A good day to be an Xbox 360 owner

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:43:55 GMT

The annual E3 conference is going on this week and is the source for some of the biggest news announcements in the tech, gaming and electronics industry. This annual event is usually dominated by the big 3 in the video game console market, namely Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, followed by the myriad of publishers and developers who make the games for all those systems. This year, Microsoft has some very exciting announcements for the future of the Xbox 360 console.

First off, for the gaming fans out there, the once exclusive to Playstation 3 game Final Fantasy XIII was revealed to be coming to the Xbox 360 afterall, much to the chagrin of the Sony fanboys. The undisputed king of the RPG genre is finally making it's way to Microsoft's console and that is very welcome news to me. On top of that, three other RPGs are set to be released by the same developer of the Final Fantasy series. In the last generation of consoles, the original Xbox was somewhat picked apart by the gaming enthusiast for it's distinct lack of traditional RPG games. That is no longer a case, and in some ways, there is almost too many. RPGs generally include 70-100+ hours of gameplay to get through the entire story. Start doing the math and you can see how that may be a problem if you are a fan of that genre.

Second off, and probably more exciting to the average electronics fan out there. Microsoft officially announced what had been rumored for at least a few months now.. that being a partnership with online video rental giant Netflix. What does this mean? Anyone with an active Xbox Live Gold membership (me) and an active Netflix account (me) will have instant access to stream over 10,000 movies to their Xbox 360 console. Even better then that, there will be an 'Instant Queue' that will show all the movies you have queued up that are available for immediate streaming. I know our queue is in the 80 movie range currently and the thought of being able to pick a movie to watch at any given time and not have to shell out money is just awesome.

Lastly, there are just a dumptruck full amount of amazing games set for release between now and early next year. Other enhancements to the Xbox 360 dashboard to further the online community feel are on the way soon as well. All in all, the future is beyond bright if you own or are planning to own an Xbox 360. I guess with that in mind, I should mention the price just dropped $50 for those still sitting on the fence. Anyway, for a more complete roundup of what was announced, you can check out this article from Gamespot and their live blogging of the Microsoft press conference.

Generik's Tap: Gaming and Technology

A good day to be an Xbox 360 owner