Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg and reggaeton producer Nely

All work and no play makes the Level Up staff very dull boys indeed. So when we got word that our favorite Xbox kingpin Aaron "B.I.G. VIP" Greenberg was rolling through NYC, we agreed to jump in for a Friday night of debauchery good-natured fun. We kicked things off at an after work cocktail party at the offices of Kinetix Integrated Communications, a lifestyle marketing company that both Microsoft's Zune and Xbox divisions are employing to reach out to urban and Latino communities. According to Greenberg, the group product manager for Xbox 360's Live and lifestyle programs, a number of key influencers and media in the urban and Latino markets are still playing videogames on their PlayStation 2s. To remedy that situation, he spent the latter half of last week being driven from meeting to meeting in an SUV, taking Xbox 360 Elites out of the back of the vehicle and dropping them off with late-adopting gamers like a big city Santa Claus.

At Kinetix's Manhattan offices, we witnessed Greenberg dispensing post-holiday cheer to an influencer of particular note: reggaeton producer Nely "El Arma Secreta," the mastermind behind such hits as Wisin Y Yandel's "Rakata" and R. Kelly's "Burn It Up." The charming twentysomething studio wizard was pleased as punch to receive his Xbox 360 Elite; the better to put the hurt on opponents in his current favorite game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur--tooling around the city after 11:30 PM trying to find a suitable restaurant for late night dining; Greenberg hollaticking with his Miami crew via cell phone; the de rigueur bottle service (Belvedere, of course) that accompanied the breaking of bread at Pop Burger in the Meatpacking district--but it was clear from our night on the town that Microsoft is sparing no expense in its broad-based pursuit of console dominance.