The Xbox Live fall update has been released, and with it, a number of changes including a “fancy” new interface that works with the Kinect, an ESPN hub that enables you to watch live and pre-recorded programming with your friends, and a slew of other features. It’s pretty cool, but after spending a few hours with it, we’ve discovered that there are still some improvements needing to be made. Here now are suggestions for Xbox’s spring update…if we have to wait that long, that is.
More Friends
We’ve been hearing about this for the longest time, ever since Microsoft shut down the original Xbox Live service that supported the likes of Halo and other older-generation games. But now is the time that Microsoft needs to expand its social capacity on Xbox Live, allowing us to hook up with more than a hundred people. Granted, some of us don’t really know that many, but think of all the people you can group together. You can keep your Call of Duty clan, Halo crew, family, friends, spouse, girlfriend, girl you’re dating on the side, or whoever, and group them wherever you wish without having to worry if you have the room to add them to the list or not.
And besides, with more friends on your virtual list, you’ll have better reason to take advantage of Xbox Live’s social services, including Twitter, Facebook, live Kinect video chat (which we’re getting a kick out of, by the way), ESPN and Netflix viewing parties. It’s hard to reach out to people that aren’t immediately accessible on your list, and even if you track them down, you run the risk of kicking off someone else. That shouldn’t have to happen.
Expansion of Current Services
We admit, ESPN on Xbox Live is a great haven for sports nuts. But it needs a little more smoothing out over time. For instance, we noticed that there was a separate channel set aside for NHL, and yet nothing on it. Microsoft should get on the ball and add this considering that Sony recently introduced the NHL GameCenter 2010 service to PlayStation Network. Furthermore, the company should try reaching out to some extent with the NFL, in order for ESPN to feel like the complete sports experience. Hey, if DirecTV can have their Sunday Ticket, why can’t Xbox have Sunday programming of its own? Is it too much to ask?
We’ve also noticed that Twitter and Facebook take a little longer to load than necessary, which Microsoft should start smoothing out so that users won’t struggle with as much. The Netflix viewing parties are fine, but we need more emoticons to express how we feel about a film. We can only “love” Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus so much before it starts to look like sick obsession.
As for other services, more Last.fm stations would hit the spot (let’s reach out for even more diverse channels) and Zune needs to offer some older movies to go with all the new releases. Oh, well, whatever we can’t find there, we’re sure we can dig up in our Netflix Instant Queue. We’ve got a ton of 80’s movies we’re still rifling through…
Information Loading
One thing that still has yet to be fixed with the Xbox Live service is loading. The biggest thing we’ve noticed is in regards to our own hard drive. It seems like we have to wait for about a minute or so in order for all of our Xbox Live games, saves and other data from the hard drive to show up in the menus. C’mon, it’s attached RIGHT TO THE SYSTEM. You would think that it would load up much quicker, despite all the add-ons and games we have on there.
We’ve also noticed that on-screen channels take some time to load up as well. For instance, when checking out the add-on listings, some of the pages take about 20-30 seconds to pop. That’s not horrible by any means, but we should spend less time browsing and more time playing. That’s what a game system is all about, right?
Expanded Kinect Menus
Okay, so the Kinect menu browsing system intrigues us. We like the voice activated prompts that let us do the work by speaking, and the hand-gesture stuff is cool, too, though not on the level of Minority Report. Not yet, anyway. For its next update, Microsoft should include full menu interaction, so we can go through all our options – not just the specific Kinect menu screen – to make our choices and see what the Xbox Live Marketplace has to offer. This is supposed to be the future, right? It shouldn’t be so antiquated.
1 vs. 100
Finally, we’re gonna take a longshot here and request the return of a game that brought us together better than Microsoft ever thought it would – 1 vs. 100. Why the company would cancel a game–no, an experience–such as this is beyond us. Yeah, we know the development team is already working on an equally social poker game of some sort, due for release next year, but 1 vs. 100 is easily more accessible amongst old and young players alike, and no one will really get frustrated with losing, as they’d laugh at their Avatar’s response to their good (or bad) luck. So, we’ll say it again – Big M, bring this back. We sorely miss it.
