360 Titbits

Now that the 360 launch is just over 6 weeks away (for which I didn’t pre-order which makes chances of picking one up slim) there is some nice details coming out about the features we’ll see. My Xbox will launch in the next couple of weeks. For the stat whores and just plain nosey this will allow you to see and compare your friends progress in games, what they are playing and their achievements throughout all their games. Some downtime for Live on Monday 24th will see the upgrades take place – we’ll then see just how good the website integration with the Live service is. This is where MS have a big advantage over Sony – it will be interesting to see just how much they push the web and online gaming features over the coming months.

The 360 pad has had great previews so far. What I’d missed until today is that it connects via a standard USB port. Therefore to use it on Windows you just need to download the correct drivers and you’ll instantly have a great pad for the PC. At last.

Finally – gaming servers. The Live service on the Xbox has been good apart from on thing – no server support. This has meant 16 players games as a max, and more than usual only 8 before lag kicks in. Compare that to PC games where 32-64 player games are more the norm thanks to the games being hosted on servers. The 360 looked to be changing that with Call of Duty 2 rumoured to have 64 player support. Alas, it’s 8 player although they won’t stop you hosting more if your connection can take it. Hopefully Perfect Dark Zero will allow for more…even if you have to pay slightly more for the service I would at least like to have the option.

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