by Richard Mitchell { 2 hours ago }
What was the biggest news of E3? Was it the PlayStation Motion Controller? Project Natal? The triumphant return of Samus? According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, it was none of the above. As part of the Gamasutra Analyze This feature, Pacther stated that he believes the biggest announcement was actually Microsoft's injection of Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter into the Xbox 360 dashboard.
Pachter states that Microsoft's announcement was "far and away the most important one of the show," and one that the media failed to latch onto. Pachter says that Microsoft's ultimate goal is to solidify the Xbox 360 as "a functioning computer that happens to be located in the living room and is connected to the television." The Facebook, Last.fm and Twitter applications open the Xbox to the internet -- if only in a limited way -- moving it one step closer to the mythical, do-everything set-top-box we've been hearing about since the days of WebTV.
The analyst makes this point in reference to Apple, which hasn't managed (successfully) to do the same thing with AppleTV. Granted, that doesn't make much difference to gamers, but from a pure business perspective, we can see Pachter's point.
From - http://xbox.joystiq.com/