This week’s update includes a bat, two shanks, a red friendship, a coupe of causes and a bit of “Doh!”

Xbox 360 owners will be pleased to know that Square Enix has decided to honor them this week with a sale. Certain downloads are reduced until February 14, 2012. These aren’t huge discounts, as the most you’ll save is about 50%, but at least you’re getting a handful of games, DLC packs and avatar items more »

Madden Bowl, EA’s marriage of competitive gaming and celebrity appearances, will air 9:00 p.m. (ET), February 2, 2012, on ESPN 3. Xbox Live features the sports network on its dashboard, so Gold members will be able to watch from their consoles.

  Call of Duty Elite Premium members can now enjoy two new maps, Piazza and Liberation.  The wide open spaces of Central Park provide the setting for Liberation, a sniper’s paradise. Long-range shooting rules the day here, and the truly brave can take to mounted turrets at either end of the park. Piazza is all more »

Gears of War 3‘s Fenix Rising DLC drops this week, with five new maps, four multiplayer character skins and a take on Call of Duty’s “Prestige” mode.   The “Re-Up” addition allows those who have reached Level 100 (Gears’ max) to zero out their XP and start over. You will keep the medals and ribbons you’ve more »

We get some survival horror in Xbox Live Arcade this week with Amy. A comet strikes the Midwestern town of Silver City and the resulting virus causes chaos. Lana is an infected woman who awakens in the middle of all this and tries to find safety. Aiding her is Amy, an eight-year old autistic girl with special powers. The tandem is greater than the sum of their parts and travels together in this nightmarish world. They will work together to solve puzzles and survive the oncoming monsters. Paul Cuisset, designer of PC classic Flashback, brings us this one for 800 Microsoft Points. ($10)

Check out this week’s update of new and notable Xbox Live arcade games…

Shooter fans have much to be happy about this week. Gears of War 3 lets us step into the combat boots of a feared villain this week in the RAAM’s Shadow add-on. This prequel takes us back to before Emergence Day and features Zeta Squad, led by Gears 1 character Lt. Minh Young Kim. The team also features Gears 2′s Tai Kaliso. The three-plus hour campaign adds 250 points worth of achievements, six new multiplayer character skins and chocolate weapon skins. If you purchased the Season Pass, this is a free download for you. Otherwise, it’s 1200 Microsoft Points. ($15)

This week’s biggest update is Xbox Live’s dashboard overhaul. You can operate the main interface with Kinect and search through Microsoft’s Bing engine by voice commands. It also comes with 512 MB of cloud storage. Video content includes Netflix, Epix, ESPN, Hulu Plus and MSNBC. Additional video content on the way includes YouTube and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Microsoft has long touted the Xbox 360 as a total entertainment machine and these steps go further toward that. Beacons are a new social feature you can use to indicate you’re ready to play a game with friends. You can set a beacon that shows you want to play Modern Warfare 3, for example. You’ll get notification as soon as a friend is playing that game.

Earlier today, we told you about how the Xbox 360 dashboard update has been delayed. Owners of the console are very excited about this update and the new features that will come along with it. This became very evident to us once we posted our video walkthrough of the the new Xbox 360 dashboard on YouTube. We’ve gotten a ton of feedback from viewers and it turns out a lot of them seem to be most excited about the Xbox 360 YouTube app.