PayPal Support Added to Xbox Live

Themes, 800 points. Fragging your ten year old neighbor, priceless. For everything money can't buy on Xbox Live, there's PayPal.

So what happens when you take a financial company that has access to your bank account and credit cards in addition to your eBay seller account and integrate some of its services with one of the world’s biggest technology companies? Nothing evil, of course, simply support for you to feed your debt gaming addiction through PayPal. In the land of the free only, as the US seems to be the only one that supports the “massively in debt, but I’ll keep spending anyways” customer base.  While it’s not full support, and it requires you to buy the Microsoft Points online through xbox.com in order for you to go to the console and then download the content, it makes it really easy. It’s not like they could have figured a way to hook up the PayPal account to distribute money to the account directly from your Xbox Dashboard thus saving a trip to the PC in the still slow web navigation. Just don’t start crying when either PayPal overcharges or Microsoft loses the transaction, or EA decides you need to buy the game twice. Just find a Twitter page and post it there. Please, no blog posts, as those end up on Digg and clogging my Reddit with “OMG PAYPAL STEELZ MY MONIES” and “MICRO$OFT HATES YOU” posts. I already have enough “Damn, EA sucks” posts on there as it is, and those never get old.

Major Nelson- PayPal now available for US Xbox LIVE Accounts

Sony Profit Down 95%, PS3 Falls Back in Next Gen Race

Consumer electronics giant Sony is perhaps the ‘perfect company’ to show the impacts of the global recession. Today they announced that yearly profits fell $2.09 billion, from $2.2 billion to $110 million. The hardest hit sector was its biggest- consumer electronics, which saw 30 percent of its sales evaporate in the toughening economic climate. The company said sales in its gaming sector, which includes the PlayStation 3 and Sony Consumer Entertainment America (SCEA) divisions, was down 32% in 2008. Fierce competition from Microsoft and Nintendo weakened the PS3’s performance in the holiday. According to Gamespot, the current tally puts the latest PlayStation at 21.3 million, nearly seven million less than the Xbox (28 million) and less than half the number of Nintendo’s Wii (45 million). This is likely due to the tightening of Japanese wallets, which is one of Sony’s largest regions against the Xbox. Shares of SNE on the NYSE were down 3% today to 20.27.

[CNN] Sony profits fall 95 percent

No, you can’t haz Recon Nao. Have ODST instead.

The highly anticipated expansion to Halo 3, simply named Halo 3: Recon , has recieved a name change! *gasp!* Now it’s titled Halo 3: ODST. Makes sense the game puts you in the perspective of an ODST instead Madter Chief. So sorry people, You can’t haz Recon.**

**= Unless you get the Vidmaster achievements in Halo 3. 🙂

Call of Duty: World at War Beta open for all

That’s right! The title says it all. The online multiplayer beta for the latest installment in the Call of Duty is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace AND PC for players to fathom, drool, and PWN over. A few weeks ago it was restricted only to those who had limited keys to access the download.

Remember, this beta only lasts till the games release which happens to be November 11th. Go download it now!

Microsoft’s NXE, Cut in half?

Even though we all know it’s a step up (or step down, if your on the hating-avatar train) to the current dashboard, Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience isn’t going to be as great as it was expected.  Many of it’s features have been hacked for unknown purposes. “There’s still a lot of stuff we want to do,” said Microsoft’s Jerry Johnson. “Half the things we wanted to do we cut out of the service.”

Mirror’s Edge demo now on PSN and Xbox Live Marketplace

As if you had any clue what’s being released online (So many games, not enough time!) you probably didn’t even notice new demo releases out on the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Marketplace. EA released a demo of Mirror’s Edge, everyone’s favorite Parkour game. Mainly just to feed all your roof jumping needs, because the staff at Tech In Hiding can’t bare to see you attempt and fail an actual jump. That wouldn’t be pretty now, would it? So get to your console and download this sweet demo now! It’s worth the wait!