Inspector Gadget was a secret agent who's body was augmented with all sorts of gadgets to help him in his espionage. in actuality he was kind of a loser and his gadgets although cool, never helped him much. it always came down to his niece Penny and her dog to help him save the day and accomplish his missions
ok, what the hell does this have to do with my Xbox? well they just added 4 new distinct features to the Xbox 360 console a couple days ago, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and the Zune Marketplace.
The Facebook and Twitter tabs are an Xbox 360 way to bring social networking to games. mostly its just a slightly watered version of the 2 current most popular social networking sites (cutting out the facebook aps, and facebook chat functions only). Its good for you if the computer is currently occupied (or dead if youre like me :/ ) but otherwise the web version will still be your best bet. Twitter is twitter so if youre all about the tweeting than its pretty much the same actually lol.
Last.fm is quite cool, ice never heard of it before but it builds radio stations around particular artists that stream songs by them and by bands of singers that are similar. if all you want are the popular singers, listen to your top 40 station back home, but this is a great tool for finding new or less popular bands. and thankfully if there is too much you dont like, there is a skip button or simply move to a new station. the absolute best part is after youve browsed other stations and told Last.fm what you like, it can build you a radio station with your favorite songs/genres. the only problem with this is it doesnt run behind anything else. you cant listen to this with custom soundtracks or anything. so if youre like me and when you actually DO get a chance to use your Xbox, you probably wont waste time by listening to Last.fm, no matter how cool it is.
and last but not least is the Zune marketplace. this isnt an add-on so much as its an update. they are now using the Zune marketplace for all Xbox Live marketplace media downloads. i'm not sure if game DLC is also through the Zune marketplace, but i think its just music, videos, and movies. the good news is theyve added a couple features like viewing parties where people on your Xbox Live friends list can come in and watch streaming videos with you in a mystery science theater 3000 kinda way. the good news is since all this is from the Zune marketplace theres more content now in the movie and tv categories, yay!
Now what does this have to do with Inspector Gadget? I feel about most of these exactly what i feel about Inspector gadget. Alot of cool features, but he still can't get the job done alone. Xbox has had a recent decline of 360 exclusives in the last year, and although alot of former Playstation exclusive developers are taking games to both consoles Microsoft needs to encourage developers to go Xbox onry! Thats what will sell consoles, not fancy features, not project natal, not Facebook and Twitter for Xbox Live. and while these things are great and add a wide range of things you can do with the console, none of them truly expand on what people buy the console in the first place: the games.
