Microsoft has announced that Grand Theft Auto IV: Lost and Damned will be featured as their Deal of the Week for starting on August 24th.

One of the more interesting Deal of the Week announcements to date, the first Grand Theft Auto IV episode will be available for 1,200 Microsoft Points, instead of the usual 1,600. After purchasing the Lost and the Damned myself (read my review here) I believed it was definitely worth its original price tag, but with the upcoming discount, every GTA fan should give the add-on a try. If you haven’t given Lost and Damned a shot I suggest you take advantage of the discount on August 24th.

The idea of video games becoming a social experience has been a major staple of the current generation of consoles. Games like Rock Band and Wii Sports have broken the barriers of traditional gaming audiences and have friends and family of all ages lining up across couches everywhere to play games together. The integration of social networking tools into game consoles combined with the growing broadband adoption rate means that playing with friends is as easy as turning on your console. The majority of games released these days include some type of online multiplayer and co-op modes. The real question is, outside of the causal games, has all this massive multiplayer online madness really brought people together or is it pulling us further apart?

Microsoft confirmed a list of the new features coming to the 360 Dashboard via the Xbox Live summer update expected to hit on August 11th. Curious about what this new update will be bring to dashboard? Here is a list of everything Microsoft is stating will be included in the Summer ‘09 update.

I spent the last two weeks logging into Xbox Live to play 1 vs.100, a new online game show. 1 vs. 100 is a two-hour game show featuring live gameplay between players, multiple rounds, and a rather boring host commenting on the action. That sounds like a real game show, right? The idea of bringing a game show with real world prizes to peoples living room is very intriguing. Millions of people connect to Xbox Live everyday and this game has been designed to give anyone the opportunity to get in on the action. This is accomplished by giving gamers three ways to participate during a live show. Every round a player is chosen to be The One. This person is selected to sit center stage and answer multiple choice trivia questions in a Who Wants To Be A Million style arena. Another 100 players are selected to be a part of The Mob. Remaining players logged into the game will be part of The Crowd.

When the Xbox360 launched back in 2005 it changed the way I play games. The console itself didn’t really change things, it was the introduction of achievement points. For anyone who has been under a rock for the last four years, achievements are points that players receive for completing game-specific challenges. These challenges range from finishing a level to winning a certain number of matches against other players on Xbox Live. Every retail Xbox360 game has 1,000 available points and every Xbox Live Arcade game has 200 possible points. When points are awarded for completing challenges they are added to a players Gamerscore. A Gamerscore is an accumulative number that represents all points that have been unlocked in every game that has been played by that person. I have to hand it to Microsoft, the way they incorporated this score was ingenious, a players Gamerscore is displayed underneath their name on their Gamercard. If you don’t know, Gamercards are name tags that represent each player on Xbox Live. Every person that someone plays with during a Xbox Live match is able to see this card. In a way, the score is like bragging about how many games someone has played or how good they are at games without having to say anything. If a player looks at another players score they are able to see what achievements that player has unlocked and it shows them every game that person has played. It sounds harmless but if you dig in a little deeper there is a dark side to achievements. That brings me back to how these meaningless digital trophies have changed the way I play games.