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“Civilization Revolution is the game I’ve always wanted to make!” said Meier, director of Creative Development at Firaxis. “We are excited to take advantage of the power of next generation consoles and the ingenuity of handhelds, to create a great and unique strategy game for newcomers to the series, as well as the millions of fans around the world who enjoy Civilization on the PC.”

Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 HD DVD drive has become more popular than standalone HD drives in the US.

A Microsoft representative told Cnet that 155,000 Xbox 360 HD DVD add-ons have been sold in the U.S., making it the “biggest-selling accessory” ever sold for the console.

Microsoft has reportedly informed Spanish website La Trifuerza that the Xbox 360 Elite will be launched in Europe on August 24, which is a day after my birthday Microsoft. Hint hint.

It seems that non-Elite owners may soon be able to use their Xbox 360s via their HDMI enable sets, courtesy of manufacturer XCM. Kotaku has what appears to be a rendering of the XCM cable here.

Meanwhile more horror stories of Xbox 360 failures have seen the light of day in the press this week.

Microsoft’s UK repair centre in Havant is now redistributing faulty consoles to foreign repair centres in order to clear an overwhelming backlog and keep up with the 1,500 to 2,500 Xbox 360s arriving at its doors on a daily basis, according to customer reports.

“A shocking statistic we found out though is that between 1,500 to 2,500 consoles get sent to Havant by three UPS lorries per day, to then be shipped to Prague for repair” reported a reader discussing his repair story with 360-gamer.com.

Whilst UK-based repairs specialist Micromart has told GamesIndustry.biz that it has had to refuse to service Xbox 360 consoles that display three red lights, dubbed the Red Ring of Death.

“We were seeing about 30 a week before we pulled the plug on the service,” said Jeff Croft of Micromart.

“We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at.”