Many of the regulars here at Electronic Theatre have noted their near-daily use of xbox.com as a hub for information and communicating with friends as part of the Xbox community in the past. With many of the features available on the Xbox 360 Dashboard conveniently at your fingertips throughout your working day, xbox.com itself can provide hours of entertainment and build anticipation amongst friends for what you’ll be playing later that evening. After the recent downtime (Wednesday 16^th June, 2009) however, it does appear some fairly drastic changes have appeared within the Xbox 360’s online space.

            Although much of the change has been mainly cosmetic, regular xbox.com users will no doubt pass verdict immediately as, seemingly inline with the New Xbox Experience, many options have been moved or renegotiated on the user account pages. The biggest change most will notice when logging-on to xbox.com will be that on the rearrangement of the page, with the display of a selection of your currently online friends and your most recent Achievements being much more prominent. Here, hovering the cursor over any of the three randomly selected friends will highlight their Avatar, and provide you with options such as messaging, comparing games and viewing their profile. Viewing your full Friends List now appears as a headlining option, along with your message inbox, across the entire of the user account pages section.

            An easily browsed Xbox LIVE! Marketplace box-out appears on the immediate right of the screen, and scrolling further down will reveal the latest headlines applicable to Xbox LIVE!. In between these handy new additions however, lies an interesting advertisement for the forthcoming 1 Vs. 100.

            Although having been confirmed for Europe (and reaffirmed many times), Microsoft have seemingly been reluctant to promote the very unique videogaming proposition in any way here in the UK. The advertisement on the xbox.com user account pages take you directly to 1 Vs. 100’s own space, which offers little in the way of new details bar a trailer brand new for the UK audience. In this trailer, there is a clear and concise statement that 1 Vs. 100 will in fact arrive in the UK “this spring”. A beta version (Season 1) is said to be coming soon, but there’s no mention of whether this loose date refers to the beta phase or the final release.

            The US version of 1 Vs. 100 is reportedly undergoing beta trails currently, with a rollout expected for this winter. Though Electronic Theatre finds the proposition of the game particularly exciting, recent rumours that Microsoft may decide to charge for the service originally said to be free have put somewhat of a dampener on things. Of course, however, Electronic Theatre will keep you updated with the facts as soon as we receive them.

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