Suggestions For Improving the 360

MS is really pushing downloadable content by integrating the UI for downloading new stuff through their Marketplace section. Already we've seen downloads that go beyond gaming such as trailers for movies, and customizable skins for the dashboard. There's a lot of great content on their, and new stuff gets added pretty regularly, but it can be quite difficult to find the latest content that's been added. Right now (January 25th, 2006) when I look at All New Demos and Trailers I see one video on Media Center Integration. It's definitely been less than a month since CES, so why isn't the FN3 demo still on there? or Condemned or more? There's no easy way that I can see a list of demos that I haven't downloaded yet, instead I have to look at some website online, or go through each game's download list, both are very cumbersome. Simply said the entire organization of the Marketplace needs to be rethought and improved for speedier navigation and to make the best content easy to download.

Another minor point, but still annoying is the fact that there's no real way to preview some content. Even though the prices are small, downloading gamer pictures or new themes is a risky prospect since you don't really know what you're buying until it's bought, and that there are no refunds. I'm sure people would be more inclined to buy a gamer picture or theme if they could see it and decide beforehand if they think it looks good or not.

The 360 is all about a seamless experience, being able to go from watching a slideshow, to playing an Arcade game to playing a full game, all without any major interruptions. And as mentioned before there's this whole new Marketplace that has cool stuff to download. So why is it that when you download something you have to completely interrupt everything you're doing? When you're downloading a file there's absolutely nothing else you can do other than listen to music, but that's only if the music was started before the file started to download. The solution to this is obvious and should be implemented as soon as possible. Create a smarter download manager that works in the background with the OS deciding when resources are available to continue any downloads. From the user's perspective they just select a bunch of files to download, and the download manager will be humming along in the background. For less intensive games that are on Xbox Arcade the downloads will still continue, but when you want to play some PGR3 the downloader will pause automatically. Then every time a file has finished you get a notification letting you know.

Achievements are a great new feature that have been introduced with the new version of Live on the 360. Before the system launched and the features were discussed, nobody really gave much attention to achievements. Now that the console has launched people have gotten really excited by achievements and are consistently talking about them developing a new kind of community. There's nothing really wrong with the system as it exists, but I would like to see an expansion to the current system. I'm not aware of the details of how achievements work, so what I suggest may already be possible and it's only a matter for the game developers to implement it properly. Right now achievements are awarded for the amount of skill a person puts into a game, or the amount of time they put in. Developers order the achievements such that the multiple of those two factors increases for new achievements.

Achievements have brought out the collectionists in people, and are driving them to grab every one for each game they own. However, some games have achievements that require far too much skill for many people which can cause a lot of frustration. There's a limit to how many gamer points each game can award through achievements (1000 for full games, and 200 for Arcade games) so I'm wondering if there's a way to have conditional achievements. The idea is that when a developer wants to have a difficult achievement, there are multiple ways of obtaining it. So for Robotron there's the achievement that is surviving wave 100 which is insane, and relies on a master level of skill. I suggest having an alternate achievement worth the same number of points that is reliant on time, say total number of games played, that allows completionists to get all the gamer points, without sacrificing bragging rights.

For some reason MS took a step backwards when it comes to voice chat. With the original Xbox users were able to setup private chat lobbies in the dashboard where 3 other people could join in and all talk to one another. Now with the 360 you can have a private chat, but only with one other person. MS really should reintroduce these group lobbies and allow them to be used while playing games just like the private chat can be now.

This issue has been somewhat addressed in this blogpost from a member of the Xbox Live team. However, his reasoning doesn't really make sense since people can do all sorts of things to affect their bandwidth (bitorrent, etc).

People lose their hard drives. People get new consoles. People should be able to transfer saves between all of these different devices easily. The best way is through an online save system. Gmail gives users 2.5GB for free, I think MS can spare each user a few dozen megs to safeguard their save files and allow easy swapping. Another avenue would be allowing saves on USB devices. MS' philosophy with the Xbox is allowing people to express themselves creatively. There's two sides to expression, making the expression and then sharing it, MS is ok on the former but offers no way for the latter. With Gran Turisimo 4 people were saving their cool photo mode pictures on USB keys and then sharing them with their friends online. Project Gotham Racing 3 has an excellent photo mode as well, but there's no way to share them with other people, so they're almost useless. PGR3 now has uploadable pictures.

Playing custom soundtracks in any game is a very cool feature that Microsoft has introduced. And allowing the custom soundtracks to be streamed from a networked computer means that you have a virtually unlimited number of songs to choose from. However, this introduces the challenge of managing all of these songs and being able to play the right song at the right time. Currently, to change songs the Guide button must be pressed, and then the forward and back buttons are accessible. Changing an album requires a significant increase in button presses as you have to go into the music list and refind whatever artist you are playing. Microsoft should implement a quick music changer where the next song can be chosen without having to pause the game and bring up the Guide (maybe holding down the back button and pressing the bumpers). Also more advanced music navigation abilities should be accessible directly from the Guide without having to go all the way into the music list.

The other issue where custom soundtracks can be improved on is the matter of persistence. The console does not store where you set the volume last. Every time you load a game or anything and put on a custom soundtrack you have to reset the volume to where you like it, especially since the default is too quiet. Furthermore, the music should not stop and have to be reconfigured when tasks are switched, such as loading a game, or going from a game to the dashboard.

Just like custom soundtracks are available for all games, users should have the ability to take a screen capture whenever they want. Screen captures should be handled by the dashboard and saved to a standard location. The images can then be viewed from the 360 dashboard, used as dashboard backgrounds, and even better shared and traded among friends and users.

Just for completion's sake, here are also the areas for improvement that everybody is already aware of.