The wait will soon be over as Capcom has announced that the Devil May Cry 4 demo will be landing on Xbox LIVE Marketplace on Thursday. The demo will allow you to play as newcomer Nero in a “sampling of sections from the full game.” The demo will feature the Devil Bringer weapon and a boss battle with this ferocious looking baddie. Hit the link for all the details straight from Capcom’s mouth.

Link: Devil May Cry 4 Demo Available This Thursday [Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Major Nelson has posted his weekly Xbox LIVE stats for the week beginning January 14th. Among the various letters and numbers, one interesting statistic stands out. Call of Duty 4 has moved into the #1 spot, beating Halo 3 in the number of unique users playing the game. I haven’t gone back week-by-week to verify this claim, but I believe this is the first time Halo 3 wasn’t #1 since it’s release in September. If that claim is false, please set me straight in the comments.

This is pretty unprecidented, especially considering many people* think of the 360 as “the Halo 3 box.” I guess there is room for two games in this box.

*I am not included in this group of people. Taking a look at the list of games I own should prove that claim.

Link: LIVE Activity for week of 1/14

Microsoft has announced the game they will be giving away free to users that were affected by the Xbox Live outages. That game is Undertow (an 800 point value).

As you can expect, the comments on the Gamerscore Blog post are already asploding with posts saying things like, “what if I already purchased Undertow?” According to a comment from John Porcaro, those people should call Xbox Support which is “prepared to take care of you.”

I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of people have probably already purchased this game. Now they’re all going to have to deal with Xbox Support, which I can personally tell you is huge hassle. Second, I didn’t care for the trial version of Undertow, so I don’t know that I really want to play it.

I think MS is handling this situation all wrong. They need to give away a new game to everyone when it’s released and they needed to say that when they announced they would be giving away a free game. That would solve several of the issues they will now be dealing with. First, you don’t have to worry about the people that already purchased it. Second, it would prevent people from not buying games until they heard which one was going to be free. Third, you wouldn’t have to worry about people saying, “I already played the Trial version and it sucked.” It would have been a great way to prevent a lot of the fires they’re now going to have to put out.

I’m just saying…

The third iteration in the FIFA Street series is coming to next-gen (can we start calling them current-gen yet?) consoles sometime next month. To give us a little taste of what to expect, EA has dropped a demo of FIFA Street 3 onto Xbox Live today.

While I haven’t ever played a FIFA Street game, the trailer below makes #3 look a lot like NBA Street Homecourt, but with more feet. And I’ve always said that video games need more feet. I don’t care for soccer myself, but if this game turns out to be anything like NBA Street Homecourt, it’s a good thing.

Link: Demo: FIFA Street 3 [Via Joystiq]

The lawsuit filed by the three Texans is the reason that we haven’t had any updates from Microsoft over the Xbox Live issues according to Major Nelson’s latest podcast. This is definitely disappointing because we are all so desperate to play on Live without lag issues and other problems. Could that really be the case or is Microsoft just trying to find a scapegoat because they aren’t putting a big enough priority on resolving the problem?

If there is a bright to all of these issues, it’s that I’m blaming all of the times I lose on Halo 3 to Live issues…

Link: Show #263 The One After CES

Tropicana is sponsoring (and apparently has been sponsoring since June) a sweepstakes in which you could instantly win a trip to Xbox Headquarters. You simply need to visit keepingittwisted.com, register and fill in a couple boxes. You’ll be notified instantly if you’re a winner.

If you aren’t a winner, and you most likely will not be, you’ll receive a free 48-hour trial code for Xbox Live. You are eligible to try again every 24 hours, and if you aren’t a winner again, they will give you another 48-hour code. You can continue doing this until the promotion ends on February 29th.

By my calculations, you have 50 days between now and the end of the contest. If you take a minute to do this every day, you’ll have 100 days of Xbox Live Gold for free. I’m just saying…

Link: keepingittwisted.com [Via Instructables]

As a follow up to the news about the three Texans filing a class action lawsuit for Xbox Live’s downtime, Gaming Steve has an article taking a closer look at the logistics of the lawsuit. He makes some really good points, such as:

If you are a Silver member, or one on a free trial offer, Microsoft owes you nothing as the service provided is cost you nothing. If you are a Gold member, you can divide up your yearly fee to a daily fee. $50 US Dollars for an annual fee is approximately 13.7 cents a day. The downtime was about 6 days, which ends up being 82 cents.

On top of the math details, there’s also a clause in the Terms of Use that should keep MS in a safe place:

16. WE MAKE NO WARRANTY We provide the Service “as-is,” “with all faults” and “as available.” The Microsoft Parties give no express warranties, guarantees or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under your local laws that this contract cannot change. To the extent permitted by law, we exclude the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, workmanlike effort and non-infringement.

Hit the link for a good read.

Link: Xbox Live Class Action Lawsuit Worth Pennies, Not Millions [Via Joystiq]

A demo of NFL Tour has made it’s way to Xbox Live Marketplace today. No details on size of the download, but it is available only to US and Canada residents.

I watched a trailer for this game last week and it actually looks like it could be fun. I’ll post my impressions once I’ve had a chance to give the demo a shot.

Link: Demo: NFL Tour