This news broke last week, so I’m a little late. But it’s important news, so I’ll post it anyway.

The Content License Transfer Tool (aka DRM Tool) is now available for use. This tool will allow you to consolidate licenses to a single console. What exactly does this mean? Well, a lot of sites reporting on this don’t seem to have a full understanding of what this is and exactly how it works. Even the official FAQ doesn’t make everything entirely clear, so I’ll do my best to what this is and why we have it. Hit the jump for the best explanation I can come up with.

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Amazon has the Game of the Year edition of Call of Duty 4 on sale today for $40 with free shipping. If you haven’t picked it up yet, here’s your chance to get the game and the recent DLC map pack for a great price.

Link: Call of Duty 4: Game of the Year - $40 at Amazon

So I wish now that I had blogged about this sooner, but I’ll just post it in retrospect. Fortunately, Gmail logs my chats, so I kind of have proof that I totally called this.

Exactly one week ago I was chatting with Tha R1gga about DRM, mostly with relation to the Xbox 360. He, for the most part, is against DRM, but I was able to get him to admit that without it, nobody would be buying XBLA games or DLC. They’d simply find a way to copy it and make it available on the internets. Anyway, here is an excerpt from that chat session:

me: i just think there has to be a happy medium
i think MS is getting there
i think eventually they’ll let you update your own license on xbox.com
you just plug in your serial number and take care if it yourself

Now, here is a quote from an interview with Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live that was posted five days ago:

Yes, this new tool will officially launch next month on Xbox.com and will allow you to be able to consolidate these licenses onto one box so you can access things like Xbox LIVE Arcade games and TV show you have downloaded even if you are not online. Because this involved allowing users to re-download licenses for content that belongs to our partners it has taken some time to work out the agreements with them to allow this, but we have heard the concerns from folks about DRM and are happy to announce that everything is nearly in place to roll this out in June.

I could be the next Michael Pachter.

Any way, I think with this upcoming tool, Microsoft is being pretty fair with their DRM. You can use your Premium DLC on any 360 as long as you’re signed into Xbox Live with the Gamertag you purchased the content with. And now you will be able to move your licenses to another 360. What are your thoughts on this issue? Sound off in the comments.

Previously referred to by it’s code name “O.K. Corral,” the new “Ghost Town” map has been revealed on the Bungie website complete with pretty pictures. This is the first we’ve seen of any of the maps that will be contained in the “Legendary Map Pack.” The map has a very cool jungle look to it, which makes it very different from the other maps I’ve played. Hit the link for more pics and some Q/A with a couple of the map’s designers.

Link: Ghost Town Revealed

As of this morning, Metal Slug 3 is on XBLA ready to steal your 800 Microsoft Points. The game supports 2-6 players over Xbox Live and 2-4 players local, which is pretty sweet. Hit the link to read Major Nelson’s announcement.

Link: Arcade: METAL SLUG 3

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the return of Sensible World of Soccer to the Xbox Live Arcade, your wishes have come true. After disappearing for a couple days, it’s back and it’s still 800 points. Maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t care, because apparently a lot of people freaked out when the game was released and didn’t work properly. Anyway, here’s Major Nelson’s original post about the release.

Link: Sensible World of Soccer now available for download