Xbox 360 Avatar Arcade (Ps3 Home-a-like?)

Thanks to @josholalia for tweeting “Not for me. But I’d pay to watch @ritajking duel @charliechu & @epredator RT @majornelson: Game Room Trailer here-> http://bit.ly/5FAIJq” and pointing out the video (via Major Nelson) of the future of the xbox 360 arcade game room.
This is the start of a virtual world usage of the 360 avatars to let you walk up to arcade cabinets (by the look of it) and play the old school arcade originals. Arcades where where I grew up and hung out and they were a very social place as you could not play the games all the time. I liked it when I saw the walk up cabinets in Playstation Home and I have to say this bears more than a passing resemblance to that just on the 360 😉

It sounds from the blurb (link to a word doc on this page) too that this is a customizable room that you place your arcade cabinets in. “invite friends into your custom arcade to check out your collection or visit their game room”.
It is also cross windows and xbox.
So what Microsoft has cleverly done is repackage the old arcade games (which has been done more than once) but added a highly social layer to it. Games whose high score table was only ever visible for the day in the arcade until the power was turned off will now be available all over the world.
One other line I liked (though would have preferred this to not be in a word doc !) was “Challenge friends to beat your high score by sending custom challenges and taunts across platforms”.
Customer challenges and taunts – fantastic.
It is generally accepted that the Xbox Live environment has been a major reason for the 360’s success. It is certainly why I buy more games for the 360 than the PS3. Sony has retro fitted trophies and achievements and innovated by adding Home. Microsoft started out with great connections between games and is evolving the virtual world connections and representations based on those connections. As we are all saying and learning this is all about people first tech features second.