In lieu of a new game yesterday, there are three titles being added to the MS Arcade Hits program. Feeding Frenzy, Worms, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 are all available now for 400MS points.

According to the Fable II Community Blog over at the official Lionhead website, there will be a big Fable II announcement next week. No hints were given as to what the news even pertains to, but if they are telling us a week ahead of time, it may be big.

We heard about this a couple of days ago, but were waiting for the official word before we posted. Well, Major Nelson has made it official. Microsoft has completed another round of modified Xbox360 bans via Xbox Live. Those few who modify their Xbox360 consoles to play pirated games, and were unlucky enough to be caught on Live, got the ban hammer. This was not so surprising, considering both Fable II and Gears of War 2 were released early, and many pirates have been playing them online for weeks.

The worldwide sales of Gears of War 2 just beat 2 million units in the first weekend of the game's availability. Of course, this is no surprise, as the game's launch is said to be behind only Halo 3 and GTA IV, both hard games to top. Microsoft said that over 1.5 million people logged into Xbox Live with GoW2 over the weekend, logging a total of 15 million gameplay hours -- apparently a new XBL record.

MS announced that the price cuts for the Xbox360 console which have been put in place in Japan, Europe, and North America, would be echoes in Australia. The Arcade SKU has been lowered to $299, the 360 Pro (60GB) SKU has been lowered to $399, and the Elite SKU has been lowered to $549. All prices are in Australian dollars.

Eurogamer took their nice, shiny, new Xbox360 dashboard, and gave the HDD Game Instillation feature a run for the money. In the end, it turned out that the loading times really did benefit from the new option, and generally increased performance. Great to hear, now you just have to purchase a bigger HDD.

According to GamingConfidential, a source working for MS has revealed that there will be some bigtime drama when the NXE Update is released on November 19. He even said that the dreaded RROD (Red Ring) issue could come roaring back to life. The release date, according to the rep, is just a few days after the extended warranted for the Red Ring issue expires (for launch consoles, that is, [hope its clearer now]). Coincidence? We will see very soon.

He adds "Our department is bracing itself from irrate callers after the update is released. I'm bringing some aspirin to work this holiday season," he adds.

Left 4 Dead, the Zombie shooter from Valve and EA, is now available in demo form on Xbox Live. It weighs in at 1.2gb, and everyone is going to grab this, so start now if you can.

In case you missed it, the demo for NCAA Basketball 09 is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo weighs in at 876mb, so it is on the larger side. Start your downloads now.

Gears of War 2 has beaten out Little Big Planet in the UK charts for the last week. Gears is just behind Halo 3 and GTA IV for the top 3 all time weekly sales on the Xbox360. Little Big debuted at number 4 on the charts. Click read more for the full top 10.

1. Gears of War 2
2. FIFA 09
3. Fallout 3
4. LittleBigPlanet