To match the upcoming release of Kinect for the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s controller-less gaming, the Xbox Live website has been given a complete face lift, bringing it into the age of Kinect. The new, clean, design is a massive improvement on what they had in the past, which had been becoming increasingly clunky. I for one believe this should have happened a long time ago. The new site features Microsoft’s Silverlight, which is sort of MS’s answer to Flash or HTML 5, it allows them to create rich graphical experiences for the user. The way they’ve used in on the new site allows you to view your most recently active Xbox Live friends, along with how many are online, how…

Microsoft have announced today, via Major Nelson, that the prices for the Xbox Live service will be going up on 1st November 2010.  The price updates are going to take effect in the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico and Canada. The biggest rises go to the United States where all their subscriptions are being increased. The one month subscription will go from $7.99 to $9.99, the 3 month subscription will go from $19.99 to $24.99. The biggest rise comes to the annual subscription which is increasing by $10, making the new price (as of November 1st) $59.99. The United Kingdom, Mexico and Canada have got off pretty lightly, only the 1 month subscription price will be increasing. In the United…

Earlier this year at E3, Microsoft announced some great new features that would be coming to the Xbox 360 later this year. The first few features were released earlier this year back in August, of which included the games on demand service plus the addition of the avatar marketplace. Well now, about two months after that update, the next one has finally been announced, and it’s the one I’ve been looking forward to. The upcoming update will bring both Facebook and Twitter to the Xbox 360 dashboard, allowing you to tweet, update your statuses, plus, some new features that will allow you to share your gaming profile with your friends via the social networking sites. Although this latest dashboard hasn’t…

I don’t normally buy the Xbox Live Arcade games, but recently there have been some popular ones to hit the store. The first one being Shadow Complex, the first arcade game created by Epic, the makers of Gears of War. When I played the trial of this, I didn’t think much of it, so with 1200 Microsoft Points burning a hole in my avatar’s pocket, I opted for the other popular one, Trials HD. Trials HD is a physics based motorcycle game where you have to ride through over 50 tracks, using your speed and posture to get over ramps, tires and lots of junk, all while avoiding the humorous explosives which send you flying if you mess up. The…

Earlier in July it was announced by Microsoft that they would be releasing yet another update for the Xbox Live service. The update was planned for August 11th and now with less than a week to go before the update, they have released further details about what we will be seeing next week. Although this update won’t contain all the new features that were announced at E3 this year, there are still some good ones to look forward to. There are 2 major new features coming to the Xbox Live service next week. The first one being the Avatar Marketplace which will allow you to purchase clothing and props for your Xbox 360 avatar. Today on the Xbox Press site,…