With video games estimated to hit an estimated 48 billion dollars in sales worldwide—bigger than the movie box office, the music industry, and DVD sales—it's no wonder Microsoft is looking to retool it's biggest gaming moneymaker, the Xbox 360. A big part of their media briefing at E3 was dedicated to the announcement of their new Xbox Live interface, but there was more than enough other things to be excited about. With that said, our highlights (or check out the lowlights here):

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NETFLIX STREAMING With one screenshot, Microsoft made up for all of those times I've been kicked off Live while playing Call of Duty 4. A new partnership with the movie rental company will allow existing Netflix and Live subscribers to stream over 10,000 movie offerings to their console. Even better, there won't be any additional charges. Even better than better...




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LIVE PARTY ...You can stream your Netflix movies to your swanky new shared space called Live Party. This means you and your friends can watch films simultaneously without additional purchases. LP also boasts live chat supporting up to eight users and the ability to share photos seemlessly.


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PLAY FROM HARD DRIVE Xbox's community manager Major Nelson dropped a few more bombs on us after Microsoft's briefing, the first one being the ability to copy games from the disc to your console's hard drive. This will, at least in theory, decrease load times and keep the system from continuous spinning discs in the CD tray, which should decrease the potential for scratches to happen.


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ACCESS MARKETPLACE ON THE WEB Why use up all that down time at work pushing papers when you could be planning what movies and games you'll be playing that night. Major Nelson announced that the Xbox Live Marketplace will be accessible on the Web, allowing you to purchase content for automatic delivery to your console.


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CO-OP IN GAMES Not exactly a novel concept, playing alongside your friends in your favorite games hasn't been exploited quite the way we'd like it to have been. Enter Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5 and Fable 2. GoW2 will feature a new mode called Horde, a 5-player fragfest where you and friends take on increasingly harder waves of Locusts. Resident Evil 5 will have online co-op for its story mode. Fable 2 will have drop-in and -out co-op giving you the ability to invite friends into your single-player world.