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11 Design Mistakes of the Xbox 360
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad.com has posted an article discussing 11 design flaws of the Xbox 360, ranging from gaming to Xbox Live Marketplace issues." From the article: "Mistake #2: No MSN Music - I'm as much of a fan of DRM as everyone else (which is to say I don't like it), but with Microsoft already charging gamers for Xbox Live Gold support, it would have been possible for Microsoft to offer discount service "bundles" allowing you to buy unlimited subscriptions to the MSN Music library at rates less than you would have to pay for Napster or Rhapsody. Gamers would have had an opportunity to get music cheaper and add one extra weapon in the console battle against Sony." I'm not so sure some of these are that big a deal. I'm more than a little glad the 360 has no web browser.
Gee, only 11?
I only mod funny =D
I don't see why they couldn't include this, either. I remember being upset that Sony didn't include one with the PS2 network adapter. 360, being a Microsoft product, should surely have shipped with a bundled IE of some form or fashion.
Even though I prefer Firefox, MS really dropped the ball without including a simple browser.
VOTE!
I'm more than a little glad the 360 has no web browser.
Why?
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
The biggest thing to me is how much potential Microsoft has each time with its consoles and how they manage to not even come close to fulfilling any of it. They have hands-down the best online system, they have the raw power, they have the money, they have the marketing, they have the glitz and glamour... yet they fall flat on their face and have a pitiful pricing structure for the marketplace, poor launch lineup (with Kameo way too overhyped), design issues/flaws, no titles supporting the multiple threads (not even 1st party title or even just ONE game), barely shipping any units, hassling customers about defective units (and now not giving shipping dates even), basically lying about shipping every week up to Christmas, Lying about the power supply issues, the preposterous claims about the "best launch lineup ever," the unknown number of complaints AFTER Christmas once they are all opened, the confusion that will be had over two different versions of the 360, the piss-poor backwards compatability issues, and on and on...
11 flaws is being kind, no matter what your stance on the 360 is.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I know that I'm going to get flamed my the pro-console/anti-PC gaming group, and I really don't mean it to be. But after reading through that whole article and looking at all of the points that he made, he seems to have inadvertently said that we wants his 360 to be a PC!
No MSN music. The PC already has it.
No HDMI support. The PC already has it.
No web browser -- although is that really a bad thing? I need not mention the browser options on a PC here.
No WMV-HD or MPEG-4 AVI playback. PC has it.
Even the point about no pressure-sensitive face buttons is equated on a PC though an analogue joystick.
Honestly, this just adds to my confusion about why the console vs PC argument can get so heated. I am NOT saying that to be a troll or flame. I know that a lot of console fans are ready to hit me with the "troll" or "flamebait" mods, but I honestly do not understand the whole rage for consoles any more. I've never understood it from the time that PCs could be (easily) connected to TVs.
That being said, I am fully cognizant of the arguments regarding having minimum PC specifications (CPU speed, RAM, video chipset). They're completely viable arguments and I agree that minimum system specifications are the biggest problems with PC gaming. Console games are meant to work with a single platform and that does indeed help to provide a consistency across all of the games for that particular platform onthe part of the designed. I will not argue that point.
But now PCs can be connected to TVs easily (almost all modern video cards support DVI or at least S-Video) and do just about everything that the article's author is asking for in his 360. Even the PS3 is supposed to have keyboard and mouse support!
Why does he not just use a console for gaming and a home theatre PC for everything else, both of which can be connected to the same audio system and same TV often through separate connections? Don't get me wrong. I still have my ol' Nintendo 64 hooked up and I do play it when I have the time and inclination. I wouldn't mind owning a PS2 or even a PS3 when it comes out. I wouldn't rule out buying a second-hand Xbox. I am *not* anti-console. But I just don't understand how someone can want so much from a console then spurn the PC that's probably sitting in an adjoining room.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
My wife would kill me, if I tried to set up the PC in the living room.
That's probably why most (married) people don't opt for it.
VOTE!
