Xbox 360 qwerty keyboard

Gamespot announced a qwerty keyboard for xbox360, but the page was quickly taken down. Luckily GamingTalkHQ was able to catch it.

New attachment snaps onto system’s standard pad for quick and easy instant message typing.To ease the task of typing in messages without the aid of a full-sized keyboard, Microsoft today announced a new text input device for the Xbox 360 controller. The attachment snaps onto the bottom of the controller through the headset jack and features a QWERTY-style key layout with 47 keys.

The keyboard attachment has not been priced or even named yet, but it is expected to see release this summer.

This definitely seems to be true as with the upcoming spring dashboard update and, Live Anywhere the texting is quite difficult with the on-screen keyboard

It looks bulky, but it still looks like it works. I can easily purchase one of these, if the price is right. Seems like a must buy for people who use Windows Messenger, but an AIM user like me, im not sure how much use I will get out of this. Would you get it and what would you mainly use it for?

[via Daking240]

- Jerome “the360loop” Francisco -

Epic forced to charge

In the April issue of Game Informer there was an article titled “The Content Microsoft Doesn’t Want You to Have”. The half-page article talks about how companies want to give out free Download Content, but Microsoft forces them to charge. For content that is for sale over the marketplace, Microsoft also gets final word on the price also. Their reason is to maintain a balance between other content of similar value. Xbox 360 product manager, Aaron Greenberg, denies that they have all-mighty control and states “It’s ultimately up to the publishers”. Further proof on a 1up podcast, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney mentions that they are being forced to charge for the new maps.

We already released two (maps) and we have four more maps that we’ve built. We’ve been wanting to give them but actually Microsoft has been pushing back on us. They’re trying to build this business model around selling additional content for games and that’s a valid idea, but we would definitely like to release more stuff for free, and we haven’t been able to do so yet.

[via 1pstart]
- Jerome “the360loop” Francisco -