It's been a long time coming, so it's hard to express how happy I am to get the new wider GameSpot site up and available to the public. The link has been open for the last week, but we've only started really promoting it today, with this page explaining what's new.

Apart from great new HD streams, what excites me the most about the GameSpot Wide design is that it represents a new visual and technical framework for the site. That isn't to say that we rebuilt all the site technology (we didn't, although there are a lot of optimizations), just that this update will free us up to more easily enhance key areas of the site, both in terms of creating new visual spaces and cleaning up old logic that was getting in the way. There are great ideas coming from Ricardo and the editorial group (plus user requests) that we're primed to start working on later this year and into 2009.

As with most any project, we won't be getting all the features we'd like done for the official launch. The forums will stay in the old style for now and the new mini-feed feature isn't fully developed. For this launch, we're more focused on ensuring that the core GameSpot experience works reliably in the new look than in getting in all the features we'd love to debut. It's a tall order for such a big site, but we've tackled the issue of delivering a quality experience head-on by scheduling in extensive QA time, performance testing, multiple rounds of usability testing, and a public beta. But it's the resulting user experience that matters, so let us know what you think.