Xbox 360 My Community

Posted by Kevin in Featured, Microsoft, Previews | 0 comments

Coming soon from Microsoft is the code-named “Brisbane” update. Microsoft kindly gave us the opportunity to check the update out for ourselves, so you don’t have to. Not yet, anyway.

What the update does is add a new tab to your dashboard called “My Community”. Within, there is a twitter application installed and you have the option to install a zune marketplace (for video content) and facebook.

Facebook acts as it's own dashboard

First up we’ll look at the facebook application. The functionality apes the standard dashboard functions, which is tried and tested and means you’ll instantly know your way around the system. All of the usual stuff is included so as long as you’ve used Facebook before, this will work fine. It looks fantastic in HD with a few Micorosft-generated graphical wizardry, and also includes your Mii Xbox Live Avatar.

Twitter looks fantastic on the big-little screen

On the twitter side of things, the application looks stunning. Graphical swirls everywhere really suit the twitter platform, and the program works so well it’s very easy to just leave it on in the background as you go about your bits n’ bobs, letting your HD screen update with beautifully presented tweets about teeth whitening and joining some sort of mafia family. Wonderful.

Updating is easy, but it is recommended to stick a USB keyboard in to make life easier. Microsoft do recommend the additional keyboard available to attach to your joypad.

Finally, the Zune marketplace is similar to the Facebook application, in that it apes the functionality of the dashboard itself. Only this time, it’s sleeky black and has the colourful Zune logo at the top. Sections are divided up to allow for indie clips to get love from the web, or the curious “Gamer TV” (which has no content as I write this).

Zune will also allow parties to watch movies together over XBL, as well as tell anyone around that you’re checking out a film on the Zune marketplace.

All in all this is a pretty packed feature-filled update to XBL and will certainly add a lot of extra functionality to sway any on-the-fence console shoppers this Christmas. Is it all worth buying a console for? Not really. Is it cool? Yes, as long as you use twitter and facebook, and plan on streaming HD movies (something we’ll look at in another post). It adds some cool new features that don’t really affect the way you play games, but is nice either way. It’s also worth noting that all of this comes at the best price possible: free… as long as you’re a gold subscriber to XBL.