Welcome to GameSpot's new look. We've been listening to your feedback and have heard your call loud and clear for a wider site, which has definitely driven our new look. We've been calling the new look "GameSpot Wide" internally because nearly every page has moved to a wider layout that's a better fit for modern monitor sizes and more cleanly showcases GameSpot's content. You may have seen the recent weeks’ public preview of the site design, and now here’s the full debut of the new GameSpot.

For those keeping score at home, our last major design update was way back in October 2005, and a number of features have been bolted on in the last three years. We took this opportunity to freshen up and improve the look and feel of the site across the board. Most content pages now feature contextual left-hand navigation to more clearly move between sections, and we've worked to break down the various artificial walls on the site by connecting concepts with related links and integrating user content and community features alongside our core content.

The biggest new feature is the addition of high-definition streaming. We've had full 720p HD downloads for Plus and Total Access subscribers for a while now, but the new 960x540 streaming format is open to all users and is optimized to load more quickly while maintaining nearly all of the crispness and resolution that you expect in HD. We already publish most of our video in HD and have reworked this library of content so that, on day one, we already have thousands of videos available as HD streams.

Check out the other major features below--then try it out for yourself. As you can probably tell, updating so many different parts of the site is a big task, and GameSpot Wide will continue to evolve with additional page updates and new features, including a refresh of the forums. In the meantime, tell us what you think in the GameSpot Wide forum.

What's New…

• 
  Wider layout.GameSpot's new design takes advantage of the larger PC displays that are now standard. With up to 25% more width to play with, we've found new ways to showcase our content.
• 
  Contextual site navigation.Building on the consistent top navigation that's been characteristic of the GameSpot design, we've moved the navigation within specific content areas from the tab design to a more consistent left-column placement. This generally results in content displaying higher on the page for stories, video, and profiles.
• 
  HD video.GameSpot has been producing premium HD video for years, but it has generally been reserved for our paying subscribers in the form of sizable 720p video downloads. We're introducing a new Web-optimized HD experience that delivers much of the quality and resolution of HD downloads in a new quick-loading, in-page format. Look for the "Watch in HD 540p" links next to most of the new video content that we produce. (Note: The 720p downloads are still reserved for subscribers.)
• 
  Streamlined video integration.With the wider pages, we've been able to move our video experience in-line with the standard game-page layout. At the same time, we've folded user videos into the standard video mix so that these diverse contributions are available just a click away from most game pages. We're also opening up all video content for user comments.
• 
  At-a-glance game details.Every game-related page consistently integrates a button that opens an in-line panel revealing handy game details and statistics.
• 
  Dynamic links for related games and related content.We've found new ways to connect games, looking beyond traditional genres to the relationships traced by user traffic. We're also trying out two new ways to connect a diverse variety of content items, based on keyword matching and user traffic. We hope that these produce more interesting connections between our pages and will be monitoring activity closely for further optimization.
• 
  Playlist-based video hub.We've completely redesigned our main video page to combine two video-sampling experiences: a hand-picked, in-page playlist and a highly flexible set of browsable video lists. You can now sit back and watch dozens of videos back to back.
• 
  Community hub.Recognizing that there are now many community and user contribution features on GameSpot beyond the traditional forums, we have added a new hub page to showcase special community events, competitions, and user content. This is in addition to the forum hub that has previously been the main entry point to our community pages.
• 
  Friend activity feed.We've revamped our tracked updates system to provide a social-media "minifeed" or personalized view of what your friends are doing in our community. This feed shows blog updates, game reviews, image and video uploads, and more.