Xbox Live returns with Message Center integration
by Christopher Grant 
{ May 3rd 2006 at 11:57AM }
Well, Xbox.com and Xbox Live were both down all day for scheduled maintenance. So... what are we looking at? Background downloading? Revised Dashboard? Maybe, just maybe, some pre-E3 goodies laying dormant on our consoles, awaiting the signal from Redmond HQ to activate their super-advanced features?
Nope, it's a message center, adding onto Xbox.com's friends management update last month. The new message center will allow gamers to read messages sent from a console to Xbox.com if you have an Xbox.com only or a Silver account, both ways with a Gold account, but only up to 200 messages per day...that's 200 if they're on your friends list but 25 if they're not.
Yeah, we know, it's a little confusing. Lucky for us, someone at Microsoft anticipated our dilemma and created a lovely chart to keep it all in order for us. Lucky for you, we're willing to decipher it for you: pony up for a Gold Xbox Live account or this feature won't do you much good.
Major Nelson has added some shots of the new services to his Flickr stream. Check em out, if you're into checking out steamy shots of software interfaces, like we are.
[Thanks everyone that sent this in]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Anthony @ May 3rd 2006 1:42PM
I think they changed the category "Social Sports" to "Bar Sports" (something like that) in the XBLA too. Maybe we'll see some darts or air hockey. Pretty lame update.. does anyone really care that much about their friends list and messaging being accessible through xbox.com?
MumbleyJoe @ May 3rd 2006 2:18PM
I really feel like people will complain about anything.
The interuption to service was really minor, at least for me everything was up and running when I got home from work which was hours before the time they had allotted.
And personallly I think the feature is great. I personally interact with a number of people on my friends list and this is a feature that I've thought would be a nice addition for quite some time.
I'm sure there were other reasons for the service being down than this, but from the announcement that service would be down, they did say there wouldn't be any changes to the dashboard. (At best an automated voice message was ambiguous about it, Major Nelson was however unambiguous).
Minor XBOX Live interuption, new service. No gripes from me.
Scott Johnson @ May 3rd 2006 5:35PM
I'm one of those types who will complain about anything. So, Joe, please stop reading now.
For the rest, I think this feature is useless. I have this nice thing called email. I already have too many email addresses. Why would I want enhanced messaging capabilities on my 360?
Seriously, I must be missing the utility of these new features. What am I not seeing?
MumbleyJoe @ May 4th 2006 12:11PM
Well Scott, I kept reading anyways and I even see your point. I've got more email addresses than I can tolerate too.
Anyway, I've already used the messaging while a friend was online in the early stages of Oblivion answering some questions. I like being able to send a message straight to the screen. I won't use it a lot, but I do like it.
I guess what I don't get is complaining about a feature just because it's one that someone might not use. It's just as easy to ignore it as it is to complain about it... easier in fact.