Microsoft has announced it is once again adding more LIVE members to the NXE Preview Program. This is the third and final time Microsoft is doing this, and the company is adding over 10,000 LIVE members. Invites are coming via email. According to Microsoft mouthpiece MajorNelson.com: "As before, we're only pulling names from those that originally signed up (there is no way to sign up if you missed it, sorry) and this selection process will be at random from those that previously filled out the Connect Program Survey from my original post. Again, this is final wave. All Xbox LIVE members will be getting the New Xbox Experience via Xbox LIVE November 19th."

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Xbox Live - so much more than a way of playing games against sweary 14 year olds. Live is also, according to Vice Prez John Schappert, an "online retailer" committed to making niche content more accessible.

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At 128MB, the New Xbox Experience will be too big for some Xbox 360s to handle.

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What's this? Are Microsoft just feeling bullish after all those Xbox/Vesperia bundles sold out? Whatever the reason, Microsoft is feeling confident enough to send LIV Vice-prez John Schappert to the Tokyo Game Show with a keynote speech under his arm.

On October 9th at midday, Schappert will present his keynote address "A Canvas for the World" which will apparently lay out how the Xbox 360 will bring people together to enjoy "the next wave of interactive entertainment experiences".

No, we don't really know what that means either —- but we bet it is pretty flippin' important. Who knows? Maybe MS are on a roll - by this time next year there could be an Xbox Elite in every self-respecting Japanese home.

Tokyo Game Show - John Schappert Keynote Address [Gamerscore Blog]

Oh. I was all excited there for a second.

Reading the start of the press release for the Xbox LIVE Film Club ("Love your movies? Want to see exclusive screenings of the hottest new releases before anyone else? Xbox LIVE Film Club has just the ticket".) I thought Microsoft had gone and rolled out some kind of movie premiere service that would let you watch new releases over LIVE rather than putting up with popcorn-hurling kids at the local multiplex.

But no - it's just a competition that will let a selection of LIVE users attend some swish movie premieres. This is all in aid of promoting some new releases via the LIVE Video Store (Forrest Gump, Pretty in Pink, Planes Trains and Automobiles and Ghost, among others). In the 'coming soon' dispatches, we have Iron Man, The Love Guru (oh dear) and — assuming it isn't sued into the ground and gets a release at all — Watchmen.

If you fancy a shot at watching Iron Man don some blackface in Tropic Thunder, just email Microsoft with a short review of your favourite film and cross your fingers.

Xbox LIVE Film Club premiers [Xbox.com]

Sometimes Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Orkut and OpenSocial just aren't enough. Too much real world stuff, not enough gamerscore bragging.

Enter Raptr - a new social network for gamers founded by Dennis 'Thresh' Fong (he had to do something with all that prize money) that offers a way of tracking your friends and sharing what you are in to on several popular games networks.

Once you have signed in and chosen a nick, you can enter your IDs on Xbox Live, PSN, World of Warcraft, Steam and others, then start entering the games in your collection.

Where it can, Raptr will pull data from your various networks and update your profile with a list of your current games, achievements and the like. There are plugins for displaying your data on Facebook et al too, of course.

A free client for PC or Mac will display and update data from you and your friends in real time as well as suck data from any games you play on your box — less of an issue for most Mac geeks, presumably.

Raptr [via 1UP]

If Microsoft has one thing going for them that no fanboy rant can question, it's Xbox LIVE. As long as Nintendo has friend codes and Sony has, uhhh, we'll get back to that, Microsoft stands tall on their untarnished pedestal. Well...untarnished if you ignore the month+ of outages around Christmas 2007. The fact of the matter is, Xbox LIVE has failed the consumer public before. And it could fail us again.

Jump ahead to next week, we have GTA IV—a game that's so big that—we'll let Microsoft's General Manager of LIVE Services Operations, Derek Ingalls explain that metric:

"...we are preparing for a spike that could be much larger than what we saw with the launches of Halo 3 and Activision's "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare."

So how is Microsoft prepping Xbox LIVE for the not so metaphorical mass rioting that is GTA IV multiplayer?

"Last holiday we weren't properly prepared," Ingalls admits. "So we are going the extra mile with Grand Theft Auto IV..." Yeah, that was total marketing speak. But it got your ears perked, didn't it?

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