This weekend the above video was leaked by Gamespot which gave a little preview of the upcoming Xbox 360 Spring Update. Rather than play stupid, today Microsoft went ahead and officially confirmed the new features for the upcoming update. Due the week of May 7th, the Xbox 360’s next update is so far looking pretty good. Here are some of the features I am looking forward to.
- Windows Messenger integration lets you instant message up to 6 friends at a time. You can use your trusty USB keyboard, or a new thumb QWERTY keyboard that plugs into your controller (pictured below). The keyboard does seem to add some heft to an already weighted controller, but if you ask me, it looks as spiffy as a full QWERTY keyboard controller attachment possibly can. From the video, the messenger functionality looks to be very well integrated, and will let you chat with friends while playing games or watching movies. Eventually this will be pretty cool with IPTV as well.
- Newly supported video codecs include H.264, MPEG-4 and PlaysForSure.
- New Achievement pop-up gives you the specific description and score of the achievement when you earn it.
- You can set up your Xbox 360 to automatically shut off after finishing downloads.
- Videos can be viewed, fastforwarded, and rewinded while you are downloading it.
- All Xbox Live marketplace content has been combined into a new dedicated Marketplace blade.
So there you have it, some new functionality, some spit n’ polish, and some welcome tweaks. I like it, Microsoft.
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