The option is incredibly simple to setup. You just insert your Twitter ID and password, then select at what points you want the game to tweet about – options include when you start playing multiplayer online, when you complete a chapter, when you earn trophies, when you earn multiplayer money or when you reach a level milestone.

Now, for me, not all of this is appealing. I don’t want to tweet every single time I earn a trophy, for example. But I do like the idea of tweeting when I start playing multiplayer, so that perhaps people on my social network may decide to join me. But fortunately you can customise what parameters you want to tweet about. What’s even better is that the tweet itself (at least for the multiplayer one) includes a link to my stats page for the game on Naughty Dog’s website, so people can see just how bad I am at multiplayer games (or they will, when I actually manage to finish one…)

The only problem with this arrangement is that it’s (so far) restricted to the one (albeit awesome) game on PS3. At the moment, there’s not a lot of info on whether the Xbox Twitter integration will allow automatic updating when certain parameters are met, but hopefully it will. Because the idea of melding social networking with gaming is pretty exciting, at least in terms of merging a couple of different aspects of your online presence.

During his last podcast, Xbox spokesperson/kind guidance counselor Major Nelson revealed that a “faster” dashboard update would be coming later this year with “a lot of very cool new features.” (We’re guessing those features include apps like Twitter and the capability to stream 1080p content—both shown off at E3—though some other unexpected goodies would be welcome.)

Of course, many have already forgotten that NXE promised to end these seasonal dashboard updates, allowing new features to unroll all year. Apparently that’s just not happening. But hey, a faster dash in 2009! [Major Nelson via CVG via Kotaku]

Starting with HAWX and MLB2K9, Xbox 360 titles will ship with NXE on their discs. And as soon as you load the game, THWACK, NXE clamps your leg like a bear trap. It then slowly drags you from your cave of obsolescence and makes you dress in cute clothing, stream Netflix movies, install full games, and sure, see a few more ads than before. [Darkzero via Kotaku]

To review, when the NXE hit late last year, some Xbox 360 owners who had connected the console to their HDTV using an HDMI cable were greeted with silence. The response from Microsoft at the time was something along the lines of “we’re looking into it,” while others reported tech support indicated it was an older TV- or hardware-related issue.

Since then, 23 pages of discussion over the issue have sprouted up at the official Xbox forums, and still there has allegedly been no response from customer support. A rumoured—a completely unconfirmed rumour—indicates this may be addressed with a February update.

We’d say HDMI and HD gaming are *somewhat* important parts of the Xbox 360 user experience, so we hope that’s true, at least for the hundreds of users allegedly without sound for their Xbox 360 games and movies. [Xbox Forums via Boy Genius Report]

Many screens look like little more than an enlarged, green-filtered version of the original 360 dashboard, but the company developed an “immersive 3D environment” (probably seen in that first shot) to navigate much of the system. My favourite screen is actually the simplest—where all of your games span your television. Screw the folks with tiny displays who’d have to squint. I have a big TV. [Gridplane via Kotaku]

Apparently, the problem comes from a new HDCP protocol (a DRM thing baked into HDMI) that some older integrated sound systems can’t deal with. Yay, another reason DRM sucks. In the meantime, you can either try that lame temporary fix by pulling out the hard drive and reinserting it when you’re already in the dashboard, or you can use analogue audio.

No word on when this patch is coming unfortunately. [Shack News via Ars]

According to Xbox Scene, the new 256MB chip will allow to install the entire new NXE dashboard without requiring the hard drive or any external flash memory unit. It will also allow you to store XLBA games, save gamesave information, or whatever you want. The rest of the motherboard layout stays the same, except for the RAM memory configuration, which changes from the previous version. [Xbox Scene]