easier for Americans serving our country is a good thing.