Geekshow

Suggestions For Improving XBox Live

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Online services have become a major feature for this generation of gaming consoles. All three major consoles have some sort of online features to supplement the content available on retail shelves. Xbox Live is arguably the most robust of the three services, but even the top dog has room for improvement.

The Facebook Factor

XBox Live already has several social aspects to it, most of them revolving around your Friends List. You can see when your friends are online, and you can see what they are currently playing when they are. You can browse through achievement lists and send messages. All of these things are nice, but there is room for more depth here.

I’m always checking to see what my friends are playing when they are online, but it would be even better if I could see the amount of time my friends spend on each game. Heck, it might be nice to see it for my own games, especially the ones that don’t tell you in-game. Live could then take this data and compile a chart or graph of player stats, tracking the type of gamer you are. You could quickly look at your friends and see that they spend a majority of their time playing RPGs or the amount of time spent playing multiplayer vs single player games.

Another addition to the social aspect of Live would be the ability to gift Marketplace points and/or content to your friends. Did you just download and play a really cool Arcade game, and you want to play it with your buddies? Rather than begging them to purchase it from the Marketplace themselves, it would be nice to be able to just send the game to them. Of course should this gifting feature ever be implemented, it should also come with the ability to create a wish list so your friends know what you want.

There are other possibilities as well. What if XBox Live allowed every user to create a homepage similar to those found on Facebook or MySpace? What if you could create specific challenges for your friends, similar to existing achievements? What if you could post tips, tricks, and random discoveries on games you’ve played for your friends to read if they wanted some help? What if you could sort your friends list into different groups such as “family” or “halo people”? There are dozens and dozens of small things that could be added to enhance the social aspects of XBox Live.

Notifications

I spend a lot of time browsing gaming related websites, but there are a lot of people who don’t. I am able to keep track of new content for the games I own fairly well, but it’s still easy for me to miss things that fly a little under the radar. If you don’t spend very much time online reading about games, you probably won’t know about very much of the new content available for your games. Currently, your XBox will notify you of title updates when you boot up a game, but it doesn’t really tell you about content that isn’t required to run the game.

What if your XBox would send you a message every time new content for the games you own is added to the Marketplace, whether you boot up the game or not? The system already keeps track of all the games you play for achievements. It shouldn’t be that difficult to send out a message about new DLC to all Live members who have save data for that particular title on their system. If more people knew about new content for their games, Microsoft might sell a few more content packs to customers who don’t actively seek out new game content.

Netflix

The capability to stream Netflix Instant View titles was arguably the best addition that came with the dashboard overhaul last fall. The feature has proven to be great for both Netflix and Microsoft, but it could be improved a bit. I understand that the two companies want a simple interface for this new content, so adding all the features from the Netflix website is out of the question. I’m not sure that I would want to search for titles without a keyboard anyway. However, I would like to be able to re-sort my queue list within the XBox interface. There have been several times that I have wished I could bump a title up to the top of my list (especially TV series) so that I don’t have to scroll through the list so much. By the time I go to the Netflix website, I have forgotten all about it until the next time I go to my queue on my XBox. Microsoft could easily add a couple sorting functions without sacrificing the streamlined interface.

Patching

Do you own The Orange Box for the 360? If so, have you noticed that the PC version of the game has received a ton of updates since it was released? Are you wondering where that content is for the 360? Restrictions on how they can patch their titles causes some developers to not even bother to update the 360 version of their games. If they do update a game, it can sometimes be delayed for a lengthy period of time. Developers will sometimes package a bunch of updates into one large package which means that the update will come long after the smaller updates on other versions of a game. If developers were more easily able to create multiple small patches for their games, they might be more willing to put the effort into doing so.

Some of the more popular titles to come out could also use dedicated servers for playing online. This could help ease stress on the network and prevent possible crashes of Live during a large influx of players. After a certain amount of time (or relative lack of use), the games could revert back to the normal servers.

Small Potatoes

A slight thing that will probably never happen is to be able to choose your startup menu panel, sort of like a home page. Would you rather your system show the games or video marketplace when your system starts up instead of the spotlight? It doesn’t really matter all that much, but some people, including myself, would probably enjoy having the option.

Gold subscriptions could be linked to your system instead of a gamertag. That way, any profile on the system can use the online features without having to use the specific profile registered on Live. They could even keep things the way they are now but add a “My Circle” type of function where you can link several other profiles on your system to the XBox Live account. Having to switch to another profile to access Live content can be a little annoying at times, so it would be nice if you didn’t have to.

The ability to straight-up purchase items in the marketplace rather than being forced to buy a certain amount of points would be a nice change. Making sure you have enough points in your account to buy content can get to be a hassle. Sometimes I just haven’t bothered with getting something because I don’t want to add a ton more points than what the content actually costs. If I could have purchased the content without adding a ton of extra points, I probably would have done so.

While we’re at it, I say Microsoft should get rid of the points system altogether in favor of listing normal prices. Nintendo’s online store also uses a points system, but at least their points easily translate into the corresponding dollar amount. Five dollars equals five hundred points on Nintendo’s system, but Microsoft points are a bit more convoluted where five hundred points actually equals $6.25. Microsoft’s points system seems a bit misleading as it is now, and I think it could use some revamping.

Written by PolygonWizard and SaberJ