In a bid to make the Xbox 360 more family-friendly than the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft is adding parental controls to the Xbox 360 Dashboard sometime in early December. This "family timer" feature will allow parents (or whoever knows the master password) to control exactly how much time gamers can spend, you know, gaming. The timer, to its credit, will give gamers warning a few minutes before the alloted time period is up, at which point the console simply shuts off. This will make running for save-points much more interesting indeed.

In related news, enforcing strict controls on when children can play video games may cause more problems than it's worth. A recent random-selection poll conducted by Microsoft of 800 families found that 45% of families create tension in the home by putting restrictions on digital content, and punishing children by barring them from their video games can lead to disturbing murder plots in extreme cases.