Geek Gestalt

Update (5:50 p.m.): This story has been updated with a statement from Microsoft.

It's oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.

Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft's Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.

This week, Activision's new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game's developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.

"Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software," InformationWeek wrote, "but some players have successfully 'modded,' or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections."

Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it's not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.

In a statement Microsoft said its "commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken."

And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player's being banned.

"Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use," Major Nelson wrote. "The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.

"When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn't just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won't be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye."

SAN FRANCISCO--At a star-studded E3 press conference last June, Microsoft touted, among other things, a plan to bring Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm to its hit online service, Xbox Live, as well as to begin offering instant streaming of movies and TV shows.

At the time, all Microsoft would say is that it hoped to roll out these new features to the public in the fall.

Well, it's now the fall. And on Wednesday, my colleague Josh Lowensohn and I got a first-hand look at the pre-release Xbox Live implementation of Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and video streaming, and had a chance to talk to Xbox Live General Manager Ron Pessner about it all.

Microsoft is still not ready to let the public in on the fun yet, and today is only willing to give the launch a November timeframe--with no actual date announced. Further, since E3, the so-called InstantOn streaming feature has been rolled up into a larger Zune branding effort, something that I think is a big mistake, given the cool reception the Zune name--at least as it applies to Microsoft's music player--has received in the marketplace.

Regardless, it's clear that Microsoft is nearly ready to start letting the Xbox Live community get its hands on the Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm features, and to begin streaming video content rather than waiting for it to download, which has been a slow, frustrating process by all accounts.

Pessner began by talking about Facebook. Clearly, Microsoft's interest is in getting the feature up and running and letting Xbox Live users begin to access the popular social network on their TVs sooner, rather than later, even though some fundamental elements of Facebook haven't been included.

According to Pessner, a chief goal of the implementation was to make it easy for users to make photo slideshows and watch them on their TVs. A quick demo revealed that much of the Xbox Live Facebook tool is built around looking at photo albums, scrolling between friends' albums and seeing who on a user's friends list has added photos to their account.

But one of Facebook's most fundamental offerings is photos and allowing users to upload them. And Microsoft has chosen, for now at least, not to let users do that. Pessner says the decision was made that Facebook on Xbox Live is about viewing images, and that anyone who wants to upload them to the social network will do so via the Web. It's a fair point, but it does seem like a major omission, and it would seem like something Microsoft will have to address soon.

Pessner also pointed to what he called Friend Linker, which is designed to help Facebook users see which of their friends are Xbox Live members, and vice versa. Among other things, it makes for an easy way for Facebook users to discover friends' gamertags and to invite them to be friends on Xbox Live.

All in all, while it's likely that many Xbox Live users will find themselves switching over to the Facebook application frequently--why move over to a computer if it's not necessary?--it's clear that there is a lot of room for more. The interface is consistent with everything else on Xbox Live, something that may please some. But frequent Facebookers might find it confusing to have to use Facebook in an entirely different format. Only time will tell.

Twitter on Xbox Live
Pessner then showed off the Xbox Live Twitter application. Like its Facebook counterpart, the interface will look very familiar to Xbox Live users. Pessner said the idea was to design a Twitter experience for the living room.

That means, of course, a fairly scaled down Twitter app. Users can post their own tweets, view friends' tweets, re-tweet them, favorite them, look at profiles, @ reply to others, and do Twitter searches. And that's about it.

To be sure, there aren't that many more features available to Twitter users elsewhere, but there are some. Again, Pessner made the argument that the idea was to optimize the experience for a living room TV and that to access a full range of features, users will happily turn to their computers.

One thing missing from both the Facebook and Twitter applications, however, is the ability to click on URLs, something that is a major piece of the social-networking puzzle these days.

Asked why not, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "That's not something we support right now. Today we're focused on delivering a great Twitter and Facebook experience which connects the Xbox Live community to friends in new and unique ways...This is just the beginning, and the great thing about Xbox Live is that we can evolve and update features based on the community's feedback."

