Adding a little life to LIVE

It may seem a little strange now, but once upon a time all that your games consoles would be able to do was play games. However in these days of mass-multi-media-tech-conglomeration-with-internet-access, anything modestly calling itself a games console is really an entertainment powerhouse striving to be your one-stop portal for all your time spent in front of your television.

To facilitate this modern consoles use their own fancy menu system called a frontend or graphical user interface. The 360 launched with it's blades system, each blade is a separate screen giving you access to different functions of the console. One blade accesses your friends and your gamer card, another for the Marketplace, another for any videos or music stored on your console etc. The Wii has the typically clear Channels system where each function is displayed as a little screen for you to pop into. Where possible everything in Nintendo's revolutionary console is tied together with your Mii, a cute little avatar that you get to design who becomes your digital self. The PS3 makes use of Sony's tried and tested XMB (Xross Media Bar) a smooth and minimal system that gets you exactly where you want to be in the shortest possible time.

If that makes it sound like the 360's cluttered blades system has been getting shown up by the order and simplicity of it's competitors, you would be right. Microsoft however aren't taking this lying down. This November, in what is probably the biggest ever software upgrade of it's kind, the 360 frontend system will be transformed overnight into something new, and yet strangely familiar.

The most obvious change will be the removal of the blades. In their place we will a series of channels nicely presented in 3d as a line disappearing to the horizon. Each channel will deal with a different function of the console, in the same way that the Wii's channels do, and you can flick through the list in the same way as you would move from one blade to another. It is a much more attractive system and far better suited to dealing with the demands of an ever-expanding LIVE experience.

Perhaps the most blatantly 'inspired' addition is avatars; customisable digital representations of yourself to use in your games and chat. The avatars have been designed by Rare using the same big head and hands style seen in their games. This has left them looking like slightly more realistic Miis though, Nintendo are far from the first people to implement a customisable avatar system, this is Microsoft adding in functionality that gamers clearly like. No doubt they are pleased to be rolling this out before Sony release their own avatar system, PlayStation Home, next year.

So far this update might seem to be focusing on attracting in the casual crowd that is serving Nintendo so well, but never fear, new features are included that 360 owners have been asking for since day one. We will now be able to install entire games on our hard drives, with the data coming from the hard drive instead of the DVD everything will be much quieter and faster. A party mode will be implimented where up to eight players can take their Avatars in for a chat on a host's dashboard, that host can then take everyone strait into a game, no fuss whatsoever. There is more, Microsoft intend to build multiplayer game shows into the mix starting with 1 vs 100, with 101 players simultaneously playing. It's a great idea that should have a lot of potential.

Xbox LIVE has always been the most comprehensive online games service however the 360 dashboard, our only access point to this multiplayer Mecca, has been a story of function over form. At best cluttered, at worst impenetrable. This update is set not just to fix those problems but to build the service into something bigger, something more personal yet more communal. Not bad for a free update eh?