Microsoft is dropping some limited edition green and red Xbox 360 controllers at the end of September, priced at $64 each. The red one comes with black accents and even comes with a bundled Play & Charge with red battery pack.

If red and green seem like odd color choices, I agree. Red and green says Christmas to me. I guess they would be an ideal pair for playing a Christmas Eve game of Halo with some holly adorning your controllers and a bunch of new games under the tree.

Let’s say you’re in love with Halo, but always on the go. There’s gotta be some way to get your game on. If only you had a convenient Xbox laptop. Ben Heck is probably to busy to make you one, but you may be in luck. For $550, a shop in Kansas called Portable Gaming Solutions says that they will convert your 360 into a suitcase-sized 15-inch laptop with keyboard and speakers.

It might be taking a chance sending your Xbox to him, but hey we all have to start somewhere. The web site has some images and videos of the mod, so it’s probably cool. We hope. Would anyone take the chance and send their console? I don’t know, but I wish him luck. It may not be the most stylish mod, but I guess it gets the job done. Check out the video below.

The Wii has changed the face of gaming with it’s interactive motion controls. So much so, that every other console has begun work on their own version. Just as the Wii has changed gaming, gamers are constantly changing the Wii console itself, giving it all kinds of personalities. Here’s a look at some of our favorites.

According to a report in the NYT, Grand Theft Auto IV reached sales of over $500 million in its first seven days on the market. Take Two Interactive said the game sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide since its launch last Tuesday.

The numbers significantly exceeded expectations of many analysts who expected to see around 5 million copies sold in the first two weeks. Take Two also stated that 3.6 million of those copies were sold the first day of the launch globally for around $310 million in sales. This number even exceeds the numbers we saw for the Halo 3 launch for both first day and first week sales.

Grand Theft Auto IV went on sale worldwide today and many retailers such as Best Buy and GameStop opened their doors at midnight last night to meet fans across the country who created long lines to be one of the first to get their hands on a copy and spend the rest of the night playing. The GTA 4 launch from Take Two is expected to see sales that will rival that of last year’s Halo 3 release, with numbers nearing $400 million for around 6 million copies sold around the world.

The Grand Theft Auto 4 game is available for both the Sony Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 which greatly broadens the audience. Some speculate that the launch delay from last October also allowed more people to have time to buy the latest generation of game console and built more anticipation for the launch. Take Two says the delay was due to technical hurdles that needed to be overcome.

Look who’s getting into the Wii action. Microsoft’s been working on a Wiimote type controller and it’s due to come out later this year. They actually began development way back in Summer ‘07. But the process has had it’s share of problems. According to MTV news and their exclusive source, this is what it looks like.

The familiar looking Wiimote has a speaker, microphone, four LED lights, A/B/X/Y face buttons, an analog stick and an underside trigger. The Nintendo Wiimote doesn’t have a Microphone and has a D-pad instead of an analog stick. Rare is the company working on it and they reportedly are trying to come up with a “unified interface and look for the controller.” The problems are between marketers and designers. The marketers basically want a replica of Nintendo’s Wiimote so game developers will want to port Wii games onto the 360. The designers want it more feature-rich and they have an interesting description “Halo, Gears and Forza in waggle form.”

HG Controllers want you to have an edge in your gaming. They’re selling custom modded Xbox 360 controllers that feature duplicate buttons on the underside. The extra buttons can be pressed by the same fingers that hold the controller. That should give you at least a split second advantage over your opponents who are still using a regular Xbox 360 controller. Timing is everything, after all.

The buttons can come in a variety of combinations that will compliment different games better. If you’re a Halo 3 fan, you can get the 4-Button modded controller for $89.99. Or you can just settle for a 2-Button version at only$69.99.

As if Nintendo hasn’t sold enough DS’s in quite enough colors it looks like another one is on the way, this time sporting Cobalt Blue/Black. We thought the bundled colors were pretty nice and that Pikachu model was pretty neat but we are definitely impressed with this new Blue color. Circuit City has this new color up on their site priced at the usual $130 but not available for order quite yet. You can ask them to let you know when it’s ready however, and help Nintendo pull just a little bit further ahead.

NPD has released the year-end sales numbers for non-PC video games in 2007 showing record figures for the industry. The year 2007 brought an impressive 43 percent increase in sales compared to 2006 with a total of $17.94 billion.

