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Earlier this year we were promised that many good things would be coming in November. Two of them are long awaited upgrades to our game consoles. Sony promised Home. And Microsoft promised The New Xbox Live Experience. But where are they?
Sony has been conducting mysterious closed Beta tests of Home for what seems like at least two years. Occasionally they would cheerfully announce that some ‘lucky’ persons would be admitted into it. But that hasn’t always proved to be true either. Not too long ago Sony came out saying that the November issue of Qore “interactive magazine” would include an invite into the Home closed beta for both annual Qore subscribers, and one-time purchasers. However a few days later Joystiq reported that those who purchased Episode 6 of Qore were not getting those beta invites which were apparently only being sent to one year subscribers who signed up before Oct. 29, as opposed to what had been said earlier.
Then there was that statement by Sony saying that those who downloaded the Home Theme from the Play-station Store would have a chance of getting into the beta. But this time guess what, Sony has sent out beta keys via email to some of the people who got that theme. The background itself is very dull looking with only its blue logo on it. I was suspicious so I downloaded it in case something like this came up. I haven’t gotten the precious email yet. The closed beta has been going on for some time and PS3 owners have been restless. Who knows it could be finally starting to move towards a release date.
Xbox Live is best known for memorable cases of verbal abuse of women and children by nasty foul mouthed idiots that spoil the spirit of being gamers. In the past it was impossible to regulate this ‘verbal user created content’. The Xbox Live service has been infamous for the amount of bad language online. Even as the XBL customer service had been saying “Sorry we can’t do anything.” geeks in another department were working on it. In fact according to Ars Technica they had been trying to obtain a patent since in 2004, for technology able to censor bad words in real time. The patent shows that this new software will detect swearing, and then bleep it, or blank it out with silence .
Right now the Xbox Live Experience has November 19 slated as the new release date. Remember last Christmas and New Years? XBL was over loaded and bogged down until after new years. With over 25 million Xbox consoles sold I wonder what will happen this time. Microsoft has also been shutting off people who have been playing pirated games on XBL. They can’t afford to give away yet more services to people who aren’t purchasing games. In addition to that, others who have managed to download the Home software from torrent sites will lose their account, and possibly permanently. They are also planning to partner with Netflix. where movies will come in on streaming video from your Netflix account. That way you can see your movies on the TV instead of the PC. Bill Gates always loved that word “hub” and the new services on XBL will supposedly reach that dream of an entertainment hub of Microsoft products in your living room.
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