Last.fm
The third piece of the new Xbox Live puzzle is its Last.fm application. Last.fm (which is owned by CNET News parent CBS Interactive) is a music service aimed at helping users discover new songs and artists--something Microsoft is hoping will add to users' overall Xbox Live experience.

Pessner said that adding Last.fm gives users access to a wide range of new music and music-related tools, much as adding Netflix to Xbox Live last year did for movies.

As with the Facebook and Twitter tools, Xbox Live users will find a scaled down version of Last.fm, one that Pessner said is focused mainly on music consumption, "but also on discovery."

Again, the tool has the familiar Xbox Live look and feel, and appears to be something that will expand some users' musical horizons. But it's also clear that what this is a simpler version of a service that's been optimized for a TV, and those who want the full experience will return to their computers.

And that's fine. No one is expecting Microsoft to replace their computer with Xbox Live, though I'm sure Microsoft would like to do so someday. If, for example, it ever put a full-featured Web browser inside Xbox Live, some of the missing features mentioned above could be addressed. But that's a conversation for another day.

InstantOn
The last new feature is the InstantOn streaming service that Xbox Live users will have access to. The idea is to give those buying or renting TV shows or movies through the Zune video marketplace (formerly known as the Xbox Live video marketplace) instant gratification instead of making them wait for their content to download.

The service will offer full 1080p high-definition movies and TV shows, and will let those who purchase content watch it right away or download it to their Xbox, a Zune player, or a PC. Those who rent content will be able to stream it and will have 24 hours to finish watching it once they press "play."

Pessner pointed to the fact that the service is designed to auto-detect a user's bandwidth level in order to play back the content in an appropriate quality. The idea there is to ensure that a user gets to watch what they want right away, regardless of how fast their connection is.

From Microsoft's perspective, this new set of offerings will make the Xbox an even stronger entertainment option than it has been in the past. But Pessner said there is still much more that can be added to the platform.

He wouldn't say what the next steps would be, of course, but did paint a broad picture, suggesting that users can draw their own conclusions of how Project Natal, Microsoft's forthcoming gesture-based control system for Xbox and PC "can light this up."

If you're the kind of video game player who likes to spend hours in shooters like Call of Duty or Halo and you want to instantly pick up some serious street cred, what better Xbox Live gamertag than "Hitman" could you get?

To date, of course, the best you could do would be something like "Hitman238" or "xxHitman42." That's because "Hitman" itself was snagged back in the summer of 2002, during the beta phase of Xbox Live, by a then 16-year-old named Chris Graziano.

But now, Graziano, 22 and a student at SUNY New Paltz, has decided to sell Hitman, and has put it up for auction on eBay. He is hoping someone out there will plunk down big bucks for the right to shoot their way through the most popular war games while sporting such an obviously old-school gamertag.

"Don't bid on this item if you don't want to be the center of attention of every game lobby you're in," Graziano wrote on the eBay ad. "You'll regularly hear comments of 'You're the original Hitman?' and 'Wow, how did you get that gamertag?!'"

It's too early to tell how much money the Hitman name might bring in the end, as the auction doesn't end until February 19 and as of this writing, the high bid is $49.99. But Graziano said he was inspired to sell the account by another auction he'd seen not too long ago in which a player sold a gamertag with a very high gamerscore--the measure of how many achievements someone has earned in Xbox Live--for thousands of dollars.

... Read more

Updated 1:42 p.m. PDT: Adds Microsoft comment.

At E3 last summer, Microsoft said it would soon be unveiling a new piece of its larger Xbox Live puzzle known as "Primetime." Essentially, it would be an ongoing series of game shows that players could participate in with friends using the soon-to-launch new Xbox Live Experience.

But Forbes reported Wednesday that Microsoft has decided to put off the launch of the Primetime element of XBE until spring, citing technical reasons.

"Aaron Greenberg, group marketing manager for Microsoft, said the company is still very dedicated to the concept of Primetime and continues to work on it," Forbes reported. "And, to be honest, the Redmond, Wash., team could find a way to make the delay a good move ultimately. If nothing else, the company will have more time to polish Primetime."

