Microsoft plans Dashboard distraction

WINDOWS LIVE Volista Chris Early has revealed how Microsoft plans to distract the legions of working gumps in the free world from earning their way to social freedom - by sending gaming invites to their Word documents.

Talking to gaming developer outlet Gamasutra, Early reveled how it "killed him" that Microsoft hasn't created an Xbox-esque Dashboard for Windows games.

On Xbox Live, gamers can receive chat and play invites from friends no matter what they're doing - so if they're playing FIFA and a buddy wants to play Gears of War, it's a simple process to swap out discs and jump into a game together. Games for Windows Live is designed to enable a similar experience to Xbox Live gaming, but the lack of "out of game experience" is a significant barrier to this kind of adoption, Early said.

Describing how an Xbox-type system could work on the PC, he said that "I want presence. I want to know what my friends are doing; I want to be able toreceive a game invite when I'm in the middle of my Word program. I don't like to work - I'd rather play games."

Which we suspect is a fair point. But is the world's economy ready to have Gears of War invites delivered into the Corporate Budget Report? What will be the impact on the world's capital markets?

All that is yet to be decided, as is the Vole's actual policy on such a service - Early says that the Vole is "absolutely" working on such an experience, but that nothing is in the bag - so don't expect any big shakes for Vista SP1. µ