[Gamecard via Ecogamer via Kotaku]

The crux of the matter is that the warranty on an Xbox 360 “is not transferable”, so if you buy a used console “that has been previously banned, you will not be able to connect to Xbox LIVE”. So if you buy a used Xbox 360, make sure it’s from a less-than-shady party — and if you buy from a used games shop, make ‘em connect it to Xbox Live so you know you’re getting something that works. [Major Nelson]

On Adium, the AIM client I use, I put in aliases for everyone on my buddy list. How the hell am I supposed to remember everybody’s ancient screennames that are references to something obscure from high school? Instead, they come up as, you know, their names.

On Xbox Live, I have literally no idea who some of my friends are. I have vague guesses based on their avatars, and I knew who they were when I added them, but everybody has such goddamned goofy usernames, it’s impossible to keep track of them all.

Wouldn’t it be easy to allow people to enter their real names as well and then give users a choice about which to display — the handle or the real name? Or allow people to create custom aliases for each person on their friends list? Because not knowing who your friends are kind of defeats the purpose of having a friends list in the first place, doesn’t it?

Only a “select few” have been chosen for what looks to be a trial run of the Xbox rewards program starting October 21, using a criteria that no one has deciphered yet (for instance, our own Jason Chen has a gamerscore of like a bajillion points and he hasn’t received an invite). We’re assuming that, like Club Nintendo, Microsoft will cut the exclusivity to their program eventually. Then again, maybe Microsoft wants their rewards to feel like a just-lucky-to-be-there type of deal indefinitely.

I, for one, could care less about free t-shirts or demos. But give me a radioactive-green Mastercard and I’m sold. [Kotaku]

Tweet Tweet Twitter actually makes the most natural jump to the Xbox. It’s a really basic app, with your timeline, search, and trending topics, but it works, largely because the vertical stream is preserved, even if you can only see four (very legible) tweets at a time, so you won’t be power-browsing, TweetDeck style, by any means. It’s slow, and typing’s reeeeeeeally frustrating, like having your eyeballs poked out one pinprick at a time, if you don’t have the chatpad (part of me thinks this entire update is all a giant conspiracy to sell more Xbox 360 chatpads). Updates can sometimes take forever to hit your Twitter stream, too. Still, it’s pretty, and works the best of the new apps.

Facebookin’ Facebook uses the standard Xbox tile UI instead of rolling its interface, like Twitter did. Which is disorienting (and disappointing), since you’re browsing through a stream horizontally, one choppily-animated tile at a time. Why is the tile-sliding animation so terrible on a monster console like the Xbox 360? We don’t know. Like Twitter, it’s basic—focused on Newsfeeds. Your groups are ported over, so you can browse their newsfeeds individually, but you literally have to browse one post at a time, which is agonising, making you far less inclined to comment on updates. The interface works much better, and feels way more natural, with photo albums. What’s interesting is that, at least in the preview, your friends have to link their Xbox Live and Facebook accounts together themselves in order to show up in the “Xbox Live Friends on Facebook” (and vice versa) pages—you can’t manually go in and link Jason Chen’s accounts so you’ll see them together in your app.

Last.fm This would be would be way better if it could play in the background. It can’t. Meaning once you link your accounts and all of you stations are nicely and automatically ported over, to listen to Last.fm, you just have to sit there and leave it running, with band pictures floating up to your screen every once in a while. Lame.

Zune Video Marketplace Not a whole lot to write home about yet besides 1080p streams—it’s a video store on Xbox, with movies for rent or purchase, TV shows, trailers—but Zune Video is here and it, um, works. You browse through the standard Xbox interface, like Netflix. We didn’t get a chance to use the possible killer feature—Party mode, where you can watch stuff with your friends—yet, but if anything makes the Zune video store really stand out, that could be it. Previews, alas, didn’t come in at 1080p, even over FiOS, which clearly has the bandwidth to deliver.

All in all, the new apps, they’re interesting, they add something, but with the exception of Zune Video Marketplace, aren’t critical. At least for now.

In other words, Microsoft’s thinking about it more as a 32X-type add-on versus some tack-on motion controller. So, I won’t be surprised if it’s $US150, or even more, honestly.

In order to add in support for more than 100 friends on the Xbox 360, Microsoft has to ditch the old Xbox Live setup first, and they’re not sure when they’re going to pull the plug on Halo 2. So if you want more friends on Xbox Live (like so many of us do), you need to tell the friends you already have to stop playing Halo 2 and move on up to Halo 3—or you know, an actually good FPS, like Call of Duty 4. Yeah, I went there. [G4 via Kotaku]