Consumers report that Xbox Live is being pushed to the limits, presumably due to the high number of gamers playing Halo 3 online. Various Xbox Live users have experienced inaccurate game stats, performance slowdown, inability to access friend lists, and an inability to perform system updates. After experiencing trouble on Tuesday night, one gamer reputedly called Microsoft's help line in which a representative responded by saying that Xbox Live was experiencing network difficulties. The issue appears to be intermittent, however, as several gamers reported no problems outside of inaccurate stat data such as number of players online. Hundreds of thousands of Halo 3 owners have flocked to Xbox Live in an effort to play online since the game launched on Tuesday.

Electronic Art's Wing Commander Arena will be available for purchase on Wednesday, July 25th via Microsoft's Live Arcade. The 3D remake of the space combat game will cost 800 Microsoft Points, or $10, and will feature 16 player online play, ship customization, 8 multiplayer maps and 4 styles of play. This is EA's second title to come to the XBOX Live Arcade.

Microsoft's Xbox chief Peter Moore has abruptly resigned from Microsoft just a few hours after passing judgement to SONY about its failure with PS3 in the Japanese market. Moore will become president of EA's Sports division. Moore's replacement at Microsoft will be Don Mattrick, who was a former president of game development Electronic Arts. Mattrick will become senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, which includes the Xbox and Games for Windows.
Microsoft stated that Moore was about to leave the company because of personal reasons although industry watchers speculate that Microsoft struggles in the gaming market and the incredible pressure facing Moore specifically were partly to blame for his departure.

While there is certainly not a shortage of new and interesting ways to completely trash a dead Xbox(360), the guys at Waterjets have found one of the best. They took a bunch of dead Xboxs and Xbox360s and subjected them to their extremely precise power washers. The result? Some very pretty cutouts of Xbox hardware. The power washers handled circuitry, heatsink and case alike with relative ease, making everything from an X in the middle of an Xbox to a 360 degree hole in the Xbox360. Waterjets' work is below.