Yesterday, a new update for XBL was released.
the features that this new update brings are as follows:
- new avatar system that allows items to be bought or awarded through games.
- new addition to gamercard indicating the amount of years to have been a Live member (with some possible rewards for milestones hinted)
- marketplace has now got a rating feature allowing people to see whats hot and whats not-so-hot.
- overall improvement of speed of the dashboard (of which i massively approve of) and some sounds have been filtered through the headset if one is attached (such as invites etc)
- Games on Demand. whole 360 games can now be downloaded onto you console (hard drive size not withstanding) and played just the same as the old, disc inhabiting game.
while i approve of all of these things there is only one problem that has ticked me off. that is the pricing of the GoD games.
now we all know that Oblivion is a massively sucessful game made by an awesome company. we also know that it has oodles of DLC for it. so why in the name of all thats holy has it got a price tag of £20? thats not including any DLC, you have to get that seperatly.
now, i fully support the notion of supporting good companies by paying for thier games and any DLC they strive to release (though activision has been cast from this list to join EA in the pits of hell) but i can go down to my local GAME which takes all of 10 minutes, and be bakc with the GoTY edtion of Oblivion with includes Knights of the Nine and Shivering isles, for.........wait for it.......£15. plus i have the option of trading it in if i so choose. with DL games you haven ot got that option, you pay for it and you can never get rid of it. thats not so much of a problem when you think that the game is now yours for all eternity as long as you can remember your account details and obtain immortality.
but that is still one great stonking price tag for a game that i can get out of currys now for 99p.
on a brighter note, avatars are now useful! sort of. ish.
i loved the avatar idea, there is so many paths that microsoft could have gone when they released it, making minigames, making a Home-esque mini world to relax and chill while chatting to your mates, or play paintball or footy.
but no, they just bolted it on and left it there, no real use and got mocked for their nintendo baiting.
now they are finally doing something about it. while the step is a very small one, the new buyable items for your avatar wil finally make them properly unique. the gears uniforms and ODST stuff are a step in the right direction (though the shirts are a bit unuseful). the next big step was rewards from ingame play. before hand thsi was totally upto the devs whether or not they allowed gamer pics to unlock or not.
now, you can get something that you can put on your avatar to show you've done something. hopefully the industry will pick this up and use it effectivly (like borderlands or MW2) and make something good out of it.
im still waiting for a chill room though.
while some of the features are put down by lack of sensible pricing, lack of more avatar stuff and a few various other things (like having to red-download all my content due to maybe the command paths being deleted) it is a step in the right direction for expanding the service and being more worth the dosh we fork out for it.
im going to give the new update a Yay.
thanks for reading.