Treyarch's Josh Olin has said that multiplayer in Call of Duty: Black Ops was underway so early that the single-player guys have been using multiplayer assets to speed up production.

"We've had a dedicated team working on that since day one," Olin, who is Treyarch's community manager, told IGN about the online side of the game.

"Let me put it in perspective for you. We had multiplayer started and up and running in the project so early that some single-player levels actually are being built around multiplayer maps that we had in production.

"So it's not the other way around," he said, referring to the accepted wisdom that multiplayer tends to follow single-player. "It's not single-player maps being brought into multiplayer, it's multiplayer being brought into single-player, so that's how ahead of the game they were."

Call of Duty: Black Ops puts players in a team of deniable operatives doing Special Forces business during the Cold War. It takes place in Vietnam and other areas around the globe.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is due out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 9th November.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/cod-black-ops-mp-preceded-campaign

Node21 (Team XeDev) released a new version of XM360, a tool running on homebrew 360s that will allow to organize, scan and unlock XBLA and DLC content.

What's new/fixed:
* Xm360 now includes a server component (xm360_server) that runs on the PC. Find it in the "server" directory of the archive.
* Be sure to define hdd1: in xm360server.cfg before using it.
* This server component when running, allows you to connect to it as if it is another 360 from within xm360. This allows you to centralize you content on a PC on your network.
* Unlike a regular 360, the server component automatically keeps its content.bin up-to-date when things are pushed to it
* I recommend pushing content to the server from xm360 to begin with to make absoultely certain that it creates the paths correctly on the PC
* xm360 now has very robust FTP job queuing, showing you what's in the queue, and the progress of each transfer right in the content list.
* Due to the fact that you may want to run the server on a port other than 21, XM360 itself now allows you to specify the port in the "Other XBOX" ftp config section. See XM360.cfg for details.
* Lots of minor fixes in XM360 itself

Official Site: http://xedev.xbins.org/

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EkZVEZkVlAWhfUqUzI.php

As part of ongoing efforts to reduce the spread of pirated Xbox 360 games and support the region's legitimate resellers, Microsoft Gulf today announced that UAE authorities confiscated over 29,000 pirated copies of Xbox 360 games in a series of 21 coordinated raids on reseller stores in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah.

In Abu Dhabi, the Ministry of Economy liaised with the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development to gain additional officers for assistance; enabling them to target a number of stores, and to conduct the raids simultaneously.

"The ramifications of piracy and the distribution of pirated goods will always negatively impact any economy and hinder growth. It does no justice to the businesses that are operating legitimately and complying with all regulatory and UAE laws," said Mohammed Ahmed Bin Abdul Aziz, Managing Director, UAE Ministry of Economy. "The Ministry, in collaboration with private rights holders such as Microsoft, will take all necessary actions to clamp down on piracy and the distribution of counterfeit products in the UAE."

In Sharjah, the store raids conducted by government authorities lead to the confiscation of pirated products and the arrest of 3 people who are currently facing criminal charges. When one store which is known as a major supplier of pirated games in the market was raided, approximately 25,000 pirated DVDs were seized. The pirated games were purportedly found on specially built and hidden shelves, which held neatly arranged bundles of 50 pirated DVDs.

http://www.ameinfo.com/233806.html