Cast away your fears of terrorist attack or natural disaster while immersed in a session of your favorite Xbox 360 game. It's no longer a problem if you live in New York.
New York State is planning on blasting out alerts of natural disasters, terrorist attacks and the like to your Xbox 360 messaging service from the Emergency Management Office. This is like an updated emergency broadcast system. The goal is to reach younger people to spend more time on game systems than they do radio or TV. Good call.
InformationWeek says that the plan is still early, and is only in the testing phase so far.
I'm one of those rare ones that has his messages shut off in Xbox Live. I guess I'm screwed should we be hit by the Big One one day.
Oh, and look at what one douche's reply at IW:
Wonderful. This is just more way for the government to invade our personal lives. I believe that the current warning system is quite adequate. At what cost is this being implemented and how many lives is it expected to save? Isn't there somewhere else that our money might be spent with greater impact?
Not a gamer, obviously.
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
2:40 PM on 11.24.2009
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Just thought it was weird. Though I'd like to know how it would work on Nintendo's Wii. More than Xbox360 and PS3, do they get updates in the top right like the big boys?
Shoot, that's too bad it wouldn't work, because I was totally serious.
This new system sounds neat. I still wish AP and MS got together and did something similar to this for 360. Actually if they did it for PS3 too that'd be awesome. And of course Wii already does.
I'm also with mrandydixon that this would be a cool feature for games. There are easy disclaimers to keep lawsuits at bay.
also, shouldn't japan get these before new york? i mean they have godzilla and we only have an event that happened 8 years ago? Also, would be better in california since we seem to have fires or quakes every other week.
On the other hand, natural disaster warnings could be EXTREMELY useful, life saving even, when broadcast directly to video gamers, because the last thing we need is to be stuck trying to find a savepoint as the tornado draws near.
Great point. Let them continue spending further into debt and bankruptcy because you don't want to hear people complaining about it.
______________________________________________________________________________
"How could anyone complain about this?"
The fact is, this is pointless and will only go to reinforce the idea that people need the Gubment for protection as they will more than likely conduct those idiotic tests, as they do on television, periodically.
Not only that, these broadcasts probably haven't done much, at least in recent times. You can hear about almost any future weather by browsing the channels on your television, or by not living in a rock or an area of the world where there are zero old people, 9/11 happened without (official) warning and the buildings were shown collapsing on live television, and most people have phones which will be used by at least one member of the family to call you and alert you to the fact that Will Smith is trying to save you from alien invasion.
Good point, but then again, my dream is to die playing videogames (while receiving fellatio, of course), so maybe your extreme example wouldn't be all that bad...
Color code it. Game related messages are one color, news alerts are another. The end.
The Govt only informs you of natural disasters like wildfires and floods.
If it was something more serious they would be afraid people would panic so they'd let them get nuked. If they don't have enough time to evacuate safely then you're toast anyway and won't be informed.
The TV is good enough and if it isn't people would be tweeting like mad about it anyway and more people pay attention to their cell phones than their TV's!
More Govt waste! Let the politicians pay for this program out of their own pockets if they think it's so great. That would kill it faster than anything!
It's almost like they think complaining about this makes any goddamn sense at all.
"OMG TEH EVIL GOV'T IS INVADING T'XBoX!"
What the FUCK are you talking about. Seriously.
War of the Worlds also had commercial breaks re-announcing the show's title and Wells and Welles being behind it. It ws the sheer naive nature of the audience that did itself in, and it wasn't nearly as hysterical of a panic as the stories told at the time. Just sensationalism for it's day.
And how many 11/9 (sic) victims would've been saved by an XBox messaging system? Don't make me laugh, it's a pointless idea.