PaulSpoerry.com

The last week or so has been filled with information from Microsoft. One of the cooler things to happen came out during the keynote presentation at TechEd Middle East in Dubai. The softie Eric Rudder played the same Indiana Jones style game on a Windows computer, a Windows Phone 7 phone, AND an Xbox 360. Gaming is about to get to blow up and MS is making it’s power play.

Not only is the game itself playable on all three platforms, but the session is maintained when you move from each device: if you’re playing on your Xbox and have to run out the door, you’ll be on the same level when you fire it up on your Windows Phone 7 Series phone. Basically, you’ll never have an excuse not to be gaming.

This all seems utterly wicked from a technology perspective and simultaneously devastating from a “get anything done/have a social life” angle. I can’t imagine a game like… Civilizations… where you have that “just one more turn” mentality!!!

There’s been a lot of buzz going around about the latest XBox 360 Dashboard update that will be hitting the streets soon. Most noteable was the expanded Friends List, which will allow you to see more info about the person as well as THEIR friends. Basically, social networking is coming to XBox live. Sounds like a neat idea to me.

The feature I’m most looking forward to is the ability to change the Windows LIVE ID associated with and Xbox LIVE account. The description pretty much says it all, but choosing this option changes the Windows Live ID associated with your Xbox LIVE account. It will also transfer all your Microsoft points to the new Windows Live ID as well. Here are some screen shots that show what this looks like in the dash. I won’t go into detail, but I had an ooooold Xbox.com account from back in the day. I also had a local profile with a GameScore on it. Thing is… these two profiles were named the same. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to create a new XBox Live profile on my XBox 360 and then associate those points with the new local profile. It was like pulling teeth. What I have now is a GamerTag with my nick, but it’s associated with an Windows Live ID other than the one I normally use (for MSIM, etc). So this will be uber handy for me. I can take my current profile and associate it with my current email address and finally everything will be unified! woot!