Amongst the deluge of E3 videos that hit the marketplace last night, including a look at the new dashboard, were a couple of free Gears of War 2 goodies: -

• Gears of War 2 - Hope Runs Deep Theme.
• Gears of War 2 - COGs of War Gamerpic pack.

As stated both are available now for free on the marketplace, along with a new GoW 2 trailer.

Gamerscoreblog have published an open letter from Marc Whitten about the "new Xbox Experience."  It details a number of new additions to the way we will use our 360's both online, and off. These include: -

• The ability to play games from your HDD (why aren't we getting the 60gb model again?)
• The ability to access the marketplace from your computer.
• Dashboard built into the guide.
• Live party system (independent of the game you're playing, stay together no matter what).
• Xbox Live Primetime.
• Avatars.
• New display modes supported.

These new features are "only the beginning," with more expected to be announced before the heavily revamped dashboard update hits in the Autumn.

To view the letter in its entirety, head over to Gamerscoreblog.

With E3 well underway, announcements have been flying out onto the web faster than most people can type them. I'll break down what I know so far: -

• Portal will get a sequel that will be launched on XBLA sometime this autumn.
• Gears of War 2 will be launched on November 7th.
• There will be a 60gb Xbox 360... but Europe isn't getting one, apparently.
• Wednesday's XBLA title will be (drumroll please), Coffeetime Crosswords... wtf?
• Final Fantasy XIII will also be coming to the 360.
• Geometry Wars 2 will be hitting XBLA next month!
• Fable 2 has a confirmed release date of October.

If you've ever had 3 red lights on your 360, you'll know it's an absolute pain when you get a new 360 back and none of your content works unless you're signed in to XBL. That's Digital Rights Management at its best kids.

To help you in your quest to get your content working properly again, MS have finally (after much complaining from pretty much everyone on the planet) released a tool that will help you transfer your licences to your new 360. This tool also works if you've upgraded to a new 360.

The only downside I can see at present is that you can only transfer your licences once every 12 months.

Elle has more information about this new tool on her blog.

While I've been dealing with the red ring of death on my beloved 360, a number of tasty news items have popped up on the net: -

• Unreal Tournament 3 has finally been released for the 360, and it's simply amazing.
• Yesterday saw the arrival of Bungie Day '08.  If you're not up to speed on what was available, you missed out on a free theme, as well as some gamerpics.  However, a new free Halo 3 map was also released (Cold Storage), and the Legendary map pack was reduced in price to 600 MS points.
• This weeks XBLA titles will be "Golf: Tee It Up!" and "Schizoid."  Both will be available for 800 ms points on Wednesday.