Knuckles Dawson, Sinnix and Club 108, Microsoft Canadian Xbox MVP's, share their points of view of the Game Developers Conference 08.

Jaken Bear, Xbox.ca: The big GDC Microsoft press conference just took place and we had several key announcements around Xbox LIVE and the future of the console. Did anything stand out for you as earth-shattering news? Anything in particular you are looking forward to in 2008?

For the full contents click here.

I finally got around to getting an Xbox 360 controller keyboard this weekend. It looks sweet! I added it to my Live Turns Five orange controller and tested it out. It is very easy to use and comfortable. The extra weight does not have any impacts that I can see. I've used it for a few hours. Also with the Messenger Kit comes an Xbox 360 headset. I took a few snapshots...

Here you can see when the keypad is illuminated.
Nice touch when trying to type in the dark!!

I received another package yesterday with a few more pieces of swag.

In the package...

there was a 1 GB USB Stick,

a notepad,

and a tshirt!

I got a little surprise today when I opened a package left at my door today. An orange wireless Xbox 360 controller with a "Live Turns Five" label on it. Beautiful!

Xbox MVP Fatty Chubs and ChangeAgent at http://blog.360voice.com have a contest going on:

Steve and I are happy to announce the "big feature" that we have been working on for the past few months. It is a story that starts over a year ago with us getting a mention in the Washington Post, which lead to some helpful contacts, which lead to more contacts, which lead to some conference calls, which then resulted in more conference calls, pitches, paperwork, lawyers, creative discussions, LOTS of coding (did I mention lots of coding?)... and BAM!... here we are...

360voice is happy to announce the BETA launch of a new gamer score challenge feature, sponsored by Old Spice. For the complete rules and requirements, check out the Terms & Conditions.

In short, you create a challenge... pass the code out to the people you want to compete against, and see who can gain the most gamer score during the duration that you have chosen. While the challenge is active, you will get daily blog entry updates, a progress chart, and a way to trash-talk your rivals. Oh and did we mention there are some badges and a challenge leaderboard?

So jump right in and check it out! Create a challenge and invite your friends, or check out the challenge board for active/complete challenges that have already taken place during our closed alpha program.

Remember, this is a BETA! Our goal here is to make sure everything is working behind the scenes... Things will get much bigger when we turn on prizing challenges! Yep that is right!

Soon you will be competing in challenges for real prizes! Old Spice will be helping us give away tens of thousands of dollars in prizes... there will be hundreds of prizes to compete for with your friends each week!

Disclaimer on prizes: No purchase necessary.  The Old Spice Experience Challenge prizes are open to residents of the 50 US/DC, 13 or older at time of entry & who have a 360Voice Full membership & have an Xbox 360 Live Gold membership at time of entry.  Void where prohibited.  Begins 12:00 AM PST on 12/5/07; ends 11:59:59 PM PST on 3/14/08.  See Official Rules in December for details.

Watch this blog for more details shortly!

It is going to be a fun holiday season and we at 360voice would just like to extend a sincere thanks to Old Spice for choosing to invest in our site and our community. We would also like to thank the team at Play for helping us make all this happen. Cheers guys and gals!

Also a special thanks to the ALPHA Test team who helped us the last month with 'Project Red Rabbit':