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I have a confession to make. I haven t technically played around with Xbox Live using the 360. Live hasn t gone live yet for the 360. Instead, Microsoft set up a sort of shell Live on a special server that is supposed to let us media folken check out the online goodies.
Because of this, some of the Live stuff just wasn t working quite right. I lost my profile s game saves several times on the debug unit by screwing around with Live and trying to transfer my old Xbox account to my 360.
But since it s pre-beta, I can t really blame Microsoft for that. I m certain that come launch day, transferring from old school Live to 360 Live will be a painless and seamless process.
I was able to check out how integrated Live now is into everything about the 360, and I m not just talking playing games. You can pop up Live when you re listening to music, watching movies, looking at pictures, pretty much anything. It s neat how it works, a little window pops up from the side of the TV with the Live functions listed without effecting what s going on in the main screen.
I was also able to check out Xbox Live Marketplace where a small selection of gamer icons were available both for free and for sale. The concept is to let you buy things to customize your playing experience for a small chunk of change. The purchases are actually made with points, something you can buy in large quantaties through Live.
Xbox Live Arcade is shaping up to be one of the 360 s killer apps. I hopped into the arcade and browsed some of the games available for free demoing or purchase. When I went into the retro section I was shocked to discover that some of the faithful adaptations of my favorite arcade classics had been jazzed up for multiplayer and online play. Robotron, for instance, now sports both Coop and online play, how friggin sweet is that?
Another key feature of Live is the ability to show off your achievements to friends and even update them on websites through Xbox.Com. I can t wait until the full-blown 360 Live goes up so I can put up those sweet bragging rights. My Live accounts (I have two now) are crecente and crecente kotaku, in case you want to try to catch me online and beat me like a red-headed stepchild in pretty much any game.
I like what I saw of Live, though I don t think I was able to play around with it enough to really form a solid opinion. I m not really worried about the hiccups I noticed since I was messing around with pre-launch stuff and both Arcade and Marketplace really knocked my socks off.
