XBox 360 Live Preview
Prolific Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble just popped up some videos of Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson), the Director of Programming for XBox Live, demonstrating some of the great new features that the 360 version of Live will offer the Microsoft faithful. Scoble crashed an XBox MVP party, whipped out his trusty video camera and recorded some footage of The Ivory Tower.
Hryb details the integration of XBox Live with the newly designed XBox.com. Microsoft wants the XBox Live the service and XBox Live the online community to gel more fluidly. The most exciting feature is the crazy level of cross-talk between XBox Live and the XBox.com forums. Those of you who are already XBox users will no doubt love the fact that your Gamer Card and Gamer Tag will now also be your forum name, so that once you plug in your system and receive your complimentary silver membership, you’re also set to go on the forums. Once you get your Gamer Tag pretty much everything you do on the XBox is shared online. Friends and rivals will be able to check out your membership level (silver or gold), your reputation, your zone, the last five games you played, etc. They will also be able to look at your community level, which is a rating specific to the forums. By posting useful items, participating in betas, surveys, acting as moderators, etc, you can up your profile in the online XBox community and earn yourself official achievement icons along the way that will be displayed on your gamer card. People who hate forums because of spamming posts will be overjoyed to hear that this community level has nothing to do with post counts, thus hopefully eliminating “cool” and “hi” and “yo mama” posts. Icons can be taken away just as easily as rewarded, so y’all behave yourselves.
They’ll also provide you with a personalized link so that you can take your Gamer Card information and post it at other sites to show off your prowess. In either text link or graphic form, you can now put your Card in forum signatures, blogs, your personal website…wherever you want.
The updated site has been approved on Windows systems (duh), Firefox, and some Mac OS systems as well and apparently they’re working on some features to function with MSN Spaces, including a “My Games”, “My Friends”, and “My Achievements” sections. Look too, for the ability to go into XBox.com ahead of the 360 launch to get your picture, Card, motto, and other profile aspects all “prettied up” (as Hryb says) for launch day.
Brief Thoughts on the Live Integration:
The MVPs seemed to be most impressed by what Microsoft has done, and judging from what Hryb was able to show on the video, for good reason. The 360 is aiming for a seamless entertainment experience and creating a sense of community that doesn’t separate the multiplayer features of the console, from the interactive feedback of an online forum. I think this is a great idea, though I have reservations about “everything I do” on my 360 being posted on the web. What if I don’t want people to know my last five games because I’ve had an embarrassing fixation on Bratz? What if I don’t want to share my membership status (a direct reflection of the amount of cash you’ve put in the Microsoft coffers, you have to dish the dough to attain the gold)? I hope that these functions are optional, voluntary things, and not just something that I would have to live with if I were to buy a 360.
Although Hryb said it was necessary to ensure that the Gamer Card in the forum was “meaningful”, the sheer size of the things (occupying about a third of the screen width and the same in height, makes the forums a nightmare to navigate. You could seriously wear out your mouse wheel simply by scrolling through the daily posts. I would have liked to see them a little smaller and less graphically intensive, but I do understand the reasoning behind the design.
Scoble also posted a video about the XBox 360 in general. Hryb calls the 360 “a holistic product”, but I have another, more appropriate name for it: a computer. Through and through this thing is basically the same machine I’m currently typing on, but with a much better graphics card and a TV as a monitor. As I keep saying, I don’t want another computer, I don’t care that the 360 will connect to my home network and stream music and pictures from my computer (why wouldn’t I just play them on my computer I ask?). It’s even got a login profile for you to sign in to when you boot the thing up, just like my comfy little XP laptop. All your XBox info, including Live, Games, Media, and System options are accessible in “blades” (-cough-windows-cough-) from the startup screen, making your various forms of XBox entertainment simple to find and use.
What I did like were some of the controller functions. I absolutely applaud the fact that the console can be turned on, and shut down by using the XBox Live button (the silver button with the green X). I’m assuming, though it wasn’t shown, that the console can also be reset. Very nice, very convenient.
Brief Thoughts on the 360:
I still maintain that it’s not a console, it’s a computer, and a big, white, butt ugly one at that. Now that I’ve seen non-press release quality shots of the console, I’m even less impressed. It looks like an iPod with body dysmorphic disorder that was made for 3 cents by a poor child in China. It’s just, it’s ugly okay? And no one will ever change my mind otherwise. Say what you will about the functions, but they should have put as much effort into the visual appeal as they did making sure that the forum monkeys had pretty little icons to win. Even worse is the repulsive controller, which reminds me of a deformed Pilsbury Doughboy. It’s bulky, it’s clunky, and it too looks like a Mac cast-off.
Great integrated functionality, shockingly poor asthetics.
A note for the gentlemen out there: If you’re worried that your hunnie bunnie might be annoyed to get incoming game invites while she’s watching Steel Magnolias, never fear! Major Nelson assured the male-dominated MVP table that the messages could be temporarily suppressed “if your wife doesn’t want to see them”…
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