Global 2012: 8 cool things you can do with your game console

The Xbox 360 Arcade with wireless controller. This is a Jasper chipset, with onboard memory. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You obviously bought your game console to play games, but these days, you can do more with an Xbox 360 or PS3 than rampage through Modern Warfare 3 maps. A lot more.

Thanks to a number of awesome updates, both the 360 and PS3 are now viable all-in-one entertainment hubs, offering a wealth of features and services that make conventional cable boxes and media players seem ridiculously one-dimensional. Here are a handful of non-gaming uses for your game console:

Watch TV shows and films
Be a sports nut
Run your home's media
Auto-blog
Network socially
Fight disease
Use it as a stereo
Video chat

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/8-cool-things-game-console-232954117.html

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Global 2011: Video game plays on fears

Cover via Amazon
It's already been a busy year for shooters, but publisher THQ thinks they found the formula for first-person success in the upcoming -- and somewhat controversial -- Homefront.

Due out March 15 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, the game imagines a fallen America in 2027. Players, as you might expect, will join the resistance and fight their way across the country to win back America's freedom.

Left there, it would be a pretty formulaic shooter -- but THQ has amped things up with a politically-charged back story and pulled in screenwriter John Milius, who penned the similarly themed film "Red Dawn" (as well as "Apocalypse Now," "Clear and Present Danger" and "Conan the Barbarian"), to handle the plot behind the game's single-player campaign.

http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/468-homefront-turns-political-fears-into-potential-hit