Personally, the only reasons I would own a console are a) if they didn't release some uber-game for the PC, or my computer wouldn't be able to run it for years, and b) consoles just work, in general. You don't get crash bugs because you don't have the right version of video card drivers. You don't lose all the music in the game because you have an unsupported sound card. I've only EVER seen two consoles fail, my roommate's Gamecube for some bug in the specific one he owned (mine never did that), and that was with only one game, and then one time with my old dreamcast, when I fell through the floor in one part of Sonic Adventure.
However, PCs tend to be much more moddable, so it usually balances out. Stuff doesn't crash and explode often enough for it to be a problem for me, and I've never gotten hardware that just randomly didn't work with something (except when the linux kernel driver for my mobo sound stopped working, but that got fixed eventually...)
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Why is the author even trying to venture a guess into the overheating problems of the 360? He makes wild assumptions about what's going on inside and then ventures some random "20% increase in fan speed" as to the fix of it. Unless you have a spec sheet in front of you, don't try and make an "educated" guess about things like this.
I haven't had one crash with my 360 related to the heating of it. I had a scratch on my PDZ disc that caused it to freeze up, but got a new copy and everything's been clear sailing since. Saying there have been constant problems is a little bit unfounded. If there was something *seriously* wrong with the console, they would have recalled it a long while ago. Maybe MS's 3% figure is a little low, but it's not 99% like the author wants to believe...
Tim Dorr
Owner/Manger
A Small Orange
I understand that, and I once was worried about that myself. The thought of keyboard and mouse wires all over the floor was not a pleasant thought. Then I started searching for a wireless keyboard with a trackball or touchpad built into it or at least a separate, wireless trackball. So, the PC can sit in the back corner with the wireless keyboard/trackball next to the sofa. If the issue is one of having a PC case, there are a number of PCs out there that are quite small. There are a few models from HP, Gateway, and, of course, Shuttle that are very nicely compact and should fit into just about any entertainment center.
:)
So, within reach would be the console and PC, both ready to be accessed by changing the audio input on the home theater audio and the video input on the TV. Get wireless controllers for all of the involved units and there's no reason for anyone to not have all of the capabilities that the article's author stated right there, ready to be accessed with no wires and no bulky PC tower sitting somewhere.
Or if you REALLY want that, grab an older laptop and throw a wireless network adapter on it. I know, I know, that's a lot of money, but you can't expect any console to gain the functionalities of PCs with having a higher price tag. So, any point about spending more money is probably moot. And making a laptop into an HTPC would be better because they're really thin, comparatively speaking, and can do everything that the author says is missing from the 360! (Lots of fully capable laptops on eBay. No one said that it has to be new!)
That's why I don't really understand the desire for more PC-like functionality in consoles. All of us have PCs. Probably all of us have a spare PC hanging around. So, convert one of the spares to an HTPC. Console + HTPC + TV with multiple inputs + stereo system with multiple inputs = everything that the article's author wants.
By the way, I'm married, too, and my wife doesn't have a problem with an HTPC as long as it's wireless in network and keyboard. So marriage isn't necessarily a barrier to an HTPC/console combination.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
So tell me, does your keyboard and mouse rumble? Can they vibrate due to actions in the game? I've noticed this to be a difference in playing COD2 on PC vs. COD2 on 360.
In fact this has been a problem for years now (considering many XBOX games have the rumble/vibrate feature as well)
How is this MSN music thing the author mentions a DESIGN flaw?
After all, it could be added to XBOX 360's via an update if MS decided to do it. I figure many things will be added over the lifespan of the 360.
Personally, the only reasons I would own a console are a) if they didn't release some uber-game for the PC, or my computer wouldn't be able to run it for years, and b) consoles just work, in general.
Agreed on both counts, and the refusal of developers to release some console uber-games on the PC really pisses me off. But in fairness there are a lot of demographics involved as well.
Halo, for instance. We all know how that game is effectively what sold the original Xbox in the beginning. When I played the PC version, I was unimpressed. It was another FPS as far as I'm concerned. (I want to see GoldenEye upgraded for the PC! Drool, drool!)
But I for one will not spend hundreds of dollars on a new console just to play a few games that aren't available for the PC. I think that's a bit of arrogance that a lot of console makers and console game developers have. I'll either wait to get the console (and possibly the game) second-hand, which means that they get no money, or I'll do without, which means they get no money. But I'm probably in the minority on that.
