Three shots of Nirvana and a four-pack of Foo Fighters grace the Rock Band Music Store next week, with Joan Jett and the Blackheart’s “Fake Friends” this week’s sole non Nirvana-related track.

For those of you who prefer Dave Grohl stick to drumming, Nirvana’s “About a Girl”, “School” and “Blew” will keep him quietly hitting the skins. Those of you wishing for a more pronounced Grohl presence should be pleased with “Best of You”, “The Pretender”, “Wheels” and “Word Forward” from the Foo Fighters.

If you prefer a more portable Rock Band experience, there’s always Bullet For My Valentine’s “Waking the Demon” and System of a Down’s “Toxicity” for Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP, both of which contain zero Grohl-levels.

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii (Nov. 3) and PlayStation 3 system (Nov. 5):

• Foo Fighters – “Best of You”
• Foo Fighters – “The Pretender”
• Foo Fighters – “Wheels”
• Foo Fighters – “Word Forward”
• Nirvana – “About a Girl”
• Nirvana – “Blew”
• Nirvana – “School”
• Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – “Fake Friends”

Tracks available for Rock Band Unplugged (November 5):

• Bullet For My Valentine – “Waking the Demon”
• System of a Down – “Toxicity”

“I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox,” Obama said today, according to prepared remarks offered by the White House.

Oh sure, first he doesn’t want us to become ever-softening sloths by exercising instead of sitting on the couch all day, controller in hand. Now he wants us to study and not play our Xboxes even more, an inalienable right outlined the Constitution (probably). I’ll check but it ounds like we’ve got a fanboy in the White House. After all, he is a Wii man.

At the very least, the President’s comments about the console helps illustrate its popularity, giving this generation its blanket console name at the highest levels of government.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama – Back to School Event [Whitehouse.gov]

The guy’s name is Bandit5317, and his Xbox is one-inch wide, losing the clunky disc drive and replacing it with a 320GB HDD. It’s like the Xbox of the past and the Xbox of the future, coming together in one slick little media centre server.

The Xbox Micro, the smallest one yet… [Xbox-Scene, via Gizmodo]

With The Conduit out of the way and a couple more Wii projects being polished off, High Voltage Software is now ready to make the leap into the “next-generation.” They’ve signed an agreement with developer Terminal Reality that grants them a lifetime licence for the Infernal Engine, which was the driving force behind the extremely well-received Ghostbusters: The Videogame on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Joe Kreiner, VP Sales and Marketing at Terminal Reality, neatly dismisses the Wii as a current-generation platform.

“With more than 75 titles shipped, High Voltage Software has a proven track record of developing quality products on all of the current platforms. Through the use of the Infernal Engine technologies, they are now able to extend that remarkable track record into the next-generation platforms.”

Poor Wii. Still, considering how painful it was to read reviews for The Conduit, perhaps moving to a new platform is in order.

Upon the launch of Section 8 on September 1, Timegate and publisher Southpeak will have free X Server software available for download, which allows players to create their own dedicated Section 8 servers on their Windows PC. Creating your own PC server doubles the multiplayer cap on the 360 from 16 to 32 players per server, allowing bigger battles at the cost of a PC you weren’t using in the first place.

“FPS fans looking for the perfect multiplayer game expect fast, reliable servers when they’re playing online. We go one step further by offering an increased player count and boosting the game play experience to a new level,” said Richard Iggo, VP of Marketing at SouthPeak. “We’re confident that Section 8’s incredible team-based combat and our adoption of cutting-edge server technology provide an experience unlike anything else out there.”

Along with the Xbox 360 server software, the publisher will also be releasing a PC Server application that will allow for up to 40 players per session.

It’s definitely a cool new feature, but one wonders why the person hosting said server wouldn’t just get the Windows PC version of the game and kick things up to 40 instead. It’ll be interesting to see how many 32 player games show up on Xbox Live once the game hits next month.

As part of a little Q&A about the new Xbox dashboard, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb has disclosed that the very first gamertag in the world is “e”, which belongs to Microsoft’s Xbox Live operations manager Eric Neustadter.

It was created all the way back on August 13, 2002, meaning that later this week his will be the first gamertag in the world to turn 7.

Awww, they grow up so fast!

Some of your Xbox LIVE Tenure questions answered [Microsoft]

The patent, #7,559,834 was invented by James Youk of Austin, Texas and filed back in the original Xbox era on December 2, 2002.

Seven years later, this is what the government assigns Microsoft a patent to:

A squad-based shooter video game allows players to dynamically join and leave the game, while that game is in progress, without the players having to save and restart the game. When a new player joins an in-progress game, a new squad member is allocated to the new player and the screen is split to present a viewing panel for the new player that depicts scenes from the perspective of the new squad member. When an existing player leaves the game, the screen is unsplit to remove the viewing panel for the exiting player and that player’s squad member becomes part of the squad being controlled by the remaining player(s).

The patent specifically refers to squad-based shooter games, reducing the likelihood that it would apply to, say, re-making Halo matchmaking so that online battles were persistent with players smoothly dropping in and out. Instead, it reads like a brief on the co-op in Gears of War 2.

The patent is full of sketches (including the one in this post) that depict a shooter game being played on the original Xbox.

Microsoft did not return Kotaku’s request by press time to elaborate on why the company patented this concept.

UPDATE: Several readers have noted the sketches included in the patent resemble screenshots from Xbox co-op shooter Brute Force, which was developed by the now-shuttered Digital Anvil. The company, like the inventor noted here, were based in Austin, Texas.

In 1999, Bungie was probably the best-known studio developing specifically for Macintosh, having delivered titles like Marathon, Myth, and Pathways Into Darkness. At Macworld 1999, Steve Jobs introduced the studio’s next big Mac exclusive: Halo.

Within a year, Bungie would be bought out by Microsoft and Halo would become a launch title that, more than any other game, made the Xbox viable in its infancy. Although Jobs had sworn that Apple had “put an initiative in place to get games back to the Mac,” the new console project and Microsoft’s commitment to it seemed a much more stable environment than remaining the lone standard bearer of gaming on the Mac.

People argue the Halo franchise’s innovation and significance, or lack thereof, all the time. What isn’t disputable is its place in history to these two companies, as the catalyst for the fortunes of one and the persistent listlessness of another, at least in gaming. I often wonder if Macintosh really could have evolved into a serious gaming platform, using OpenGL, with Halo as a leadership title. And I wonder what would have happened with the Xbox – if anything could have matched the impact of Halo on that console, or if Microsoft would have simply developed another multiplayer FPS with which to stake its claim in the market.

Above is Steve Jobs’ keynote introduction of Halo on July 21, 1999 at Macworld Expo in New York. The game had been given a closed-door screening at E3 earlier that year. This is its public debut.

Eventually, Halo would make it to the Mac. In 2003.

Halo … On the Mac? [YouTube]

After an initial flurry of titles, releases for the service soon slowed to the point where most of you probably forgot it was even around. And it may as well have disappeared, with Microsoft saying it has now “finished its portfolio” of releases for the service, and that following one final release (which has yet to be determined), there will be no more Xbox games offered for download.

Shame. The service had real potential. Or, it would have if Microsoft had bothered releasing more stuff like Psychonauts, or had fixed some backwards-compatibility issues so they could sell Jet Set Radio and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath.

E3 2009: The End of Originals [IGN]