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Inside the New Xbox Live - Part One
By Edge Staff
July 30, 2008
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“The idea is to move toward this channel metaphor, so you can see at a glance the types of things that I can do on my box, to make these things much more relevant about me,”
“We created a new medium. None of the other consoles were really thinking about online at the time. That was our focus – we were like a crazy bull running around a china shop.”
It’s a little after nine on a hot Monday morning, and we’re sitting on the worn leather sofa of one of the men who built Xbox Live. Scott Henson, now director of Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group, has spent the previous evening at home digging out artefacts from Xbox’s past – a disc of Re-Volt, the first game that ever ran on Live; a bottle of Champagne specially labelled to celebrate Live’s release on November 15, 2002; its original headset, a construction of such complexity that almost no one could initially figure out how it was meant to be worn.
It already seems a long time ago. It was a time before MySpace; blogs were around but hardly widespread, and the concept of social software was formative but was far from occupying the popular imagination as it does today. Most importantly, broadband was only just on the cusp of becoming common. In other words, when it was being conceived in 2001, voice chat, friends lists and all, Live was a risk, but one that Microsoft had initiated the day it decided to ship Xboxes with an Ethernet port as standard.
“Broadband was a big leap of faith, a monster bet,” Henson says with the benefit of hindsight. After all, since November 2002 Live has defined how game consoles would work online, and continues to far surpass all that its competitors have mustered in its wake. And since then, broadband uptake has spread widely all over North America and western Europe, faster than many forecasts supposed, and slowly the memberships of Live followed suit. The latest total of Live accounts, which includes both free Silver members as well as paying Gold subs, is well over 12 million. The bet, eventually, paid off.
With that surely in mind, Microsoft is making a new one. We’ve come to Xbox’s headquarters in Seattle because Microsoft is ready to show us how it’s looking to Live to take Xbox to a new level. It wants us to meet almost everyone that runs the Xbox business to understand the changes that it hopes will transform Xbox 360 from principally a gamer’s machine to an entertainment box for all.
I wish people would stop whining about an interface they haven't tried yet. "Oooh, it has avatars! The Wii has avatars! This is too kiddy!"- get over it. Avatars in my opinion add a lot to X-Box Live, especially in the way of personalization, something themes and backgrounds (all of which I'm not willing to pay for) don't. You can actually play online with these avatars in games like 1 vs. 100, which makes this more than just an aesthetic change, this is an upgrade.
So be a little more open-minded, and wait to try the damn thing before you bash it. It looks like it's simple and much more pleasing to the eyes than the current dashboard. Whether it actually is or not remains to be seen because I've seen very little about it so far, and I'm guessing most others who are so up-in-arms over the redesign have only seen that much too.
I agree the new interface sucks. Its way too kiddy, while making it confusing where everything goes (ie playing a mp4 video file thats on the hdd - is it My Xbox 360 or in Videos?) They're changing the demographic. Each console has its specific demographic. Xbox360 is for hardcore gamers who want good games that just work. Playstation3 is for hackers and hardcore gamers who are betting on future titles (plus ppl who just want a blu-ray player). Wii is for nongamers and community gamers.
I'm so bummed out by this "PSwii-pple" interface. I HATE the PS3 XMB...words floating in space has never appealed to me. I liked the old blade system...but really, it's how they catagorize the selection on Marketplace that are the problem. Why is it SO HARD to find the Comic-Con content? Hidden inside "TV" is not the way to go. Even the banner takes you to a graphical interface that doesn't have everything. It also has buttons you click on and nothing happens (like in the Comedy Meets Horror section.)
This new interface along with the avatar feels so "kiddie" to me. I'm not a fan of the clean white Wii look. I love the dark, hard edge of the 360 blades where I have my own themes that take up the whole screen and have Carbon trim.
I think it's a good thing to change the way we experience Xbox, but ripping off 3 other looks from other companies and combining it together is NOT the answer.
Please just bring Live to South Africa allready.
Or at least let us pay in RANDS, not Pounds!
That way we can also download 18+ content ffs.
But the new blade thing is nice looking, lets hope it is not to bandwith heavy for us poor folks in Africa.
All of this isn't worth a dime in getting new users from non-gamer demographic if you have an Xbox controller in your hands. Nintendo knows how to do it - anyone can use and likes to use the Wiimote as a pointer to chose channels on the screen. It seems they forgot that the important component of the interface is not just what you see but how you interact with it as well. Or maybe they didn't and we'll soon see the Xmote?
To put it in a plain question: how many Facebook users would there be if they were forced to chose options by arrow keys while the competition is offering a mouse?
After reading the secrets of menu design article, it seems that Msoft knows what makes a good menu system, in terms of functionality at least. It's all about the community features and simplicity. However, while I like the new design over the clunky old one, I still prefer the XMB, solely based on its graphical style. When I see the new Xbox interface, I can easily see its a Msoft product, as it's somewhat flat and uneventful. Just look at the main selections, My Xbox, Community. It's simple text-based buttons the player scrolls with the controller. Function-wise, its simple, but in terms of looks, it's boring as all hell. As an avid tech-user, it's far from the designs that are supplied by Apple or Sony. Those two seem to have a better grasp on letting users navigate menus in style (I mean, just look at the iPhone's interface). But there's where my complaints stop, as not everyone is like me. For non-gamers, this may be all that and a bag of potato chips, as most people don't mind simple looking menus, as long as it gets them to where they want to go. So maybe Msoft is doing the right thing. I would like more style to go with that functionality, but again, this is Msoft we're talking about. Nothing is ever pretty from them:)
After looking at it more, the iTunes style album/game scrolling idea is pretty cool, but it's odd that every selection within a category is it's own "page". Meh, whatever, it's better than what we have now, so I shouldn't complain.
good menu design? sound more like a good apple rip off, MS keeps surprising us with nothing but recycled ideas from other companies... shame on them.
Here is thinking Microsoft would be better spending its 43 Yahoo billions on Facebook instead. Time to raise your stake in the FB thing from 5-10% (what it is today) to 51% (controlling stake). It goes beyond gaming. It's about software markets.
It won't change anything on the search wars front, but being the clear leader of the social networking phenomenon with two or three steps ahead of all wannabe competitors is quite a valuable asset for the future if you ask me. Cross-integration of Xbox Live with the Window Live suite (Messenger) and Facebook would achieve just that.
Then News Corp can sell its obsolete mySpace for a thousands bucks, while Sony keeps promising Home will unleash its full power "real soon".