I feel the need to stress again that I'm not anti-console. I just don't understand the fervor for it that obviously millions of people have. I just don't understand how the author can actually complain because the 360 doesn't have those features, yet the PC on which he created his article DOES! Considerng how the prices of some new PCs are the same as the 360, "console fever" further confuses me.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I'm sorry, but you can't convince me that a vibrating controller feature is a clear reason to spends hundreds of dollars for a console as opposed to a PC. Forget graphics; forget sound; you are pleased to have spent $400+ to play CoD with a rumbling joystick?
You're exactly the kind of hard-core console user that exacerbates my confusion. Although to be fair, I also don't understand the people who will pay $500+ for a video card for their PC, either.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
My wife would kill me, if I tried to set up the PC in the living room.
Two words:
Mac
mini
It's the ultimate "wife friendly" HTPC. Set it up properly, program your remote with the Keyspan buttons and the thing looks (and works) exactly like a DVD player when you're watching movies.
Pull out the bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and you've got an okay game machine for World of Warcraft, the Sims, Halo, etc.
Connect an EyeTV 500, and you've got PVR functions for the free over-the-air HDTV signals. (Yeah, yeah... box specs say you need a G5 for 1080i. Guess what, the mini downscales smoothly and good LCD's upscale well enough that you'll probably never notice the difference. "1/4 Def" is still a higher res than you get from a DVD.
The only pain-in-the-ass element is audio. If you want DTS or Dolby Surround you will need to buy a USB-TOSLink converter box, and the only company who makes such a creature for the Mac right now is M-Audio, who makes okay "pro" devices, but flimsy consumer gadgets with clumsy driver software.
Still, a media room computer plus marital bliss just might be worth the $1140 you'll spend. ($600 mini, $100 RAM, $300 EyeTV box, $60 Keyspan remote, $80 USB audio box.)
Better still, wait until the mini "2" comes out sometime after next month. If the current iMac is any indicator, it might very well save you the trouble of buying either the remote or the M-Audio box, while handling HD signals even better thanks to a spiffy new dual-core Intel chip.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No MSN music. The PC already has it.
No web browser -- although is that really a bad thing? I need not mention the browser options on a PC here.
I'm with you so far, but then...
No HDMI support. The PC already has it.
The PC can't play Xbox 360 games. I think the author is concerned that people with HDMI-input-only TVs are going to end up getting the short end of the stick in terms of a digital connection for their Xbox.
No WMV-HD or MPEG-4 AVI playback. PC has it.
Not everyone has a PC hooked up to their TV. I did, when I had a small apartment. But now that I have a separate room for my computer gear versus regular entertainment electronics, I don't have a way to watch anything other than plain-Jane DVDs in my living room. Eventually I'll get around to building a quiet media PC, but it's not something I can afford for awhile.
I won't own a 360 for awhile either, but it would have been nice to finally have a piece of hardware that could play the WMV-HD T2 DVD I got years ago with the Ultimate Edition.
Now, my nits to pick with the article:
Mistake #11: No pressure sensitive face buttons
The travel distance on console controller buttons is so small that I don't see the point. A friend of mine loved this PS2 feature in Baldur's Gate, but I think it would be more hassle than it's worth.
The system-wide video calibration is a really good point, though. Pretty much every console I've ever owned could have used that. The transaction security is also important, although not to me because I hate online gaming and refuse to buy into the nickel-and-dime-to-death model that MS is pushing on the 360.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I've had a force-feedback joystick on my PC for years and years (fighting weapon recoil pushing the stick up is much more fun than a playing with a directionless rumble pack), and you can buy PC controllers with rumble if you want them.
Still, more software support would be nice, and a USB rumble peripheral - wristband maybe - would be cool. Apart from the endless sex-toy jokes.
Microsoft seems to make it a habit to offer no compatibility, sometimes even between their own products. Another example is that godforsaken winmail.dat file I'm always getting when newbies send me attachments in Outlook 97/2000. Gmail and yahoo transparently convert these for me, but good ole MS's hotmail.com doesn't. With hotmail, you need to download your own winmail.dat decoder and extract the files if you don't have access to Outlook.
