QWERTY add on for 360 controller confirmed
Yo! That’s not fan fiction rendering, that’s straight from Microsoft: An honest to God QWERTY that slaps underneath your Xbox controller. Why do you need that?
Well, you might have heard some rumors about the Xbox Spring Update over the weekend. Those were true. So, the QWERTY isn’t coming ’til Summer, but it’ll make text input, and that Live messenger chat a lot more bearable than it would have been using just the onscreen keyboard.
Then there are the rest of the Spring Updates, which include:
Integration of Live Messenger buddy lists with the friends list, and text chatting while you’re gaming or watching movies. That happens in a little overlay window, and it’s as distracting as you’d imagine, but I welcome insane multitasking in my life. (I rarely watch a movie at home without a web browser open nearby.)
And background download mode that shuts down most of the Xbox 360, just keeping the HDD, ethernet, and some logic alive for DLing. When the transfers are done, the Xbox shuts down proper. Before then, the status lights will glow in a particular way that indicates its near-comatose but not yet powered down state.
Also…
•The Marketplace gets its own Blade on the top menu level. The blade is red, btw.
•New autodownload feature that’ll grab Live arcade demos as they’re available. Takes a gig or so.
•”Progressive download controls” let you ff, rw, and pause video as its downloaded from Marketplace, too
This is pretty much the next logical step in the advancement of the Xbox online environment. I’d say that most of the 360’s target demographic does not want to sit on their couches in from of an Xbox with a keyboard and mouse (cementing that the 360 is just a shitty computer), so by making it an easy add on to the controller you can get many more people to say in the Xbox Live lobby’s and other areas much longer. Tricking them into it, almost.
Which is exactly what Mircosoft wants to do. More people in Xbox live = more money in Microsoft’s pocket.
Of course, this is a big advancement for online console gaming. I think I’ll stick with my Wii friend codes, however. Not because I don’t want a social experience… but because I don’t want a social experience while playing a console game. I’ll go play World of Warcraft if I wanted to make friends on the internet though a game.
Source: Gizmodo
Oh you bastard you’re pretty on top of things eh? AND WOW IS NO PLACE TO MAKE FRIENDS!!!