Microsoft is touting Box Office Smash, an update to last year’s efficient but lukewarm take on Sony’s Buzz! series, as the first retail game to use Xbox 360’s new avatars. So, from the flawed original’s slightly sterile appearance, which made little effort to embody its players other than through a paltry selection of emblems, players now take centre stage, their avatars occupying the four-seater sofa that’s on screen throughout and flamboyantly exhibiting their performance in the game.

But beyond this new focus, Box Office Smash is more a thorough tightening up of the original than a reinvention. With 1,700 new questions, the same trivia puzzles, some slightly tweaked, others expanded, return with four additional types.

The game also receives a new online mode, which will support matches between up to four teams. Chat between teams will be difficult as there’s no headset plug on the button pad, but Krome is considering putting taunts on its D-pad (which is concealed in the big button).

Downloadable content is also promised and, in another gesture towards Microsoft’s strategy to make 360 more attractive to the European market, Box Office Smash will be better localised, with 20 percent of the questions loaded in UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish editions tailored specifically to each region, plus translations for Nordic countries and Latin America.

Elsewhere, irritations from the first game have been mitigated, such as the producer host, who will be replaced by two characters that will apparently play on the cliché of the action and romance movie trailer voiceovers. The awards doled out between rounds will seem less arbitrary, games without buzzer rounds will be available and buzzer cheating – holding the button down while the question is being asked for an instant chance to answer – will be much reduced. So, all solid and logical improvements on the original, though next to Primetime, Scene It’s achievements will seem modest indeed.