I agree this is too expensive. The price is dropping to 200pts in early July. Currently working on better graphics, avatars, spectators, awardments, timed games and single player.

I have a lot of fun playing this game against other members of the xbox live community. I try to play at least one game every day. I find this much more fun than any free online chess game I've played since I automatically get the features of the 360 console like voice chat and inviting friends to games.

There is an anti-idle feature so I can host a game and switch my display back to my PC. When someone joins the game, my controller will shake until I pick it up. This means you don't have to wait around for matches to start, or if you get distracted by something the game will get your attention back when it's your turn.

If you happen to play against one of the developers a "boss battle" begins. If you can beat us, you earn boss status and get a gold star. Then when you play against other players, these boss titles are up for grabs. You can lose your boss status to other players.

You get a full history in standard notion at the touch of a button, or you can move time backwards and see what the board looked like all the way back to the start of the game.

If a game runs too long, or someone has to leave the game, it can be saved finished later. I can play locally with two controllers, save the game, and continue it online.

There is no tutorial and no personal move analysis. More advanced games on the PC can tell you things like how many times you've been in a given position and show you what you did when faced with certain attacks. On the PC there WinBoard and XChess for playing against a different single player AI's.

I like graphics and controls but this game is too expensive considering there are no AI opponents. You can get Chessmaster for 800 points on XBLA, so why buy this?

It's a simple no frills chess game. Nothing fancy.

The question does arise however, why would you want to by this when there are numerous free online chess games.

If you are really into chess go ahead and get this but for peole who arn't or people that have PC's I fail to see the point. Maybe chess via IM would work a bit better on a 360, fopr all those times you are online waiting for someone or something.