Xbox LIVE GM Marc Whitten followed-up Microsoft's E3 press conference with a letter posted over at Larry Hryb's site, which further details the new Xbox Live experience that's coming our way this fall. Among the innovative new features is the ability to load your games from the disc directly to your hard drive, bypassing the disc drive to allow games to run faster and smoother. Going to assume that the disc would still be required to play the game - otherwise Blockbuster would be seeing a huge, one-time spike in rentals.
Then there's the ability to access Xbox Live Marketplace via the web on your computer or any other web-enabled device (PS3?), allowing you to purchase new games, demos, DLC and the like from the relative comfort of wherever you happen to be at the time.
The live party feature allows you to team up with up to eight friends and go from game to game, both new and old, while sharing photos, watching a Netflix video together, etc., all without ever disconnecting from one another. Hit up the link for more info, including the addition of 16x10 support via HDMI and VGA. Woot!
Some of the features in the new Xbox experience (8 person chat, VGA support and more) [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]