E308 Aftermath
Well the Microsoft keynote is over and I have to say I’m pretty chuffed with some of the stuff.
Awesome holiday lineup: Viva Pinata 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Call of Duty 5. Another stellar line up for the holiday means I’m gonna be a poor boy cos January. Maybe I can convince my family they don’t need Christmas presents….
Dash refurb: When it launched, the Xbox 360 dashboard was pretty good. But now that there’s a lot of content and most people have games, movies, tv on there it’s too difficult to find stuff. It’s also painfully slow nowadays. Thankfully Microsoft listened and are revamping it completely. Which is great for useability, but what about all the themes people have spent money on? Thankfully I’ve never bought a theme but there’s likely a few people who might be a bit peeved when they realize.
Mii…Avatars: Pretty much just the same as the Wii’s Mii’s, Avatars are little dudes you create and then can use in some games. It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft can keep making games to use them in or whether it’ll go the way of the Vision Cam and just fade into the background.
Lips: The one I really wanted. Lips is Singstar for 360. BUT you can import music from your iPod. I can’t wait. Wireless mics with motion sensing. Definitely be picking this one up.
Final Fantasy for 360: This’ll be a huge blow for Sony since Final Fantasy has been synonymous with them for some time now. But Final Fantasy XIII will be launching simultaneously on 360 and PS3. A huge win for Microsoft.
Install games to HDD: This is a feature I don’t know that I’d use but I know a lot of people want it. It’s been very hit and miss on PS3 but that’s because it’s always been mandatory which it won’t be on 360. If it significantly speeds up games then I’ll look into getting a bigger HDD.
1680×1050 support: When I bought my monitor a few months ago, I tested it out with the 360 but it couldn’t do the highest resolution capable on the monitor so it didn’t look great. However Microsoft’s gonna be changing that and so I’ll be getting another monitor when they do.
It’s gonna be an interesting rest of 2008. Hopefully Sony and Nintendo’s keynotes are equally as exciting.
July 15th, 2008 at 7:54 am
supposedly the themes still work in the new dashboard, as do the gamerpics (if you prefer those over the avatars).
i didn’t see you mention the party stuff. that’s one of teh best features. it’s like an 8 person group chat, and you can all be doing different things, or you can have a leader and hop from game to game really easily. can even watch movies together and i’d presume listen to music together as well, but that’s not confirmed.
July 15th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I’m anti-social tho so I don’t care about such things