GDC Musings

Some pretty interesting news coming out of GDC today. Seems like Xbox Next is going down the path I'd like to see it go down, namely greater Live integration, HD support, etc. IGN has posted some pictures of a presentation on the features of the Xbox Next Live UI that evidently will be integrated with every game. It sounds quite extensive, and I'm glad to see that they've extended the custom soundtrack option so that every game will allow it. Nice.

IGN also had an interesting article on one of the panel discussions. The discussion meandered quite a lot, or perhaps violently zigzagged, as it sounds like the group was pretty lively, but one topic was gaming's need to break into the mainstream. But what is the mainstream, the group asked? Their answers are pretty thorough and worth a read. I'd say that gaming is in the mainstream when questions posed to supermodels such as "What do you think of gamers?" don't make any sense, just like asking her "What do you think of movie-watchers?" wouldn't make any sense.