Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

After announcing it earlier this year, from the middle of October, Sky will be coming to your Xbox 360. Inside the Sky Magazine an article from Rupert Murdoch’s men confirmed the date and gave some info on this upcoming feature.

Already up is sky.com/xbox360, now it hasn’t got anything on the site as of yet but the article in the magazine gave us plenty of info. Basically if you have an Xbox Live Gold Account, you can receive basic access to the “Sky Player” If you are a Sky customer to boot you will be granted access to “premium content” probably live streams of the football and Sky’s exclusive programmes and movies.

We have no details on the pricing as of yet and overall this could cause the service to stumble but once again Microsoft are pushing the boat out with the content supplied through your xbox and obviously teaming up with a media giant like Sky it surely can’t disappoint.

There has been a lot of rumours flying around about the Zune HD in the recent weeks, and it has now been officially announced.

So far the specs are a little sketchy but Microsoft have revealed that the Zune HD will include a 3.3-inch, 480 x 272 OLED capacitive touchscreen display, built-in HD Radio receiver, HD output (utilizing a new dock -- not on-board).

However the specs do conform to the leaked specifications a few weeks ago which includes:

• NVIDIA Tegra processor/gpu
• 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB versions
• HDMI Connection to stream straight to your TV
• HD Radio.
• Web Browser.
• WiFi compatible, with wireless marketplace.
• Released, early fall.
• International Release
• Home AV packs, Car packs, Charge packs.

Microsoft are getting rind of the squircle in favour a full multitouch device and they have suggested that some new touch-friendly apps and games would be released.

The device will boast an IE-based, customized browser, but little else was said in the way of software.

Zune integration is coming to the Xbox and Xbox Live, as the Zune marketplace will step in to replace the current Live video resources, expanding the library and offering all kinds of new perks.

It is also believed that the Zune will be released internationally!

Press release after the jump

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There are currently several rumours flying around the net that there could be a large price drop for the Xbox 360.

Rumour has it Microsoft might be planning another rather significant slashing of prices for its console again, with the 'entry-level' arcade model suggested to be a bargain basement $199 (£100).

The PS3 seems to be gaining momentum recently so this could help Xbox maintain sales.

Microsoft have been having a lot of problems recently with its live service however it has not stopped them selling a whole load of 360s during the Christmas break.

Apparantly the company has shipped 17.7 Million Xbox 360 Consoles since its launch 2 years ago. On September 30 the figure was apparently at 13.4 million meaning they have sold over 4.3 millions units from October onwards. Pretty impressive really.