Why doesn't MS offer compatibility between their own formats??? The world may never know...
Mistake #11: No pressure sensitive face buttons
I disagree this is a mistake. Most games don't make use of this feature because for the user, there is little feedback regarding what is going on. How exactly do I push the face button half-way down? 1/4 way? All the way? I can't, really. I can just mash it with my thumb, and hope that I am getting what I want.
Sound is so much better on a console than my desktop, but admittedly only because my console is plugged into my home theater.
For some odd reason, it's always feels weird to play a PC game with surround sound, but seems perfectly natural for a console.
I think the author of the article is a bit off on wanting it to be like a PC but for a different reason.
YOU may like a gaming PC just fine. But a PC is a lot more complex. It is more difficult to use, more difficult to keep going, requires knowledge of what is in it, and more prone to problems. Plus it's easy to screw it up.
For someone who's comfortable with PCs already, those are no problem. You know your way around a PC. Installing and using a game is cake. Not everyone is so enthusiastic about using a PC though. That's where game consoles come in. They are an appliance, not a computer. You stick in a game, and turn it on. And it works. You know the game will work with your hardware because it is what it was developed for. There is no complexity. You just stick a game in and turn it on. Pretty difficult to screw up.
On the other hand, the more like a PC a console becomes, the more complexity is introduced. Suddenly you lose that simplicity of it being a gaming appliance, and gain the complexity of it being a PC. Admittedly it's still simpler than a true PC, but not a whole lot.
Then there's people like me. I'm perfectly computer literate and perfectly capable of setting up a HTPC. I play some games on my PC, and have what was considered a leading edge gaming system a couple years ago. But unless there is a good reason to get the PC version of a game, my preference is to get the console version. It's just easier to deal with. It's the same reason I have a TiVo instead of setting up a computer with similar functionality.
Those millions of people that buy consoles are people that don't want to deal with the hastle of a computer for gaming, for whatever reason.
Some of the author's expectations would cost too much to add into the system at this time. Perhaps if MS waited longer the price would drop on adding them, but not right now. Cases in point:
Other items would have added to the development time of the product. If you work in software development you should be familiar with the concept of having to cut features in order to release in time. I think these items are of this category:
Then there's just design decisions that the author disliked:
Then the one that are probably licensing related (if not it probably belongs with "No WMV-HD DVD Playback" above):
That leaves us with a real flaw:
Calling somebody else's opinion 'pathetic' because 'no one' gives a fuck??
Seems more like a troll to me.
With regards to MSN music, this isn't a design flaw of MS, its a design flaw of the RIAA.
ANY new music distribution system, even that mirroring avialable Internet services, must be approved by the RIAA. Even though the Xbox Live service uses the Internet as a backbone, the RIAA considers it a different medium for music distribution, and so must agonize over whether the Xbox360 has appropriate DRM protection and cannot be used as a platform to pirate music. The bottom line is, there is probably some pending approval for the idea of selling/subscribing to music on the Xbox360 stuck on some RIAA desk.
Like the PSP and its obvious lack of online music integration, to believe that it is simple to establish a new market for online music sales suggests a total lack of understanding of the process of getting approval by the RIAA. Is MS had to wait for RIAA approval before integrating online music sales in the Xbox360, then we may have seen Windows Vista 2 long before the Xbox360.
Apple fought tooth and nail to get their iTMS established, and in other markets around the world, the process for getting approval by the appropriate local music cartel is slow, painful, and full of ignorance it isn't even funny. Even with the well established and successful iTMS in the US, it took Canada 2 years to get into the game, and some places like Australia and Japan are still pending or have just been approved. Every other legit online music service has had to jump through hoops to prove that their service will not be used as a sorce of piracy.
I doubt MS ignored the potential for the Xbox360 to be used as a retail marketplace for music and video, they did bank on the Live to have improved services for game sales. If it was entirely up to MS, they would have integrated MSN Music directly in the XBox360 at launch. Just as I would assume that Sony would have integrated a Sony based music store for their PSP product.
