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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.
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.
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
Gee, only 11?
Actually, there's only one.
The X-Box 360 clearly has heat management issues in some models (not most, but the early scuttlebut seems to be that it's more than one would expect.)
The author goes on some weird rant, based on the one and only 360 he has access to, speculating that other people's reports about overheating power supplied must be bullshit because his problem happened to seem to be with the CPU and/or graphics card.
So, why 10 more "problems"?
So you will have to load 10 more pages to read this useless "article." Nobody gives a fuck that there's not web browser built in to this game console (just like there's none in any other major console on the market), but you will need to load ad after ad to discover that such nitpicks are the best this joker can come up with.
Pathetic.
(Disclaimer: I don't own a 360, and won't unless or until there's a better selection of games available for it.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
Guess what? Here's your proof proving my outrageous claim. But I guess you won't believe it coming from the developers mouth?
Just because you have problems with the launch titles, doesn't mean everyone does. Kameo's a darned good game. PDZero, while flawed, is still fun, especially in co-op online. Call of Duty 2 is absolutely outstanding. So is PGR3. Those are the games I tried, and there's plenty more from the launch lineup (ie, out on the 22nd), that I'd like to play. So just because YOU don't like the games doesn't mean they were lacklustre.
Microsoft actually tends to do the opposite with their platforms. Office is sort-of a compatability miscreant(and it's all backwards compatable).
It causes all sorts of problems, because tons of legacy stuff is supported across OS versions and patches for exactly that. You could still run almost all DOS stuff as late as Windows 98. You can still run 95/98 stuff on 2k/XP. Etc. Etc.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
How hard would that be? They have an automatic updater in WindowsXP, couldn't they do the same for 360? And how would someone even introduce their own online virus code via the Xbox Live network?
Not saying it couldn't happen, because I know better than that. But what's the difference in potentially exploitable Windows PCs, and potentially exploitable 360s? The potential for exploit never stopped M$ from bundling IE in Windows. "Why should it hold them back on the 360?", was basically my question.
VOTE!
Ok, and those launches aren't really all that great. Sure, it's a smaller launch but everybody loves to act like the PS2 launched with MGS 2, FFX and GTA 3. The launch games weren't really significant, and the 360 compares more favorably when the Xbox Live arcade is taken into account, a feat many seem incapable of acheiving...
Also, other launches are more successful because they don't have the MS logo anywhere near them. The stigma of the Xbox being a PC just because it had the same parts was such a huge argument it's scary, and all the while Sony was almost completely PC-centric when designing the PS2.
"This is considered plagiarism."