Thursday news 'n stuff

New downloads on Marketplace:

Need for Speed ProStreet gets a ton of content.  Additional tracks and more than a dozen cars from the looks of it.

If you're in Japan and play Senko no Rondo (known as WarTech here) you've got more than a dozen new pieces of content.  Since I don't speak Japanese I haven't got the foggiest idea what any of it is, though.  I'm going to guess that it's more giant fighting robots and it's hard to go wrong with that.

The registration gamer picture for the Forza Motorsport 2 Play & Win Sweepstakes is up.

There's also a new Fable 2 Dev Diary, more SXSW videos, a VG Cats picture pack, and more.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is coming to Xbox Originals next Monday (March 24th) for 1,200 points.  See Xbox.com for more info.

Battlefield: Bad Company will be kicking off a mulitplayer beta test on Xbox Live next week:

EA DICE, a studio of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) today announced the multiplayer beta test for Battlefield: Bad Company(TM) on the Xbox 360(R) video game system from Microsoft. IGN Founders' Club and IGN Insider will offer keys to members and the public in North America and the UK to participate in the multiplayer beta test starting March 25 provided by IGN's popular game download site FilePlanet (http://www.fileplanet.com). In addition, keys will also be available through IGN Entertainment's gaming Web sites including IGN.com, GameSpy, TeamXbox, Planet Battlefield and Voodoo Extreme. 

Get the full scoop from EA's press release.

The next time you sign into Xbox Live with Bully: Scholarship Edition you'll be prompted to download a title update that I know a number of you have been waiting for.  Sorry, I don't have any information on what's changed in the update.

Our friends at Bungie have activated the Team SWAT hopper for Halo 3.  This is the latest Double XP Weekend hopper, following hot on the heels of Grifball.  Hit Bungie.net for no additional information on this subject.

In other news of importance only to me:

• My NCAA bracket is six out of seven so far.  I called the UNLV/Kent State game wrong.  Oregon takes on Mississippi State tomorrow afternoon.
• I've gotten essentially no gaming in this week, thus made no progress on my gaming goals.  After some chores tonight I will have time to game... I think.  Sigh.
• There had been a fair amount of Halo smack talk in the hallways here from a certain someone, so we had a face-off during the Operations team meeting today.  25-5, e can haz victory!  I'm in serious trouble when the time comes for the Rock Band rematch, though.

 - e