This is yet another example of how far behind the times the music industry is, how anal and overprotective they are of their copyrights and the fact they are stagnating the music industry by stonewalling any new innovative services or markets for online music sales.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If you have Half-Life 2 for the PC, some modders are making both GoldenEye and PerfectDark into mods. I'm not sure if they will have the single player content, but the multiplayer is going to be there. It is supposed to be as close as they can get to the original, with a few extra stuff thrown in (like jumping).
I don't think it is coming out for a while, though.
Surprise!
You mean Microsoft didn't include the features they easily could have, but which someone might argue would cut into their Windows XP Media Center Edition/Xbox 360 Media Center upgrade market?
I'm shocked and stunned.
I agree with you on pressure sensitive face buttons, there's just no point. I've played one game so far that even used them, Star Ocean 3, and that used them in a way that was absolutely annoying (you had to press the button in four different ways to solve some puzzles, each wrong press would mean a battle). The only acceptable analog buttons are shoulder buttons with at least half a centimetre of travel distance (e.g. GC L/R buttons) and even those are used almost never.
Though I think some XBox games used analog face buttons (DOA Volleyball, for example) and that would cause trouble with the backwards compatibility.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Mistake #1: Overheating CPU or GPU
.5% of the 360 target market cares. Not worth the extra development $$.
-Actually it is the separated power brick.
Mistake #2: No MSN Music
-This can be incorporated at any time through the marketplace. When the legal issues are sorted I expect it.
Mistake #3: No HDMI support
-Not needed. Microsoft has tested HDMI with the 360 and found there was no improvement in quality.
Mistake #4: 20GB is too small
-What? The hard drive was designed for XBOX Live Arcade games and MP3's (to play during games). Anything larger should be streamed from a media center.
Mistake #5: Microtransaction Security
-Have to do more research here.
Mistake #6: No Web Browser
-This introduces more problems than it's worth.
Mistake #7: No WMV-HD DVD Playback
-About
Mistake #8: No MPEG-4 AVI playback (i.e. XviD, etc)
-See #7
Mistake #9: No System-Wide Video Calibration
-This is just false. There is a universal option to change from Full/Wide screen and -420p/720p/1080i.
Mistake #10: Poor DVD Playback Quality
-Probably representative of your TV. I see the same quality on mine as any other DVD player that doesn't upconvert.
Mistake #11: No pressure sensitive face buttons
-yawn
... most of those things can be addressed by software updates.
In fact, I am willing to bet that, right around the time of the PS3 launch, several of those "missing" features will be announced - specifically, MSN music and web browsing.
As for the other stuff - small hard-drive, for example - I can see MSFT selling upgrades for people who've run out of space.
The 360 is designed to allow plenty of room for upsales. Would I spend $1000 on a console in one shot? Hell no. Would I spend $1000 on a console if it were spread out in dribs and drabs over 5 years? Maybe not, but it's a lot more likely than the up-front expenditure.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You know, things that anyone with an HDTV should already have and have used, and come with different DVD movies (Fight Club and The Incredibles are two off of the top of my head).
Yeah, it might have been nice to have thrown in there, but a design mistake? No.
Despite the lack of some features, I actually agree with this strategy. It's a console whose main purpsoe is playing games. They also expanded it to do some other things you'd like to do with a system hooked up to your TV and surround sound receiver -- play movies, music, display pictures.
If they released a keyboard, an internet browser, a word processor, you'd end up with a PC that can also play Xbox games. Besides cutting into other markets that they probably don't want to overlap, it also adds clutter to the interface, and adds new potential points of failure and hassle.
I think they've made a good compromise between functionality and features, while retaining ease of use and simplicity.