The plan, however, had been that the Primetime offering would be integral to the full Xbox Live Experience, which is scheduled for a Nov. 19 launch. Now it appears that Microsoft is going to have to tuck its tail a little bit between its legs as it pulls back on that original E3 promise.

... Read more

Watch out, Hollywood. Here comes Microsoft.

At an event it called Digital Showcase, held Thursday in New York, the software giant told a group of ad execs that it is getting into the business of producing original Web shows for its wide range of Web platforms.

According to MediaWeek, Microsoft told the ad execs that the shows it is funding will be naturals for supporting online advertising.

The shows are slated to run on portals like MSN, Xbox Live, and MSNBC.com. Among the initial series are: 50 Greatest, which MediaWeek said is "a spoof of the multiple pop culture list shows common to VH1 and other cable networks"; and In Need of Repair, "a male-aimed home improvement series featuring a pair of sophomoric, mostly inept hosts."

This is interesting because there's been considerable interest lately in whether Internet shows can replace or at least emerge alongside traditional television series. The interest was particularly intense during the Hollywood writer's strike because studios were desperate for original programming created outside the auspices of the Writer's Guild.

Whether a company like Microsoft can be among the first to succeed with Web-only series is a question that I'm sure a lot of people would like to know the answer to. I certainly wouldn't put it past them, since they can throw a lot of resources at the problem.

The bigger question may be whether they choose good scripts. As we all know, the only way to succeed with any kind of story telling is to tell good stories.

And, I must say, I'm not too optimistic at the prospect of watching inept, sophomoric guys trying to fix things. Then again, King of the Hill has been a huge hit for Fox. So you never know. If the writing's good, anything is possible.

On the other hand, since one of the portals in question is Xbox Live and one of the shows is called In Need of Repair, I can see a few people thinking that the show might be about the well-publicized quality control problems of Microsoft's Xbox video game consoles.

SAN FRANCISCO--After Wednesday morning's Microsoft keynote address at the Game Developers Conference here, I was struck by how the only really significant news from the talk was about the company's new Creators Club initiative, which will allow almost anyone to create Xbox, Windows, or games and have them distributed on Xbox Live.

So it was a good thing that I had an appointment shortly afterwards with Chris Satchell, the head of Microsoft's game development studio.

Primarily, I just wanted to get some follow-up details on the initiative, details that Satchell didn't share during the keynote address.

One of them was about timing. Unless I missed it, Satchell did not say during his speech when members of the community would be able to begin submitting their games for possible inclusion.

Satchell told me in our meeting that Microsoft will launch the Creators Club beta this spring and that the program should be fully operational by the end of the year.

One of the major goals of the beta is to iron out some of the little details of the program that will make or break it.

For example, it was not clear during Satchell's time on stage exactly what the process for the Creators Club would be.

Fundamentally, he explained that someone would create a game, submit it, get it peer-reviewed and then, assuming it didn't contain any "objectionable" content, it would be added to the roster of community-created games on Xbox Live.

What Satchell had not explained, and which he spelled out to me in private, was a little more about how this would work.

For the most part, he said, just about anyone could have their game added to Xbox Live. But he did say that in order for that to happen, some as-yet undecided number of Creators Club members would have to review the game and assert that it was suitable for being placed on the system.

Satchell said Microsoft has yet to figure out that number, but said there would have to be enough interest to warrant putting a game up.

In addition, he pointed out that peer reviewers would be able to provide feedback to game developers so that, even if a game is not accepted initially, the developer can go back and fix or solve, whatever problems might exist.

Ultimately, though, the idea is to manifest a system whereby Microsoft itself doesn't have to get actively involved in vetting games. That would, ideally, Satchell said, be left entirely to the community.

And while the beta won't go live until spring, Satchell did say that there are several community-created games already live on the Creators Club section of Xbox Live, games that the company selected specially for the service's public launch.