Microsoft has been holding their cards pretty close since they announced their upcoming Windows Phone 7 series at the MWC 2010.  That will be changing soon at the Game Developer’s Conference this week, where they are all set to unveil their new XNA Game Studio 4.0, which includes support for the Windows Phone 7 series. It will support integration with Visual Studio 2010 and allow developers to make slight modifications to their game to run it on each platform separately ( PC, Xbox, Windows Phone 7 etc. )

Recently, Microsoft have revealed that the Xbox LIVE service is due to be updated soon, and the new update will make it incompatible with first-generation Xbox games. The company has taken great care to ensure their users aren’t left empty-handed from the whole ordeal, though.

The PlayStation Network has been down today, and customers have been expressing severe frustration over the matter. It doesn’t seem to be an issue with the downtime itself, as much as the fat that Sony still haven’t made an official statement on the matter.

The third DLC pack for Gearbox’s shooter Borderlands will soon hit the market, according to an announcement made by Gearbox and 2K Games. The DLC will be called “The Secret Armory of General Knoxx” and will be available for download through the Xbox LIVE system in about one day.

How much did we wait for the Mobile World Congress 2010 is unexplainable but, the fact that the day has arrived is soothing enough and now even when the surge has begun, we still have a leak lined-up for you-Windows Mobile 7. The Microsoft OS specifically developed for cellphones is slated to go public anytime at the event and courtesy of the scoop, we know that the interface will feature Xbox Live integration.

For all you gamers who have been looking forward to a Sonic game that carries over the spirit of the Genesis fan favorites, here’s some bit of news. Sega’s new Sonic The Hedgehog game, Sonic 4 is soon arriving as a downloadable episode on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Wii. Significant is the fact that Sonic 4 will be a 2D game with 3D visuals.

We are not quite sure about the stress pattern of the word video-game! This confusion is the courtesy of gaming behemoths like Sony and Microsoft who apparently are stressing more on the word video than the word game. Microsoft especially is keen on developing XboX Live more as a media portal than a gaming service which already offers access to social networking sites and attractions like Netflix. Microsoft has taken rapid strides by streaming TV shows and movies and now user specific shows are also being produced.

Yesterday at CES, Microsoft revealed the “Game Room”, which will be a virtual marketplace for classic old games. The service will be launched on Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live during the spring.

The last few days have been terrible for social services. First Twitter went down, then Facebook and Livejournal experienced serious downtime, tonight Xbox Live went down, too.

Although the multiplayer gaming platform prevented users from connecting to Xbox Live for quite a while, on their new Twitter feed they’ve just announced that “ALL XBOX LIVE services are now up and running. We are sorry about the outage earlier”.

It looks like things are back on track, but you’ll have to agree that it’s been a terrible week for our main addictions. How do you feel when your favorite service is not working, don’t you get pissed off?

The gaming freaks are having a good time with the updates for all their favorite games. It was the WoW that got the patch yesterday and today the buffs are expecting the Call of Duty: World at War Pack 3 anytime. Just like usual times, the fanatics are suffering because they do not know the exact timing of the Pack 3 release but, we are hopeful it should be early.

It will be released for all forms of the game that primarily includes an Xbox and a Sony PS3 Option.