Xbox 360: New Details from GDC Europe

- Vrignaud explained how the new Xbox 360 Guide liberates game developers from writing a lot of code since it is an always-running application that handles configuration and device management and common system tasks such as Xbox Live log-in, log-out, alerts, Friend’s List, game invitations, plus game saves, controller disconnection, music playback, and error messages.

- One of the things that the Gamer Profile will include is your common game settings for different types of games. So for example, you always use automatic gear in racing games and inverted Y-axis controls in first-person shooters, once you load any racing game or FPS, the game will automatically load your Gamer Profile settings, saving you to set up any of these in the game configuration screen.

- In his speech, Vrignaud explained the importance of the new Reputation and Gamerzone features when it comes to find new gamers to play with and eventually add to your Friend’s List.
After every game, gamers will be able to provide feedback on other players which will set up for every gamer a sort of reliability rating. This together with the Gamerzone will improve the matchmaking capabilities of the next-generation Xbox Live.

- Microsoft confirmed that the storage medium is completely abstracted, meaning that the game will choose from a variety of storage resources but does not assume which type of storage device it is. As long as the free space on the storage medium allows the game to save its data, developers should not worry about if it is an Xbox 360 hard drive, a memory unit or eventually, a remote storage space on Xbox Live. This is a clever way to guarantee backward compatibility with future generations as far as what storage respects.