MS replaces Xbox part

Microsoft will provide customers of the Xbox 360 wireless steering wheel with a free retrofit, after 50 reports that the video game controllers overheated and released smoke when plugged in, reports Xinhuanet.

This is the second Xbox 360 problem: in July, the company said it expected to spend more than $1 billion to repair hardware problems in the video game console. Gamers can register online to receive a "retrofit", which Microsoft would send with instructions "if necessary". The company would not say what replacement parts it plans to send to customers.

Some users have complained that there is a part within the wheel that may overheat and release smoke when using the AC-DC power supply.

Conduit Labs claims it has come up with a new way to merge social networking and online gaming, but the stealthy start-up isn't giving much away, reports Red Herring.

The company, which announced a $5.5 million round of funding from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks, hopes to stand out from the crowd by creating a browser-based virtual world where friends can gather to play games, much in the same way they might hang out in the real world and play a game of monopoly or pick-up basketball.

"What we're basically building is a real-time social network, and it's all about what you want to do with your friends right now. You can play games with them," said Conduit Labs founder Nabil Hyatt.

ABI Research says driven by the ability to dynamically serve advertising into video games connected to the Internet, in-game advertising on consoles will grow more than tenfold from $80 million in 2007 to $850 million in 2011, reports Media Post Publications.

The figure echoes trends found in recent research from Parks Associates and Yankee Group. Parks projected that total in-game advertising will grow from $55 million in 2006 to more than $800 million in 2012, with dynamic in-game advertising (in PCs and on mobile, as well as consoles) growing from 27% of the total to 84%.

Yankee said the in-game market will grow from $77.7 million in 2006 to $971.3 million in 2011, and that dynamically placed ads will cannibalise static in-game ads.