We don’t know about you, but the GamerNode staff just hates texting messages via the 360 dashboard. It’s slow and tedious as you peck away at the virtual keyboard in order to send your witty trash talk to the guy who blew you away in last night’s Gears of War match. True, it gets the job done, but everyone knows that it’s a pain in the you-know-where to use.
But that’s about to change with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 mini-keyboard which was recently announced last month. The new "chatpad" will do more than make your typing duties easier – it may be used as a component of gameplay as well. JJ Richards, General Manager of Xbox Live said, "I can have chat in my games, now that it’s a proper keyboard. It’ll be very interesting to see how developers take advantage of that innovation."
Jeff Pobst of Hidden Path Entertainment is enthusiastic about the possibilities of the chatpad. "Are those buttons available for gameplay? All of the sudden, I can have a controller with mini-buttons, if I want."
No price or launch date has been announced by Microsoft yet.
[via Gamasutra]
