Xbox 360 owners planning a Left 4 Dead zombie massacre party next Tuesday are going to have to reschedule. Microsoft said this week that Xbox Live will be taken offline for server maintenance on June 16. Beginning at 12:01 a.m. PDT, the online service and My Xbox section of Xbox.com, will unavailable for a period of up to 24 hours, the publisher said.

No new features will be implemented as a result of the downtime. However, ... Read more »

Motion-sensing technology was out in full force during the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo last week. On Monday, Microsoft officially announced its widely rumored Project Natal, an Xbox 360 camera peripheral that tracks motion without the need of a controller or handheld device. Sony's press conference a day later also featured motion-sensing tech, as the publisher unveiled a new controller that integrates with the PlayStation 3's EyeToy camera peripheral.

Though it helped put the military first-person shooter multiplayer on the map, Electronic Arts' Battlefield franchise has seen itself outsold by the Call of Duty series in recent years. Granted, 2005's Battlefield 2 was a hit--selling over 1 million units in the US, according to the NPD Group--as was its console spin-off, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, which sold 1.2 million units domestically on the Xbox 360, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. However, 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the overall best-selling game of 2007, and has sold over 8 million units domestically (according to NPD) and ... Read more »