XBox Live avatars and new dashboard

From here, it sure like the virtual world-ish convergence that has long been predicted is hitting the consoles in earnest.

• XBox Live is adding avatars, akin to the Nintendo Miis, but it looks like they’ll have a bit more spatiality and multiplayer interaction to them — and will be the basic interface for XBL from now on. Oh, and remember when I commented that consoles were turning into PCs? They announced the ability to install games to the hard drive as a major advance. Heh.
• Nintendo’s next Animal Crossing game is also drifting towards online-world land, though still not truly massive in scale.
• Club Penguin is jumping to the Nintendo DS, and don’t underestimate Disney’s new DGamer service, which is intended to network all the Disney online properties.
• Sony has a 256-player action game coming, which qualifies as “massive,” certainly, though perhaps not as presistent. They’re also adding more real-world integration, with stuff like movie and TV downloads, weather service, news, etc.