Microsoft Launches Xbox 360 Arcade

By Nick Mokey October 22, 2007

Microsoft Launches Xbox 360 Arcade

Having already captured the hearts, minds, and money of young adults everywhere with the Halo franchise, Microsoft is looking for new pockets of cash by peddling its console to different audiences. On Monday, it launched a new version of the Xbox 360 targeted especially at families.

The Xbox 360 Arcade comes bundled with five family-friendly games: PAC-MAN Championship Edition, Uno, Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket and Feeding Frenzy. It also gets an HDMI interface, wireless controller, and 256MB memory card. In case some more violent games happen to migrate into the household, Microsoft has also included a Family Settings feature that allows parents to control what their kids watch and play.

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Continuing with its family bent, Microsoft is also bringing a number of new family content to Xbox Live, including Looney TunesBlue’s Clues, The Backyardigans and iCarly. Two new games, SpongeBob SquarePants Underpants Slam and Shrek-n-Roll will also be available. cartoons,

The new Xbox 360 Arcade will be on shelves at retailers immediately for $279.99, the same price as the standard Xbox 360 Core edition.

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Gaming

Xbox has new Ninja Turtles controllers … and they smell like pizza

Players use Ninja Turtles themed Xbox controllers.

Microsoft and Paramount Pictures are giving away Xbox controllers based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which they are proudly proclaiming are "the world's first pizza-scented Xbox controllers."
This is not the first time Microsoft and Paramount created weird Xbox controllers to give away in a sweepstakes. Its fuzzy Sonic and Knuckles controllers released around Sonic the Hedgehog 2 also gained a lot of attention in February 2022. Still, there's never been an Xbox controller quite like this. Four controllers exist, which are an oozy green, have art of one of the turtles on it, and have the top of a pizza sticking out of the back. According to Microsoft, that is what is actually pizza-scented.

"Satisfy your hunger for kicking butt with the world’s first ever pizza-scented controller," Microsoft says in an Xbox Wire post about the controller. "Designed to deliver the smell of the Turtles’ beloved meal to your game time, these exclusive Xbox Wireless Controllers come with a built-in scent diffuser shaped like a slice of delicious New York ‘za." That's a pretty fancy way to say you've made a controller that smells weird and will continue to smell even weirder as time goes on. They don't even specify what kind of pizza it smells like!
To have a chance to nab one of these controllers, people need to follow Xbox Game Pass on Twitter (or X, as it's being rebranded to) and retweet (re-X?) a tweet (an X, I hate this) that the account will eventually post before August 13. What you do after you get one of these is on you.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem hits theaters on August 2.

Gaming

Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition is going to take even longer

inarius diablo 4

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have agreed to extend the deadline for its impending merger. The companies now have until October 18 to close the deal, extending their original deadline by months.

The original cutoff for Microsoft's Activision Blizzard buyout was July 18, however, that finish line wasn't an easy one to cross. Just before that date, Microsoft had to face off against the FTC in a court case to decide the deal's fate. A San Francisco judge ruled in Microsoft's favor with only days to go before the July date. With a few other loose ends to tie up, Microsoft now has until mid-October to get it done.

Gaming

The best upcoming Xbox Series X games: 2023 and beyond

Two Atlas Fallen characters stand together in key art.

The Xbox Series X and Series S have now been out for over two years, bringing better resolution, higher frame rates, and ray tracing to gamers around the world. And the upcoming Xbox Series X games on this list promise to continue to show off all those bells and whistles in fun, new experiences.

If you're eager to find out what Microsoft has in store for the years ahead, we've rounded up every game confirmed so far, including new offerings, franchise installments, and ports of existing titles. We're looking beyond the first-party projects here to encompass all the great games coming to this powerful piece of gaming hardware. Maybe some of them will end up being among the best games on Xbox Series X.
Confirmed 2023 releases
The games listed below either have 100% confirmed release dates or solid release windows that we expect them to hit this year. Anything that's up in the air due to more vague launch predictions or previous delays will be listed under the following header.