Depending which account you believe, during the 1 vs. 100 Live game last night, it seems that many think that host Chris Cashman let the cat out of the bag when he said that at least points would start being handed out next week. We happened to have been in the “Mob” during this game, and while we didn’t hear it this way what we did hear is that a big announcement is coming next week.

Part of the exciting thing with 1 vs. 100 is the fact that players will be able to play for prizes as well as Microsoft Points that are awarded, depending how on well you do at the game. The speculation that 1 vs. 100 will be moving to awarding Microsoft Points and prizes in the next phase of the testing would seem to be a bit pre-mature, unless Microsoft is ready to move from Beta testing to an actual release. We believe that it is more likely that Microsoft will announce their schedule to move from Beta to perhaps a next phase of the beta testing, but we have been unable to confirm that this is the case.

Cashman was caught in the fact during the game that the player chose to take the money (Microsoft Points), but since the game was in beta and there were no points to be awarded he thought that they player should just choose the “mob” and continue the game. We would agree with his assessment, as the contestant or “the one” really had nothing to lose.

At any rate, Cashman did let it be known that recently the contestant playing as “the one” was able to knock out everyone in the mob. Cashman claimed that this player was the first to do it and go all the way.

Our impression of 1 vs. 100, after playing it a few times, is that this could be really big for the Xbox Live platform. While some of the questions are clearly “softballs” and easy to answer, the game does seem to really pick up the pace and the questions seem to become very difficult the longer that each game goes on. If you like trivia, this is clearly an innovative concept that could turn out to be more popular than Microsoft ever expected on Xbox Live when they start playing for real prizes and Microsoft Points. Until the beta is over, take our advice… just take “the mob” and forget the money.