Ben Heckendorn is no doubt one of the greatest computer modders of our time. Doug just interviewed him and we have featured his work numerous times on CrunchGear. He’s back with yet another incarnation of a portable Xbox. This time around he used a newer Jasper motherboard and added more features like a built-in Ethernet, digital volume controls, and a flush mounted optical drive.

My favorite WWII RTS is getting another round of DLC starting with the Mustan Pack today for 800 MS points. The Carrier Battles Map pack drops on the 23rd of this month for both Xbox 360 and Games for Windows Live.

Flexing their journalistic muscles, the crew at Joystiq have details surrounding Last.fm’s arrival onto Xbox Live, which was announced at E3 this year. It shouldn’t come as a surprise by now, but Gold members will have 24-hour access to the service that’s ad supported for free.

Like the Sky deal before it, Xbox 360 users in France will soon be able to view Canal+ content on their TV set. Users will have access to some 3,000 movies on demand and eventually Ligue 1 soccer.

The Mole, as Ars affectionately refers to its gaming industry insider, has once again struck with a ‘rumor’ detailing Microsoft and Sony’s plans for their respective consoles this year. In case you’re super busy this Monday morning, I’ll break it down for you real quick. Expect to see bigger hard drives in the Xbox 360 and a slimmed down version of the PS3.

A bit of World of Warcraftnews for you this Thursday afternoon. If given the chance, how many of you would play the game on your Xbox 360 or PS3? It doesn’t even matter, as Blizzard’s executive vice-president of game design, Rob Pardo, said that producing a console version of the game would run into a whole host of challenges that would need to be overcome. Chief among them: an input device. Do you go create a specially designed WoW controller, or leave it up to people to bring their own mouse and keyboard?

One of those highly paid analyst types from Wedbush has gone on record saying that the only thing holding back a true-to-life Xbox 360 game download service, à la Steam, is hard drive capacity. Right now, you can buy a 120GB hard drive for $140 on Amazon, which is ridiculous given the low, low prices of standard hard drives these days. (A recent CrunchDeal spotted a 1TB hard drive for $77.) So if Microsoft is serious about launching such a service, it needs to do something about bringing large capacity hard drives at normal prices. There’s no reason that a 120GB hard disk drive should cost $140 in the year 2009.

Major Nelson, whose military credentials I suspect, said on his thrilling podcast at the weekend the Microsoft is already hard at work creating the next version of the Xbox 360 dashboard. Don’t expect a silly name, like NXE, this time around, though.

Attention Halo nerds-

Pre-order Halo 3: ODST now and get a token to unlock UNSC Sgt. Johnson as a playable character in Firefight. ODST drops on September 22 for $60 or $100 for the Collector’s Pack that comes with a special edition wireless controller. Oh, you also get an exclusive beta invite to Halo: Reach when you pre-order ODST.

Just a quick update on the story we posted yesterday about an Xbox 360 Arcade model with 512MB of built-in memory; it’s true! Microsoft confirmed with Eurogamer a wee bit ago. Hit the jump for the official blurb from MS.

The headline might be misleading or confusing, but the BioShock and Elder Scrolls bundle does not include a console. It’s just a games bundle that includes the 2006 and 2007 Game of the Year Winners. Starting on July 7, you can get BioShock and Elder Scrolls IV for $40. The Windows PC bundle will be $30.

Hey there, amigo. Have you logged onto Xbox Live today? Don’t! Well, not unless you’re looking forward to dealing with a few post-maintenance glitches.

Eagle-eyed citizens have spotted a new revision of the Xbox 360, one with 512MB of built-in storage. Pictures of the 360, a Japanese Arcade model, were posted to the Xbox Hacker forums.

The rumor that Microsoft would be shipping a bumped-up Xbox 360 console with Natal integrated in 2010 has turned out to be false according to director of product management, Aaron Greenberg.

Final Fantasy XIII is our white whale. We’ll follow it and follow it until it drives us crazy. Today’s news: the Xbox 360 version of the game has only been in development for two months. Spring 2010, you say?

Kojima made it very clear from day 1 that the Xbox 360 could not handle the MGS4 engine. When it was announced at E3 that the MGS franchise would be coming to the Microsoft platform I wondered if Kojima had made progress in making the MGS4 engine compatible with the Xbox 360, but that appears to be untrue. During the latest Kojima podcast, Sean Eyestone stated that Kojima has reworked the “engine from scratch” to make MGS: Rising compatible with all three major platforms.