Microsoft today did not quite announce a new update to the features of its Xbox Live online gaming service. Rather, it carefully tiptoed around properly announcing something it calls "Tsunami," a suite of development tools it soon plans to roll out that will enable new community and content sharing features for Xbox Live gamers, which reportedly number some 750,000 as of the end of last year. "Tsunami," Microsoft says, encompasses (but is not necessarily limited to) the following new Live features, which will gradually roll out over the coming year:
- Team Dynamics: A structured clan system, this seems to be, where players can form a team with a distinct identity, send messages within that team, keep statistics for that team, and challenge other teams to matches.
- Competitions: Tsunami will let developers more easily implement different competitions into games, which can then be administered by either users or publishers.