Xbox 360 owners who have been banned from Microsoft’s Xbox Live service are out of luck. Completely out of luck. Those of you who have been banned will need to purchase a whole new console if you ever want to get back into the online action.

Microsoft says that banned machines will be permanently barred and “unable to connect to Xbox Live” as affected consoles do not have any recourse for terms of use violations. Like it or not, that’s the word. Those banned add up to about a million gamers missing from Xbox Live.

Modern Warfare 2 fans have something else to smile about. Infinity Ward has confirmed Microsoft’s plans for a 250GB Xbox 360 Elite with details of a special bundle for the game. The Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition bundle includes the mentioned added capacity along with a custom paint job on the console. There’s also two wireless gamepads and of course the game itself.

The bundle should already be available for pre-order for $399, which is a great buy when you price each of the items separately. No word on when the console will hit stores. Microsoft also isn’t saying whether it will have any other 250GB versions.

Oh Special Edition Beatles Rock Band Xbox 360, I want to hold your hand. Uh, controller. This Xbox 360 console is a beauty. I don’t care if the walrus was Paul or John, I just want this. Even though it would cost small fortune.

Proceeds from the auction will go to Doctors Without Borders. This rare Xbox 360 was custom made to honor the Fab Four and will go on sale this holiday season on eBay. Each console will be numbered and come with illustrations straight from the intro for “The Beatles: Rock Band.”

The PS4 may be a long way off yet, but designer Tai Chiem already has all of the details worked out and it looks awesome. If only the PlayStation 4 could be like this. It sports a high end touch screen instead of the glossy body that the current generation has. And he’s even incorporated that touchscreen design into the controller, which is really cool.

The design would come in black or white. Hopefully that touchscreen material is scratch-resistant, otherwise your PS4 is going to look nasty in no time. Just to be clear, this is a concept, not an actual product. But we can dream.

Sure we’ve seen all kinds of mods where they toss the Atari 2600’s case and hack them into a proper portable, but what if you want to keep the aesthetics of the console intact? You put a 5″ LCD screen and the joystick controls right on the console itself of course.

This one goes by the “Stella-Tubby v1.0″ moniker. And it can actually be yours since it’s on Ebay. It even runs on a pair 9V batteries so it is portable. Kind of. Think of it as an Atari tablet.

Sorry PS3 and Wii, no Netflix streaming for you. Today we learn that Netflix streaming won’t land on Sony’s PlayStation 3 or Nintendo’s Wii (Not counting PlayOn). Ever. How do we know? Because at the bottom of Microsoft’s details on today’s Xbox LIVE update, it now states that Netflix Watch Instantly integration is now an “exclusive partnership,” with Microsoft.

It even says that the “Xbox 360 will be the only game console to offer this movie-watching experience, available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix unlimited plan subscribers.” Who knew that the Microsoft guys had the foresight to lock things down so quickly? Netflix could still find it’s way to other consoles in some form, but this sounds pretty definitive to us.

Your eyes will never be the same after taking in this abomination. Someone should put it out of it’s misery, but since it is fueled by the souls of all your past dead Mario lives, it remains undead. You can’t kill it, you can’t reason with it and it’s ugliness can not be stopped.

At night this thing even glows in the dark, looking spooky as hell, where it comes from. It’s still fully functional. It’s appropriately called the Game Over SNES.

We’ll leave it up to you to decide if this video is real or fake. It shows off a purportedly “stolen” PS3 slim at a street market in the Philippines. You decide.

If real, the PS3 Slim certainly looks like one sexy beast. Nothing too Earth-shattering here though. The video below suffers from glaucoma and shows a black plastic box with the new rounded-off logo style from the PSPgo.

We all know that some game consoles consume a whole lot more power than others. Wii won’t mention any names. TrickleStar knows this and so has introduced their TV TrickleSaver device aimed at cutting down on some of that wasted power consumption.

Just plug both your TV and game console into the device (it will also work with a power bar), and then the device does it’s thing, cutting off power to the game console when you shut off your TV. It even works with other devices other than game consoles. TrickleStar outs the PS3 as its primary target, with the Xbox 360 a close second.

This oddly-shaped pink gadget is the Conny Q3 Sports, a video game console from where else? China. It’s designed to play like the Nintendo Wii, just cheaper and crappier. The Q3 Sports sells for just $99 and includes 5 games. That’s gotta keep you entertained for at least 15 minutes. Plus it looks like a Wii designed by a female razor company.

The Conny Q3 includes a wireless 3D motion-sensing controller, but it isn’t as powerful as their Wii competitor. Mostly because it plays ONLY those 5 games. Nothing else. I hope you like “Hot Dance”, fishing, bowling, golf or tennis. Excuse me, “tennies”.

According to 1Up, Microsoft is planning to release a new Xbox console this fall that will focus on Project Natal’s motion-sensing technology. Supposedly it will include native Project Natal support and backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 software. It would be released in fall 2010.

We aren’t buying it. It’s too soon for a full console devoted to the new technology. The Xbox 360 has a lot of lifespan left on it’s own. That’s our take anyway.

It’s the console with a name only a performing circus clown could love. And it is now out and about, doing it’s thing in Brazil. According to UOL Tecnologia, Tectoy’s Zeebo game console is on sale now in Rio de Janeiro. After that it will spread across the rest of Brazil later this year.

The system costs R$499 (Or about $299) and ships with three games in its memory. FIFA 2009, Need For Speed Carbon, and Brain Training. They are all in Portuguese, if you were wondering. The console also ships with credit for three free downloads, which are: Prey Evil, Quake, and Quake II. Video below.

Connecting your console to your LCD monitor can be a pain with expensive adapters and such, but Castrade’s Game Box makes the process easy. The device accepts video input from your Wii, PS3, or pretty much anything else that uses a common video cable, and properly scales it to an LCD-friendly resolution.

It prevents your console from reverting to a low-quality video mode just because your monitor doesn’t support the specific 1080i or 720p video setting it expects. It also accepts audio inputs from a few proprietary console connectors and sends them out through a 3.5mm jack.

If you’ve ever broken any bones, then you have likely seen an x-ray of your insides. But I bet you’ve never seen x-rays of your favorite game consoles. Gamers and Doctor Mario types will be happy to know that the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and Sony’s Playstation 3 (among others) have been x-rayed and are perfectly healthy.

Reintiji uploaded this set of x-rays to Flickr. It’s nerdy, it’s geeky and it’s even damn artistic. There’s some beautiful images in this gallery. Even the simple nunchuk. Wait. Do I see a problem with a torn rotator cuff on it’s analog stick?

Nielsen just released their report on console usage. I wish I could say that there were some shocking developments, but it all pans out pretty much how you might think. Almost. The report was conducted in December of 2008, with Nielsen keeping track of the use of the big three consoles.

According to their numbers, Xbox 360 users used their console the most: 11.4 percent of the time during the poll. The PS3 came next at 10.6 percent. The original Xbox came in next with 10.2 percent. while Wii owners gamed a sad 6.8 percent of the time… far less than that of even PS2 owners. What I fond surprising was that the Wii came in last place in total days used during their research. People don’t like hitting others in the nads with a Wiimote all the sudden?