Filtered Judgment

It appears the best gaming system in the world (pardon my bias) is been updated in ways that correlate directly to class subjects of old.

Among insanely cool features, like offering previously incompatible original XBox games, such as the first Halo, for download, they try to encourage more friending among XBox Live. A group in our class did a social networking project on XBox and had trouble justifying that the friend system was viable. Clearly, Microsoft agreed. Now, you can view your friends' friends as you can in similar social applications. They also made the dashboard even more intuitive than it was before, and more pervasive.

With the original Dashboard, you could unlock achievements in a game that gave you points. Your total points created a Gamerscore, which was essentially your bragging rights. Now, instead of having to leave your game to find out what it is you did, it tells you over your game in real time. Also, Praise Jesus, DivX an XVid are now supported!! For all the technologically impaired, this video format allows you to watch partially a long video as it loads the rest of it, or buffering.. Now the videos, trailers, full length movies, or Youtube (possibly) that you watch from your couch and your 360 don't take forever and a day to load! This is furthering Microsoft's goal for the 360 to be more useful in all of your needs, making it a gaming and an internet entertainment platform. it also earns them money, because all these things cost money, and they already have your credit card..

XBox Live has really changed the way I game. Its king of like Gaming 2.0. There are Maps or mission extensions that Game developers can just add as downloadable content - removing the need for the gamer to go out and buy another gaming disc. The downloadable content section also carries TV programs, movies, trailers, acting more like direct tv +. This really paves the way for the future possibility of a multitude of user generated game data, something the pc gaming world has been doing for generations.

All in all, things like this encourage me that playing games isn't considered "mindless" now. Someone finally noticed that the experience of playing a video game with others, either in a multi-player platform or a "one plays, others watch" scenario, is an extremely fun environment. Improving on THAT is just as important as improving the games themselves.