Game Consoles
The highlights of the year come as no surprise if you’ve been reading our coverage of game console sales with the Nintendo Wii topping the list of most console units sold at 6.29 million. The Wii spent the year at a lower price-point than rival consoles and caught the attention of a wide range of gamers. Behind the Wii in console sales was the Xbox 360 with 4.62 million units sold in 2007, which was helped out a little bit by the wildly popular Halo 3. Next in line was not Sony’s new Playstation 3 but it’s older brother, the Playstation 2. Sony moved 3.97 million PS2 units in 2007 and 2.56 million PS3s.

The marketing research firm NPD has turned in their analysis of what the top video game titles and consoles were last month and the news is very good for the industry as a whole. Leading the top in sales of new software was Activision’s “Call of Duty 4″ for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which sold an impressive 1.57 million copies. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Galaxy” came in second place and if you combine the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sales for “Assassin’s Creed” it would actually take the silver medal. Not coincidentally Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” has emerged as the best-selling new IP for games in recent years.

Nintendo’s handheld DS gaming device sold an amazing 1.53 million units in November which was enough to give it the top of the chart for hardware sales. In second place was Nintendo’s Wii gaming console with 981,000 Wiis sold followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in third spot with 770,000 units finding homes. Sony moved 577,000 PlayStation Portable to give it fourth place and the price drop in the PS3 convinced 466,000 consumers to go out and buy one of the consoles last month.

Attention all you Halo 3 lovers - you can now carry your game pride around on your shoulder as you haul around your laptop day to day. Master Chief says to outfit yourself with this new Halo 3 Messenger Bag, priced at around $40.

The Halo 3 Messenger Bag, when not busy hold your plasma grenades, has enough room to store a 15-inch laptop. There are six zippered compartments and velcroed interior compartments - plenty of space to store extra ammo or your iPod.

Time magazine has released its list of the top ten videogames of the year. Can you take a guess at what made their number one spot? If you guessed “Halo 3″ you don’t win a prize. “Like a pebble that has been rounded over the centuries by the gentle splashing of the ocean waves, ‘Halo 3′ has become the perfect hardcore first-person combat simulator,” said Time in their idol worship of the Xbox 360 killer app. “By dint of painstaking labor on the part of its developer, Bungie, it has been refined over three installments to the point where it delivers only pure, unadulterated gaming bliss.” Who knew that the editors at Time were down with playing some Master Chief deathmatches?

Of the titles that made Time’s best of 2007 list six are exclusive to one videogame system, of which three are for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and one each for Sony’s PlayStation 2, Nintendo’s DS and Wii console systems. Why didn’t at least one PlayStation 3 exclusive title make it on Time’s list? And no “Guitar Hero III” (or is that game now redundant that “Rock Band” is out and lets you play drums as well as guitar?)

Finally, a USB drive for geeks who want to put some religion into their USB port and their lives. Normally it’s only after you’ve lost your important data that you would pray to Holy Mary, Mother Of God. Now you can do it at your leisure and hopefully she will listen and keep your data safe.

It will act as a good reminder to geeks to keep some religion in their lives. When she is hooked up, her red LED heart will beat, indicating how the Holy Mother watches over your computer’s innards. (If only she sang “Turn On Your Heartlight, huh?) Her halo is engraved with the prayer “Oh Maria, keep my data safe!”. So, it must work.

Remember those cute “Star Wars” and “Halo” themed USB memory drives offered by Mimoco? Starting in February the company will offer its second wave of “Star Wars” USB drives with another four characters from George Lucas epic space adventure. Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker (in his orange X-Wing jumpsuit) and bounty hunter Boba Fett are in the second wave. The four new USBs join the first wave “Star Wars” Mimoco drives of Darth Vader, R2-D2, Chewbacca and an Imperial Stormtrooper.

The “Star Wars” USB drives come in 1 GB ($49.95), 2 GB ($69.95) and 4 GB ($109.95) models. Compatible with both Mac and Windows platforms, the USB 2.0 drives are 2 2/8-inches high and limited to 3,500 units. And you bet that you can remove Boba Fett’s helmet and see what his face looks like under that armor.

Is “Halo 3″ not worthy of play on the Microsoft Xbox 360? According to one California resident, you better bet your Covenant plasma pistol.

A class action suit has been dropped on Bungie, the makers of “Halo 3″ and Microsoft alleging that their hit video game “does not function with the Xbox 360, and to the contrary, attempted use of Halo 3 consistently causes the Xbox 360 to ‘crash,’ ‘freeze,’ or ‘lock up’ while the game is being played.” The suit also states that neither one of the two firms have done enough to fix the problems caused by the bad loads. “Many consumers have reported that the ‘Halo 3′ video game has caused their Xbox video game consoles to crash and remain totally inoperable after playing the ‘Halo 3′ video game,” reads a portion of the document.