The Xbox 360 is being marketed as more than a game console, it's being shown as a digital media hub. No MSN music. The PC already has it. Yes but wouldn't you like to be able to simply download songs with a subscription service you already have and use the songs ingame. Loading your MP3 player with music from the 360 would be nice considering since you can hook up your MP3 player and play songs off it already. No HDMI support. The PC already has it. Yes and without it you won't be able to play protected HD video that you would be able to purchase from the Live Marketplace. No web browser -- although is that really a bad thing? I need not mention the browser options on a PC here. Again a central media hub should provide a way to easily check your email, IM, and hit some websites. You can get your email and IM with the MCE Extender functionality, but having this functionality without needing a MCE would be very nice. No WMV-HD or MPEG-4 AVI playback. PC has it. The Xbox Media Center was a major selling point for modchips on the original Xbox. By enabling the ability to play these types of files by default you'd add a nice feature that would get more people to upgrade, and give people less of a reason to mod. Also for WMV-HD. The 360 is supposed to be a huge HD content driven console, and it can't play Microsoft's HD format videos? Even the point about no pressure-sensitive face buttons is equated on a PC though an analogue joystick. Not even close to the same thing. The original Xbox and PS2 both have pressure-senstive face buttons. Not many games made good use of them, but the ones that did really enhanced the experience. Why does he not just use a console for gaming and a home theatre PC for everything else, both of which can be connected to the same audio system and same TV often through separate connections? Home theatre PCs are pretty nice however they are expensive and a majority of them don't fit with the rest of the AV components well. We'll have to see what Sony does with the PS3. I also won't just put off his comments as typical complaining. The 360 and PS3 are supposed to be trojan horses into your living room slowly becoming the center of your entertain experience. His article is mainly describing all of the additional changes Microsoft could have made, but feel flat doing.
XBox360 has an extender built into it. I haven't gotten my hands on the 360, but I have a hardware media center extender, and some of the points made in this article are fixed by simply having a MediaCenter somewhere in the house (I recently read that 50% of new home PCs sold now run Media Center Edition)
#2 - MSN Music is on MCE.
#6 - Seems like it would be easy to write an MCE HTML app to make browsing reasonable on an xbox. I've been planning on getting around to writing this myself, just haven't wanted it THAT bad.
#7 - WMV-HDs are DVDs with a WMV file on them. I'm curious to find out Media Center can play that video directly off the DVD like it was in your My Videos folder.
#8 - Playing around with VLC to convert these files to mpeg or WMV would make this work
Pressure sensitive buttons can be useful. It's just that most games out there don't even try to do anything with them. Examples good use: Any decent racing game(that should be a no brainer) and Metal Gear Solid 2/3. In the game, when you have a weapon equiped, you press down the fire button to aim the weapon. Releasing the button makes you fire the weapon. If you take aim and decide not to fire, you can slowly let off the button and put down weapon without firing.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
Home theatre PCs are pretty nice however they are expensive
:)
Not trying to take your whole statement out of context, but this one struck me because it's absolutely not true. You can make a decent HTPC out of nothing more than
* an 800 MHz Athlon
* An ATI All-In-Wonder card (even the old AIW 7200 had everything that was necessary including remote)
* Sound Blaster Live 5.1
* whatever hard disk space you want
All of these parts can be purchased on the cheap on eBay, if you don't already have them. (And we can't really be considered to be geeks unless we have a few spare systems laying around, right?) Playing DVDs is NOT CPU intensive for the most part. I can watch DVDs on my 450 MHz Pentium II laptop in full screen without issue.
If you get into high-quality DIVX or WMV, yes, you'll need something beefier, but even brand new systems that are more than up to the task in memory and CPU power can be purchased for less than $400. Even if you need to buy another video card, HTPC cards - even high-def - are not outrageously expensive if you know where to look, and no one said that you need the best of the best. As I mentioned before, my AIT AIW7200 does time-shifting, has a remote, can take complete control of what I watch on the TV, and has software like that gives me the ability to record a future show just be double-clicking on it.
As for hard drives, I just bought a 200 GB drive on NewEgg for less than $100. That's a sh*tload of hours of Divx movies, even in high quality.
Sorry, but if you think that HTPCs are expensive, then it's glaringly evident that you've never tried to buy or build one, or else you're trying to buy an Alienware version.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
LOL, instead you get crash bugs because you have not religiously followed the manual where to put your power brick.
Pressure sensitive buttons are a waste. Too little value and too much of a pain to deal with.
