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The sound of a tornado siren can be hard to hear when there aren’t any particularly loud sounds going on, and almost impossible to detect when there are. Hence, there’s probably many a gamer that missed out on an important emergency notification because the sound of Modern Warfare 2 blasting from their TV speakers was just too loud and distracting. This is obviously a problem, since while pwning noobs is pretty important, not dying from the F3 tornado passing over your house normally takes precedence. But New York gamers soon need worry no more, since their state is testing a system by which emergency notifications will go out through consoles.
New York State’s Emergency Management Office (EMO) is currently using the Xbox 360 in trials to send out emergency broadcasts. They say that while TV and radio is fairly effective, they want to reach out to the younger generation that might be on a video game console instead of listening to the radio. If the system works accurately on the Xbox, the EMO is also going to transfer it to the PS3 and Wii.
There’s no word currently on other states adopting a similar system, but it wouldn’t be surprising if other areas catch on over time. For now, New York Xbox 360 owners can rest assured that if a nuclear attack happens while they’re in the middle of Fallout 3, there’s a good chance they’ll know about it.
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