Xbox Live Primetime is ‘a whole new gaming paradigm’

Speaking at the Microsoft developers Gamefest event in Seattle, Chris Satchell described the social gaming part of the Xbox 360 dashboard – to be relaunched later this year – as ‘a whole new gaming paradigm’.

Primetime takes gameshow IPs to a massively multiplayer scale, inviting large groups of consumers to participate in live versions of TV shows like 1 to 100.

It was unveiled last week at E3 as just one part of a big casual push by Microsoft to make the 360 appealing to wider demographics. Other announcements included new peripheral based singing and camera games.

“Primetime is an ability for a 1,000, 5,000 or 50,000 to play a game together. Many of these games are different to games we’ve seen before – it’s almost a new genre,” said Satchel.

“If you think of broadening our audience this is the way to do it.”