The cool thing about the current crop of consoles is that they keep evolving after you get ‘em home. Broadband has turned gaming machines into mere plastic and metal shells. What really makes them tick is the firmware inside—and that can be updated at whim.

The Wii and PS3 alternate between behind-the-scenes refinement tweaks (most recently to 4.1 and 2.80, respectively) and bigger upgrades which add stuff like enabling 32gb SD memory cards (to address the Wii’s ridiculously low on-board storage) or the PS3's trophy meta-game that aped Xbox's achievements.

Now Xbox is paying Sony back in its summer dashboard update, the first revamp of the New Xbox Experience which, among many other things, had added Mii-like Avatars. Now there is an Avatar Marketplace, which sells virtual accoutrements for the virtual you, just like the stores in Playstation Home. I'm probably much older than the targeted demo, but these digital items are practically picking gamer pockets one micropayment at a time. Then again, a fool and his Microsoft Points are soon parted and if someone feels like spending real money for a pretend tokidoki purse, remote-controlled Halo Warthog or a steampunk jacket than so be it. (To be fair, the steampunk duds are pretty cool and some items can be won through gameplay.)

More useful is Games On Demand, which let users download entire 360 back-catalogue games—classics like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Mass Effect, Gears of War 2, LEGO Star Wars, Burnout Paradise and BioShock. Convenient, sure, but possibly more expensive than buying old used games at resale retailers and the lengthy downloads fill up to 5gb of hard-drive space. Still, it's a big step forward into our inevitable download-only future and could help niche games develop cult followings. 

They’ve also added Xbox Live Movie Parties, so two Xbox owners can watch the same downloaded movie and text each other on screen or speak via headset. (Um, yay?) More useful is a YouTube-like ratings system for Live Arcade and (the now-renamed) Indie Games downloads. There was also a whack of minor enhancements and in the next round they'll be adding functionality for Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM.

Not every console update can be all magic mushrooms and rescued princesses (especially for homebrew fans, who regularly get their hacks overridden). But the simple fact that these machines can patch their makers’ mistakes and realize their missed opportunities dramatically and fundamentally changes the whole notion of gaming generations, when users had to make do with years-old tech until a next-gen console came out. 

Now hardware has essentially become software—and this evolution of gaming is being televised.