After many rumours, RedOctane finally announced that Guitar Hero II will see a release on the Xbox 360, with the game and the “X-Plorer” controller currently being shown at Microsoft’s X06, currently underway. The controller is designed specifically for the Xbox 360 and players will be able to download new content, such as rock rhythm, lead and bass guitar tracks (awesome). With the Xbox Live Arcade being as great as it is, I imagine the possibilities are endless for downloadable content.

Read more: Red Octane announces Guitar Hero 360

Microsoft’s Major Nelson announced the new content this week for the Xbox Live Arcade, with no major announcements other than the availability of the Lego Star Wars II demo, which is now available for download. The only other items announced are trailers for titles such as Just Cause, The Darkness, Sonic and several others. I’m totally looking forward to the new Lego Star Wars though, not only because Chewy rips off little Lego arms, but also because I think the original was quite a feat for a Lego-inspired game and certainly a fun little extension of the aging Star Wars brand.

Read more: Major Nelson’s XBLA announcement | Lego Star Wars II

Microsoft and Rare have announced the relaunch of the Viva Pinata website, with a whole new batch of media, mini-games, character profiles, and episode summaries for the brand’s television shows. There’s even a nifty little fan-kit to download, containing screenshots, forum avatars, music clips, desktops and more so you can finally turn your PC into a massive Viva Pinata marketing machine. Viva Pinata the game is currently in development at Rare, Ltd for release on the Microsoft Xbox 360. The Viva Pinata animated television series is currently being aired in the U.S. on Fox and is set to begin broadcasting on Canada’s YTV network starting in September 2006.

Read more: Viva Pinata!

Ben Heck is crazy, but in that cool mad scientist sort of way. Ripping apart gaming consoles and turning them into handheld and laptop form is second nature to this scientist and this time he’s taken on his biggest project yet, the Xbox 360 laptop! At only 2.8 inches thick and featuring a sharp high-definition screen, the Xbox 360 laptop is another feat of engineering, allowing the truly hardcore to carry their next-gen gaming with them wherever they may go, allowing access to Xbox Live Arcade through the units wireless network adapter, built-in to the body of the unit.

Read more: Xbox 360 laptop project walkthrough and photo gallery

Ahhhh Hudson, what have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!? Though the Xbox 360 isn’t quite known for having quality titles available yet, Bomberman: Act Zero, the latest entry in the Bomberman franchise has managed to drop like a bomb (har har har), becoming the lowest rated title on the Xbox 360 (at least until the next X-Men title comes out), adding to a long-line of poor games using the Bomberman franchise. There’s very little left of classic Bomberman in Act Zero, which creates a completely new storyline and darker, more mature level design, featuring 99 levels that basically all feel like you haven’t left the first. Bomberman is currently rating below 40% if it’s lucky, with a 2.9 at Gamespot.

Read more: Bomberman: Act Zero bombs at Gamespot

The new and already great LearnXNA, a community-run Microsoft XNA source for tutorials, news and more regarding MS’s newest approach to gaming has a great tutorial and video how-to on creating your own Pong clone using the XNA framework, including everything from presentations to video documentation. It will take months before we start seeing what XNA is really capable, but for now it’s great to see the interest growing and seeing more exmaples of what we can hopefully expect from small XNA homebrewers.

Read more: LearnXNA | Pong video tutorial | XNA @ Microsoft

The indie gaming world was abuzz after Microsoft announced it’s independent and student game development tool, XNA Game Studio Express, allowing aspiring game creators the ability to begin developing their own games for Windows XP and Vista at no charge. The most exciting bit of news from that announcement was the ability for game creators to develop for the Xbox 360 console starting this holiday season 2006 as part of what MS are calling the XNA Creators Club. This will be a subscription-based service, requiring a yearly subscription of $99, a low fee for any student or bedroom coder who wants to see their creation running on an Xbox 360. To follow that up today, Microsoft has announced the beta release of XNA Game Studio Express for Windows XP and Vista, leading up to the final release at the end of this year with XNA Game Studio Professional launching Spring 2007. Coinciding with today’s beta release, GarageGames has announced the enrollment program for their Torque X beta program, which will include both the Torque Game Builder engine and the Torque Shader Engine, which were developed in conjunction with XNA Game Studio Express.

Read more: Microsoft releases Game Studio Express beta | Garage Games

According to a recent post on a Japanese gaming site, there is a rumour hitting the streets of Tokyo that the Xbox 360 will be receiving a price drop as well as a new colour on December 7th, 2006. Naturally this is only a rumour on a foreign language games site, but, it has some legs with some respected Japanese sites carrying the rumour and confirming with ‘insider sources’ suggesting that the ‘price drop’ will come in the form of a bundle with DOAX2. Many more rumours to come for sure..

Read more: Xbox 360 rumoured to drop in price and feature new colour in Japan (Japenese blog posting)

Microsoft pulled a fast one on Sony by securing the exclusive rights to Pro Evolution Soccer 6 from Konami and FIFA Pro Football 7 from EA for 2007. This means that pretty much the only 2 football/soccer titles that actually matter will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 in 2007, a crucial year for Sony with the launch of the PS3. Though this is but a blip on the radar in the US, this could very well hurt Sony (as if they aren’t doing enough to hurt themselves) in the EURO and Japanese markets, as football is undeniably the most popular sport throughout the world and both franchises were big sellers for the PS2 in the past. Both titles will be released Fall 2006 for the Xbox 360.

Update 1: According to the producer of PES, Microsoft only has PES6 exclusively because of the lack of development time to get it onto PS3, not because of any cash agreement with Microsoft. Seems MS were putting a spit and polish in their ‘exclusivity’ announcement.

Read more: Microsoft secures 12 months exclusive rights to Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA