Mid-Morning Consoling

Microsoft today announced that beginning this week it will be shipping "two to three times" as many Xbox 360 units to stores as it has been recently. The increase in supply is attributed to manufacturing firm Celestica, Inc. joining existing partners Wistron Corp. and Flextronics Corp. In a recent interview, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer indicated that the system's widespread shortage was at least partially due to poor performance from an unnamed manufacturing partner.

The full Xbox 360 spring lineup was revealed today in a Microsoft press release. Several of the games have already been released, or are being released today. For the sake of completeness, here is the full list. Looks like Rockstar's table tennis sim will be out sooner than expected.

- 2006 FIFA World Cup (EA Canada, EA Sports)
- Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (Digital Illusions CE, EA Games)
- Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII (Ubisoft Romania, Ubisoft)
- Burnout Revenge (Criterion Games, Electronic Arts)
- Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires (Omega Force, KOEI)
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks, 2K Games)
- Far Cry Instincts Predator (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft)
- Final Fantasy XI (Square Enix, Square Enix)
- Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft)
- Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend (Crystal Dynamics, Eidos)
- Major League Baseball 2K6 (Kush Games, 2K Sports)
- The Outfit (Relic, THQ)
- Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (Rockstar San Diego, Rockstar Games)
- Rumble Roses XX (Yuke's, Konami)
- Top Spin 2 (Indie Built, 2K Sports)
- X-Men: The Official Game (Z-Axis, Activision)

Finally, Microsoft made the encouraging announcement that its popular Xbox Live online service will be opened to developers. This will give developers the ability to run their own Live servers and develop infrastructure more conducive to certain game types, such as MMOs. The next revision of the Xbox dev kit, which will ship in May, includes the update.