The next Xbox will be revealed May 12, and buy it in November ...

1. Next Xbox will be revealed May 12 on MTV
   
2. Buy your Xbox 360 in November?
   
3. May OXM rocks!
   
4. ourcolony.net updates
   

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NEWS:
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1. Next Xbox will be revealed May 12 on MTV
   
   
   
   • Color me impressed.
     
   • So, Microsoft Corp. won't be announcing their next version of the Xbox at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) next month. They'll be announcing it 4 days earlier -- to the world, via culture pipe MTV: Music Television.
     
   • MTV and Microsoft Corp. announced they'll be unveiling the next-gen Xbox on MTV channels in the United States, Asia Pacific and Europe (within a 24-hour window).
     
   • The half-hour "MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed" will be hosted by sometime hobbit and Xbox nut Elijah Wood, and showcase a ton of celebrities. The special will show the debut of next-gen games, and an Xbox experience that is "always connected, always personalised and always in high definition". Afterwards, MTV.com will have a bunch of additional content in the form of behind-the-scenes video, photos and "other special extras".
     
   • Drawing first blood in the next-gen war by getting their box out first to the general worldwide public is absolutely, stunningly brilliant. I am curious as to whether they'll actually show the new hardware, or just what it can do, saving the former for E3. We shall see.
     
   • Worldwide times for the special follow:
     
     
     
     • Update: Go to the xbox.com MTV site for the latest showtimes.
       
     
     
   
   
2. Buy your Xbox 360 in November?
   
   
   
   • So, the rumor has been that Xbox 360 (for the love of all that's holy, change the name) will ship this holiday season. Now, Electronic Arts announced Need for Speed Most Wanted. The top of the press release says, "A New Racer Hits the Streets This November", while buried at the bottom it says the game "will be available for a next generation console as well as" [the current crop of everything else]. Hmmm ...
     
   
   
3. May OXM rocks!
   
   
   
   • If you don't subscribe to the Official Xbox Magazine -- what the hell is wrong with you?
     
   • That said, pick up the May issue. The demo disc has playable Doom 3 (single player, Xbox Live Co-op, and Live/System-Link deathmatch); Pariah, new Digital Extremes IP looking to shake up the FPS world; and sleepers Psychonauts (OXM's "Best Platformer"); and Darkwatch, which'll show us what High Moon Studios is capable of out of the gate. (Hey, if you want to actually play the Darkwatch, there's a glitch; to get around it, "make sure the network cable is disconnected from the back of the Xbox if you are an Xbox Live subscriber. Then simply change the clock on your Xbox settings screen to show March 1, 2005 and reinsert the disc." Methinks OXM DVD editor Dave Rees was overly awed by this month's offerings, and missed a QA step.)
     
   
   
4. ourcolony.net updates
   
   
   
   • So, this ourcolony.net thing is interesting. It's a much more interactive ARG than the ilovebees weirdness, and is getting a ton of play.
     
   • The forums were annoying as hell, which initially led me to feel like the same idiots I don't like playing with on Xbox Live were the same griefer and whiner idiots on the ourcolony.net forums. There was no apparent moderating, but any of us who had started colonies had the power to delete any and all posts or topics.
     
   • Just as I was getting tired of it, the forums were removed, and a new message was added to the front page: "you [sic] survived through Chaos the way i hoped you would. you read the rules and complied. where no rules existed, you made 'em up. you made the site your own, and together endured the rigors of Chaos ..."
     
   • Now, you could argue The Powers That Shall Go Unnamed were just reacting to what happened. However, even after I saw the structure (or lack thereof) of the forums, I could guess what was going to happen.
     
   • There were a couple of images hidden in the website images directory, then when pasted together, made what looked like a close-up of of a new Xbox controller. Then some new pictures showed up in the TeamXbox forums.
     
   • What's interesting to me is this could be the mother of all reverse Alternate Reality Games (mainly because I think it would be the first one). The ourcolony.net site has pictures of some of the ant logos pasted all over the Sony Metreon, with PSP adverts in the background. The new picts over at TeamXbox.com show the "new" controller on the screen of a PSP, showing the whole PSP and the Sony logo. Why all of the Sony plugs, if this is supposed to be an ARG for the next Xbox? Hmmm ...