Live Aware

Opens the Doors Between Online and Offline Games

Imagine this scenario: You get home from work, school, band camp… whatever, and you feel like playing a little Ghost Recon. So you pop the Ghost DVD into your Xbox and look around for a game. Only none of your clan members are online. This annoys you. How dare they? So you have two choices: You could go do your homework, mow the lawn, or practice playing the trumpet, OR you could pop in an Xbox Live Aware title and play a fun offline game while you wait for your buddies to get their butts on Xbox Live.

Xbox Music Mixer and other Xbox LiveAware titles will hit the shelves in time for the holiday season, which will make for incredible post-holiday gaming online AND offline.

Here's how it's going to work. Youpop an offline game (or super-fun title like Xbox Music Mixer) into your Xbox and it automatically searches for an Xbox Live account. If you're an Xbox Live subscriber, you'll be logged into the service. Unfortunately, this doesn't make your offline game magically XboxLive enabled (sorry, Halofans), but it DOES give you the ability to keep track of what's happening on Xbox Live. You can quickly check your Friends List to see if any of those slackers have logged on. Plus, your friends will be able to see that you're online and send you game invites that will pop up in the game you're playing—just like a cross-game invite between two Xbox Live enabled games. So when your clan members start to log on to Xbox Live, they'll send you a Ghost Recon game invite, you'll pop in the Ghost disc, and away you'll go!

Xbox Live Aware opens the doors that once separated online and offline games. As Xbox Live Aware program manager Andrew Murphy said, "It's the icing on the cake. Once a lot of games use Xbox Live Aware, you'll wonder what you ever did without it."