System Update

May 2007 brought another revision to the 360 dashboard, integrating Windows Live Messenger for those all-important "omg lol u n00b" exchanges. Background downloads became more sophisticated, now able to slurp down new content while the console GPU and drives slumbered, before switching off completely in the dead of night. Messaging and social networking also shared download space with media functionality in the shape of MPEG-4 video compatibility, neatly ticking boxes on the two pillars of online strategy for the brave new world of console gaming.

The MPEG-4 feature was especially interesting since support for any new video codec, much like the sale of blank tapes and double-deck tape recorders back in the day, tends to carry an implicit acknowledgment that people probably aren't using their console to watch their own home movie files. Clearly no corporation will ever waver from the "piracy is bad" message, but if the ability to play DivX files on a games console is likely to attract more customers, well, who would want to deny them that pleasure?

Sony retaliated by adding H.264 support in June, and DivX and XviD joined its approved filetypes in December 2007. This also demonstrated another of the truisms that would dominate the shifting sands of console firmware in the 21st century - that features could arrive in chunks, or be taken away again. The PS3's new open-door policy for video files was limited in that anything saved using the DivX 3.11 standard wouldn't work (we had to wait until January 2009 for that) while files that were over 2GB also gummed up the works (it was March 2009 before that changed).

Essential and visible PS3 updates were still the exception rather than the rule though. Whereas Microsoft was cunningly turning its updates into an event to look forward to, PlayStation owners could be forgiven for letting out a sigh whenever they turned on their machine to play a game, and were instead directed to spend precious playing time downloading another inconsequential firmware tweak that improved the use of various European fonts or corrected a minor imbalance in one of the audio settings.

Microsoft kept banging the friends drum with its December update, allowing members to view the friends lists of their friends, and ask themselves important questions like "Why is xXNuk3Kill4Xx friends with CODzilla, but not me?" The option to add location and a short biography to gamer profiles moved things even further into the realms of the social. Meanwhile, Arcade trial games stopped soiling your Gamercard - so nobody need know you tried Screwjumper - while original Xbox games got the opposite treatment, hanging their old-fashioned bits out on the "played games" list for all to see.

As we crested into 2008, the stuff that popped up when you started a console was starting to be as important as the discs you put into it, or at least that's how it appeared if you followed the tit-for-tat race between Sony and Microsoft to slap more stuff on their dashboards.