Things I Wish the NXE Did

The NXE has been out for almost two weeks now, and I have to say my final reaction is similar to when I first played around with the Wii: total mind blow for the first couple of days, a little “meh” after that.  Granted, I am talking about a UI here, and not the whole console, but still a similar reaction: it could have been much, much better.

If I worked at Microsoft and I worked on this project, here is what I would try to implement:

Livelier Avatars: Making your avatar is pretty fun, but after you do it the first time, your toon kind of loses his charm.  At first, Lil’ level250geek brought a smile to my face; now, he’s just kind of there.  If I’m going to have an animated projection of myself, I want him to do all kinds of awesome stuff.  Let me flip to the “My Xbox” channel and see him doing a headstand.  Let him walk across the screen at random moments (say you’re browsing the Games Marketplace and he pops up, studies the title you’re looking at, scratches his chin thoughtfully).  And by all means, I shouldn’t have to go into the avatar creator and press “Save and Quit” just to see his adorable happy dance.  Do something with the avatars that Nintendo never did with their Miis: make them feel alive.

Subscription Options for TV series: The other night, I downloaded the entire first season of The Guild.  I had heard a good deal about the show but never got around to seeing it.  If you haven’t heard about it, and you play video games (specifically MMORPGs) do yourself a favor and go to YouTube right now and watch it (or, download it through Live–it’s free).  Well, I loved the show, and Felicia Day is cuter than a vat of kittens.  So I want to follow the second series.  Too bad that I’m liable to forget to check for updates, since I can’t just subscribe to the series.  Why I don’t know; iTunes does it just fine, what with their podcasts and “season tickets” for TV series’.  Speaking of iTunes and TV series’…

Buy the whole season of TV series’: Because nothing is more fun to pressing A and B for twenty minutes!  Just give me an option to buy them all in one fell swoop; I won’t even ask for a bulk rate discount if you just me freakin’ one-button bulk purchases!  I’m not kidding, I would have bought all of Battlestar Galactica, but I just can’t stand sitting there, confirming the purchase of every episode, when I could be playing games.

Launch games from anywhere: How cool would this be: I’m browsing the Marketplace and I decide I want to play the game in the drive.  Instead of having to back out of three menus, scrolling to that game, and launching it, I just press the Left trigger and BAM! I’m off to the races.

Bring me two sausage dogs with chili and cheese and an ice-cold Cherry Coke on demand. Hey, since I’m dreaming, dream big.

NXE: Thoughts

I sat down with the NXE last night and played around with it in full.  All in all, it’s pretty cool.  Completely ripped from Apple’s Cover Flow, but pretty cool.  The Avatars (no, I’m not going to ironically call them Miis, because they aren’t Miis) are incredibly awesome.  They have much more personality than the Miis, even with limited customization options (which are, might I add, nowhere near as limited as the customization options that Nintendo offers up).  I have an affinity for my Avatar that I never felt for my Mii.

Speaking of which, here’s the little guy.

It would be nice to have more clothing options, I will admit, and Microsoft promises bi-weekly updates for the next six months.  Hopefully, they are free or at least ridiculously cost efficent (30 new shoes for 40 points?  72 color choices for 40 points?  Not bad.  One pair of NIKE’s for 80 points=EXTORTION).

The new Dashboard is much more aesthetically pleasing, even if it is lifted right from Apple’s Cover Flow style used in iTunes.  It’s quicker, more streamlined, and more visual; a welcome break from the text-heavy Blades system.  While menus are still organized in multiple layers, the transition from one to another is much smoother.

I can’t speak on the Netflix streaming movies, because I suspended my Netflix account.  I may restart it just to use this feature though, as it does seem promising, especially considering I’m a more impulsive movie watcher.  Once in a while, it strikes me that I may want to see movie, and if I’m not in a mood for movies then that’s that–which is why I suspended my account in the first place.

The socialization options offered in the NXE are pure win.  Chat Parties are great if you and a bunch of buddies are all playing different games, but you want to talk to each other (and as one guy who in my Left 4 Dead game last night, it will allow dead players in Gears 2 to remain at least somewhat active).  It’s also great if you and some friends want to arrange your multiplayer sessions then and there, and the new Avatars give the friends list much more personality.

I have read of some problems with the NXE, with Red Rings a-plenty and Microsoft not exactly winning customer service awards, but hopefully the kinks will be worked out soon.  Even Gabe from Penny Arcade is having problems, it seems; hopefully his celebrity will be enough to motivate the engineers into overdrive hot-fix mania.  Maybe Microsoft rushed the release, wanting to beat out Sony’s Home.  Since we all know that Home is never coming out anyway, that was a mistake on their part: or it could just be Microsoft being reliable in their tendency to be less-than-efficient.

If you are one of the lucky ones though, then the NXE is a refreshing take on the soulless Dashboard of old, with more options to game with your friends and a more streamlined interface all around.

OMG NXE w00t!

As we speak, my 360 is updating to the NXE.  In just a few short minutes, I’ll be making my avatar and navigating what will hopefully be a quicker, cleaner, more lemony-fresh UI.  You would think I would be using this time to play some no-wait WoW (it’s not even 7:00 AM server time on Kilrogg), but no; I’m staring at my TV, waiting for the progress bar to go all the way to the right, sipping my tea (hmmm, tea), and imagining mind how I’m going to make my avatar.

Should I make him all realistic, with the gut and shaggy hair and nerd glasses, or should I make an idealized version of myself?  Speaking of avatars, Left 4 Dead should allow custom characters.  I understand that the four stock characters allow for some quick reference action (if you’re playing with somebody with a Gamertag like “n4bzlikLOL” you just shout out their character’s name when you want to get their attention), but surviving the zombie apocalypse would be a lot more…personal…if you got to design your own avatar.  I’m not saying throw in a convoluted XP system–one reason I love this game is for it’s inherent simplicity, the fact that it feels more like a board game than a video game–but it would be nice to design my own toon.

I guess the fact that there is an achievement called “Brain Salad” makes up for that, and if loving a game that rewards popping zombie heads into a gooey pulp is wrong then I don’t ever want to be right.

Well, the progress bar is almost to the right.  Time to play with upgrades kids!

EDIT:It seems that you can get a PNG file of your avatar to use for all kinds of fun stuff!  Pop the following URL in your browser, replacing “GAMERTAG” with your…um…gamertag…and there you go.  You can slap the little dude (or dudette) onto and into anything, thanks to the format that he’s saved in (essentially a JPG with a transparent background).  Expect much avatary hijinks in the future.

Here’s the URL you need:  “http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/GAMERTAG/avatar-body.png”