Machogames: New Xbox Live Update Hits Today, Includes Neflix Streaming And Avatars

If you’ve been playing Call of Duty: World At War or Left4Dead on Xbox Live recently, you know that the service has been less than amazing. That probably had to do with something with the giant roll out Microsoft is performing today of their new Xbox Live dashbord (NXE). The amazing new service will let you do things like make Wii-like avatars for your profile (sorry MSN, it’s true…) and upload a game disc to the hard drive to play the game right off of there so your “notoriously noisy” (sorry MSN, it’s true…) Xbox can run a little lighter. But one thing that sets this apart (which really could’ve been done before with some software uploads we were too scared to put on the machine) is that Netflix is going to be streaming both SD and HD content to your TV via your Xbox. But thanks to the knuckleheads at Sony, their films are the only ones to be excluded from the service for now (jerks). According to Netflix’s PR flack Steve Swasey…

“In the case of Xbox 360, a few hundred titles are temporarily unavailable to be streamed via the Xbox game console”, he told MTV Multiplayer. “Those titles are still available to be watched on subscribers’ computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they’ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly.”

Swasey would not be drawn on whether Sony had specifically requested that the films be made unavailable on the 360, but said, “As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content licensed for all of our partner devices. We’re doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal.

The download is taking a while to get there, but we’re pumped more than we should be. Sure, it’ll rock, but will it bring us pizza like TiVo will? Until that time, we’ll hold the right to hold judgment over your, XBL. Sorry. NXE.
Xbox Live Update Brings Major Enhancements [Kotaku]
Netflix HD Impressions, On Xbox 360 [Gizmodo]
Sony Movies Cut from Netflix Xbox 360 Service [Sprong]