14 DAY TRIAL // One of the big selling points of the Xbox 360 home gaming console, for this Christmas, is the social tools which Microsoft is promising to integrate, from Facebook and Twitter to Last.fm. They are being slowly rolled out over the coming weeks and the company is hoping that the new services, available to all those who are willing to pay up for Gold-tiered subscription, will make players spend more time on their consoles rather than switch to the old PC in order to engage in interactions with their friends.
However, it seems that Facebook and Twitter are not for everyone. Larry Hryb, aka "Major Nelson", who leads the team taking care of Xbox Live, has recently posted on his blog that just those over 18 years of age will have access to the new services. “We made this decision because as it stands now, parents aren’t able to use Family Settings to customize which of these applications their children can access” before adding “this has been a hot topic with the preview users. We want to make sure everyone was aware, however, that the development team is working on an update that gives parents the choice of which social applications their children can access,” he says. Of course, a lot of people might choose to just go in and change their age on the Xbox profile to get access.
The Xbox Live social update does not yet have a clear release date and will probably come packed with some new features and tweaks which will target other areas of the Xbox 360. In addition, the Xbox Live does not have a time frame after which it will be able to implement the parental controls. A potential problem for Microsoft is that Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm will get much less traction on the Xbox 360 before the tools for parents arrive.