As most of you already know Microsoft's Xbox Live service has a video marketplace, in which users can download movies and TV episodes onto their 360 Hard drive. According to Xbox marketing manager, Aaron Greenberg, the Xbox live video marketplace will eventually launch in countries other than the United States. This really isn't big news seeing as though the regular Xbox live service isn't US exclusive. So you would think that any new features that come out on the service will eventually make it around the world as well. Rival companies have also pointed out some of the disadvantages to the new service. Like, members with the core 360, that do not already have a hard drive, must purchase one in order to download anything.
Which leads me to a quote,
"despite ongoing rumors of a larger drive for the Xbox 360, the
firm is adamant that no such drive is on the cards just yet. Instead,
Greenberg suggested that users could buy multiple 20GB drives and swap
them around to store more content – although he admitted that such a
scheme is 'not a perfect workaround'."
In other news, Microsoft has announced that its long awaited new OS
'Vista', is finished and is currently being manufactured. Although,
Vista won't be shipping until January 30th, one day before my own
birthday. There is an upside and a downside for you PC gamers that
aren't thinking of upgrading right away. Vista features an online
community that is compatible with Xbox live. Then there is the dreaded
bad news. Vista will be using DirectX 10. Although game developers say
that those who don't make the switch-over right away, will still be
able to play new games. There will be a time that the developers will
switch over to Vista and DirectX 10 exclusively. Which may be a bad
thing for those of the PC gamers that feel a little reluctant to go
ahead and switch their OS after some of the bad things we've all heard
about the Vista beta. Time will tell.
