According to GI, the Japan hardware sales numbers have taken a nosedive in the last month. The Media Create figures show last week's console sales were the lowest for many months, with the best seller, the DS, selleing less than 100,000 units for 2 weeks in a row. We expect the numbers to pickup as the Summer ends, of course, but only time will tell how much.

Hooray! The Halo 2 map download issues have been fixed! If you were one of the number of people unable to download the recent “Blastacular” map pack for a variety of reasons (cheating), a fix implemented last night should have you all set. Bungie apologies and they realize this has been inconvenient and annoying.

The Halo 2 ‘Blastacular Map Pack’ is now available for download over Xbox Live. This pack is US $4.00, and it contains two maps: Tombstone and Desolation. This should hold us over for 1 more month until Halo 3 Multiplayer!

Microsoft and Bungiew have announced the upcoming release of two new maps for the aging FPS, Halo 2. The maps will be available on both the XBox and XBox360, and the maps will actually be remakes of two of the more popular maps from the original Halo game.

According to this SCi trading paper and financial report, the sequal to Just Cause is in the works. This is not surprising considering the game has just about sold 1 million copies. Great news for JC fans!

We now expect Just Cause to sell over one million units in the current financial year. The sequel to Just Cause is in development

Worhtplaying has a list of 28 Xbox 1 title's that will fully be playable for the Xbox360. Some good games we are looking forward to play on the 360 are Psychonauts, Shenmue II, Indigo Prophecy, plus many more!

Yeah, we know you're all either playing Resistance: Fall of Man on your shiny new PS3s (or putting them on eBay...we won't judge), but for those of you with a 360, you can now download the multiplayer demo of Rainbow Six: Vegas. The demo weighs in at 985.07 MB.

Recently, it was revealed that the Call Of Duty 3 release eoster was conspicuously missing an Xbox release. Well, now, Activision has announced that it has struck a deal with UK retailer GAME to sell the remaining stock of XBox games.

It only happens a few times a year, but XBOX Live and XBOX.com will be down and out for up to 24 whole hours starting at midnight Pacific Time on Tuesday, October 17. No word yet on new features to the site, but my guess is the ability to view and save Live Vision cam shots sent among other things. Note that this isn't the Fall Dashboard update, simply unilateral maintenance. Full press release after the jump. My favorite part is the reference to playing your XBOX 1 as "Bust[ing] out your big black buddy." Nice.

Edit: Oops, and by "this weekend" we meant Tuesday

The first annual EA Sports NBA Live Challenge, a multi-city gaming tournament played on EA’s NBA basketball videogame franchise, is set to launch right here in Elizabeth, N.J! The eight winners will be flown to Las Vegas in February for the chance to win $50,000 during the NBA All-Star Week. Click the link to register.