Yeah….wow. There’s honestly too much stuff in this update for me to dig through it, so I’ll just touch on some highlights.
The Good:
The biggest apart of this update is hands down downloadable Games on Demand. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken Microsoft so long to roll this feature out, as I was looking for something like it a year ago. It would be nice, though unlikely, if we get discounts on GoD since we won’t be paying for packaging or disc media. What’s more likely is a system like Steam, where certain titles are marked down for weekends at a time, though something like that would still surprise me.
Awardable clothing seems like it could be fun. Gimmick, yes, but as long as it’s free that could be cool. It’s not like my avatar looks a thing like me anyway. I wouldn’t mind putting a Spartan helmet on to hide that fact.
Pre-subscription-termination notification should be very useful, lest you get charged an extra $10 a month when they automatically charge your credit card to renew LIVE.
The Bad:
While free awardable stuff for your avatar is O.K. in my books, having to pay for certain “premium” items is not. That’s just ridiculous, and should be placed in the same category of insanity as paying for sprite image “presents” on Facebook or that golden armor DLC in Elder Scrolls. While I understand Microsoft going for this because undoubtedly there are people who go for this type of thing, I shed a little tear for humanity every time someone buys one of these virtual items.
Pure Silliness:
Netflix movie parties? At first I was skeptical, but I don’t see any harm in this. I can imagine a slow weekday night while away at school I might want to pop something on run my own MST3K style commentary with some friends over LIVE on Armageddon or something. But that brings up another point: can we please get some good movies available on instant queue? There is so much crap that riffing is really the only application I can think of for a “movie party.” Maybe if something good was available I could think of something else.
Gizmodo.com has a list of all the updates. You can find that here.
-TRC
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1 comment:
Another thought:
If they release new titles with Games on Demand, we'll never see games sold out. Perhaps you can preorder a game, leave your box on over the night of the release, and it will be downloaded for you in the morning. Fancy stuff.
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