Joystiq compatriot and all-round Microsoft bellweather 360 Fanboy has a very interesting scoop, of sorts. Apparently they were tipped by some bothans to a new avatar-based service that could potentially debut on Xbox Live in the “spring”. There’s even a picture:

This looks like someone from MS has been doing unholy breeding experiments in their basement. Perhaps in an attempt to create a Wii/Home Hybrid that will unite the warring factions and bring peace to the galaxy. Or perhaps, to subjugate us all to their superdeformed will – it’s unclear at this point. Also uncertain is the environment that these avatars would exist in. Will they simply be trapped in the Purgatory of your Gamerpic box, to dance when poked with a stick? Will they engage in a slightly uncomfortable “parade”? Will they traverse Eurotrash Space Malls, searching for just the right Umbra knockoff desk lamp that is within their microtransaction limit?

Either way, it seems clear that, very soon, we’re all going to be shifting from little thumbnail icons to talking ambulatory cartoons. Hopefully we’ll get some light on this initiative at E3 in July.

Some interesting bits of information coming out of Next-Generation’s website, via one Mark Whitten of General Manager stature.

Apparently there is to be no Sping Update for Live. Which is sort of odd. But it gets weirder – Microsoft will be purging the catalog of  so-called “underperforming” arcade titles. He even gave the criteria:

“…XBLA titles that have been out for more than six months, have a Metacritic score of less than 65%, and have a conversion rate of less than 6% will be eligible for desliting.”

Which is more than odd, it’s absolutely baffling. I thought one of the advantages of digital distribution was unlimited shelf space? Why would they let metacritic determine what is good and bad for everyone? This sort of strikes at the heart of the way MS portrays Live, as a premum service somewhat immunized to the vagaries of cancelled online communities and arbitrary moves like this one. Very hard to understand the thinking here. Whitten offers only a flimsy reasoning of “making things easier to find”, which last I checked was a function of the interface design and not the number of titles.

On a good note, they are also promising a forthcoming “tool” to transfer your DRM from repaired consoles properly, so that’s a bit of a relief if it works well. That is due sometime next month.

Back in the “old days” of the first Xbox it was pretty simple to be able to use your Live gamertag on a friend’s console. All you had to do was throw it on a memory card and copy it to their hard drive. It could then live on both consoles without the need to swap it back and forth. I had my old Xbox Live account on three different consoles so I could play Return To Castle Wolfenstein or Halo 2 without a hitch. Now in these DRM-fueled times your gamertag is tied to a specific console and must be “recovered” when you want to play over Live (and not as a “guest) at a friend’s house or to make sure that you get points for the achievements you might unlock. This long process involves downloading from some magical server that can take upwards of 20 minutes to complete. I’ve often wondered why this takes so damn long when it seems like this should be a quick download. What’s in this file that takes up so much space? Is the server extremely slow or overrun with activity? My frustration with the process reached such a pitch that I actually decided to start looking into it to try finding an explanation or alternative methods. Continue Reading »

Just got an email from Jim who’s hard at work unboxing copious copies of GTAIV and he let me know that each copy of the 360 version is going to include a free month of Xbox Live, not the 48 hours that’s usually standard.

Microsoft is both looking to promote the service, and is no doubt looking for redemption after the outages that plagued the Christmas season.

How do you know someone’s cheating? Easy, if they’re better than you… they’re probably cheating.

But seriously the reason I think I’m enjoying Halo so much recently is because it’s dead simple to mute idiots and assholes on Xbox Live. Basically, anyone that says ANYTHING in the lobby gets muted. Anyone that starts with a racial or sexual remark gets reported.