Pressure sensitive TRIGGERS, however, are great. The Xbox, 360, and GC all had great implementations. The PS2, not so much, because the shoulder buttons there still don't have enough travel space or proper feedback. I get the impression that the PS3 is still going to fail in this regard.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
No MSN music. The PC already has it. Yes but wouldn't you like to be able to simply download songs with a subscription service you already have and use the songs ingame.
That's why you download them on the PC and use Windows Media Center/Windows Media Connect to stream from the PC to the 360. It's like having MSN music on the Xbox 360 - only better.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Music subscription songs are DRM protected, and I can't say for sure but I don't believe they are supported on the 360. I remember reading about them not being transferable off of MP3 Players, but I'm not sure about streaming them. Either way you can't use them as ingame soundtrack songs.
If Microsoft include a web browser in the game console, it can harm their core business that is selling Windows OS for PC. What's the main usage of PC in home today, web browsing, email, and what?
On the other hand, PSP already has a web browser embedded in its firmware and PS3 will too.
Many of the mistakes made were basic design flaws, like the following:
/.)
Mistake #1: Overheating CPU or GPU
I've rarely bought PC systems that had serious overheating problems. The only system I can think of off the top of my head was a white box dual Opteron server (back when they were initially intoduced) that would overheat if crammed in the closet. Like the 360, this system was built with inadaquate cooling (the problem was more egregious on the server because it was in a HUGE case to accomodate a RAID array).
This problem is actually easily dealt with. As discussed in the article all that is really necessary is to increase the power of the fans substantially, that would increase the noise but cest la vie.
Mistake #2: No MSN Music
This is basically a crock. You can buy music on your PC and then play it on your 360, PC, or a portable player. And you can do it with iTunes, Rhapsody, etc. It strikes me that this is FAR more useful than having your music stuck on the 360. It's clear that MS is targeting people that either own PCs or have easy access to them. (which describes most people on
Mistake #3: No HDMI support
While claim and claim is made about Microsoft offering HDMI or DVI support in the future "with a special cable," I find these rumors very hard to believe. If HDMI support was as trivial as making a cable, don't you think Monster Cable or any of the 3rd party manufacturers would have already made a cable
Pacific Cable has one http://www.pacificcable.com/Xbox-360-VGA-DVI-Conve rter.html. It's "only" $650 though. I'm assuming it contains an Analogue to Digital Converter at that price, which means that the "official" kit will probably have to do something similar. The PS3 will almost certainly have a HDMI port (or DVI port, they're very similar). Still, this is completely dropping to ball over at MS. More rush to market madness.
Mistake #4: 20GB is too small
The author is just high on this one. 20GB is plenty if you aren't hosting music, video, etc. on the 360 which is exactly what was intended. The author of the article does not apparently grasp the concept of Windows Media Extender. The idea is that you have a central "server" Media Centre PC and then you use Extender boxes as remote front-ends for the PC on your Home Theatre, etc. The 360 just has the same functionality as those $100 UPnP boxes you can get at Frys, like this thing http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318&sec=1 from D-Link. These things have NO hard drives.
Mistake #4: 20GB is too small
The big downside of the HD is that it's 2.5", so it's slow (probably faster than the XBOX HD though). The author seems to have forgotten the entire purpose of the HD was disk caching to make games load faster, making the internal HD USB2 is a terrible idea in this context.
Mistake #5: Microtransaction Security
Beyond nit-picking. In the U.S., you don't have any liablity if the 360 is stolen, etc. In Europe you DO, but you're probably already using a debit card for this reason. Hell, if you're in the US you're probably using a debit card too because of the lovely 30% interest rates we're seeing (rant, rant).
Mistake #6: No Web Browser
Yeah, this sucks ass. If you want to defend MS on this one, explain how the 360 doesn't have a web browser but the DREAMCAST did? It seems like this would be trivially easy to add (MS could even update through Live if they felt it necessary) and users would like it. The fact that MS even has a specialized product for this niche (MSNTV, formerly WebTV), and consequently had ready-made software, is even more mystifying.
Mistake #9: No System-Wide Video Calibration
This is a real complaint, but the author is making it in an obtuse way. The problem is that the 360 is "optomized" for