Microsoft Takes Parental Control To The Next Level
Parents don’t mind it if their children the new Xbox 360 that they spent so much money to get – but trying to control how much they play is something that they have found hard to do. It’s one thing to tell your kid not to do something – but when you aren’t there what are stopping them from doing it anyway? Microsoft has solved every parent’s problems by creating the ‘Family Timer’.
The Family Timer – which will be available for download next month – is a parental control that will allow the parent to set a daily or weekly timer that will limit the amount of time the child can play on it. When the child is reaching the limit they get a warning message and when they have used all the time they were given they console will automatically shut off.
Right now not all the kinks have been worked out. For example the timer affects anyone who plays the console that doesn’t log in with the parental control password. So it has a hard time differentiating who is playing at the time. Microsoft reps say that’s to ensure that children don’t set up new profiles to defeat the controls. The controls also don’t allow parents to set a window of time for their kids to play during. This is just a straight timer.
I don’t think the parents are going to mind the kinks too much right now. It’s a great tool that has every parent grinning (and every child booing). Now we just have to wait and see if Nintendo and Sony will take the same steps for their consoles.
