According to Kotaku reader Ken, he got his hands on the upcoming Kinectimals before its launch, and when he loaded it into his Xbox 360, the poor console became locked out of Xbox Live through a series of silly and unfortunate events. Read past the jump for the details.

Without explanation, Microsoft’s Major Nelson has announced that they are planning to raise their Xbox Live Gold subscription fees beginning November 1st, 2010.

In the United States, a one month Gold membership will increase from $7.99 to $9.99, a three month gold membership will increase from $19.99 to $24.99 and the one year membership will increase from $49.99 to $59.99. The price increase affects other territories as well, including Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Thus ends an era in multiplayer gaming: 1 vs. 100, the beloved XBox Live trivia game in which more than 100,000 players routinely participated at once, has been canceled by Microsoft.

Halo 2, released in 2004, was a historic game in the progression of online multiplayer first person shooting game, and it kept its following for years, right up to the middle of this month, when Microsoft ended its Xbox Live support for titles and services corresponding to the original Xbox.

But, as Eurogamer reports, there are still a dedicated few fighting the good fight with needlers blazing, and by now they’ve had their Xboxes on nonstop for eleven days.

Read on...

Funny geek Conan O’Brien bucked convention when he picked cable network TBS over Fox as the launchpad for his new talk show, which will debut in November. But apparently, Conan may have seriously considering bucking TV altogether: Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that he was in talks with Microsoft to make a show for XBox.

Deadline:

A lot of showbiz reporters got it wrong (not us!) speculating about where Conan would land. They were fixated on Fox and assumed he would only go to a network. But the fact is that, we knew from the very beginning, Team Conan (including his exec producer Jeff Ross, and WME’s Rick Rosen, and manager Gavin Palone, and Ziffren Brittenham attorney Sam Fischer), were thinking way outside the network box. For instance, there were discussions with Microsoft about an XBox deal for Conan’s show that would have broken new ground. And yes, discussions took place with Fox.     [emphasis added]

There’s a lot to be said for the TBS deal: Whereas Fox’s affiliated local stations were reluctant to give up prebought reruns for Conan — and Fox has a nasty history of canceling good programming – TBS “agreed quickly to almost every request” from Conan’s camp, and the network has a fairly young audience to boot. And it can’t hurt that Conan will get a reported eight figures for his troubles.

At that: Think of all of the positive effects a Conan talk show exclusively for the XBox would have had on the industry as a whole.

Microsoft‘s Xbox Live service debuted a change to its Code of Conduct this morning.

You may use the following terms to express your relationship orientation in your profile or Gamertag: Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Straight.

Other terms regarding relationship orientation are not allowed. In addition you may not use these terms or any other terms regarding relationship orientation to insult, harass, or any other pejorative use against other users.

This is great and all, but, seriously? Way to keep up with the times, Microsoft. I’m glad you managed to do it before the US Military. That would have been really embarrassing.

First, Google whittles away at IE6; now, Microsoft itself is cutting off original XBox owners from XBox Live, effective April 15th. Is no 2001 Microsoft release sacred?

First: no.

But according to a sensationalist Denver ‘news’ report on the aforementioned ‘sex box,’ “XBOX live, Play Station 3 and even Wii have become a sexual predator’s playground.”

On the basis of footage gathered from a camera crew’s expedition into what appears to be all of two Denver households, a budget- and talent-strapped local news affiliate has once again managed to approach gaming from the hoariest perspective possible: That if unsuspecting American parents allow their children to approach any electronic device more complicated than a Tiger Handheld, sexual sex predators will reach their slimy sex tentacles through the fiber-optic cables running into your house and sex them. With sex.