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Project Gotham Racism (Xbox 360 annoyance #001)
Justin Nolan over at 360insider blogs about one of our key annoyances with Project Gotham Racing 3 and Call of Duty 2. When in a multiplayer match, smack talk is expected. But some people who play on Xbox Live are sometimes very foul, probably in part because they feel immune from punishment.
The issue is that PGR3 and other games lack an on-screen indicator showing who is talking. If you want to leave negative feedback for the jerk who thinks that black people should not be allowed to play video games, you can't, because you don't know which of the people you're playing with spouted the hate in the first place.
It needs to be fixed. This is not an optional feature in an online game with voice.
Xbox 360 wireless controllers aren't (Xbox 360 annoyance #002)
Before we get all nitpicky it should be noted out of fairness that the Xbox 360's designers had no easy task. They wanted to give gamers the beauty and convenience of a wireless controller, but they also needed to make sure that help is near when batteries run low in the middle of a critical Xbox Live competitive experience. Hot-swapping of batteries isn't an option in high-stakes scenarios (those of you who are in league 1 of Project Gotham Racing 3 know what we mean).
The only solution to these conflicting concerns is to create a controller that accepts a power cord for charging at any time.
Unfortunately, Microsoft's designers underestimated gamer laziness. Rather than use the play-and-charge kit only when the controllers need to be charged, we find ourselves just leaving them plugged in all the time because it's too much trouble to neatly wrap up then put away the play-and-charge kit. Once we started leaving it in the system, we were able to recharge the controllers more conveniently, but now our living room looks messy! The core wireless design aesthetic has been ruined.
Like us, most gamers are going to leave their play-and-charge cables plugged in to the Xbox 360 so that when their controller runs out of juice they can charge it up conveniently. At that point, it doesn't matter if you disengage from the play-and-charge for wireless gaming because you've still got a spaghetti monster's worth of wires spilling out from your Xbox 360.
Essentially, we're now back to wired controllers. Even if Microsoft were to release the mysteriously absent battery charger, we'd be subject to the fundamental risk of play interruption. But at this point, anything's better than these damned wires.
Stupid download screen limbo (Xbox 360 annoyance #003)
File this one under bad UI design. When downloading content in the Xbox 360 Marketplace, a small dialog box shows your download progress. While this dialog box is in place, you can access no other content on the Xbox 360 if you want your download to finish.
Surely the system can multitask, but perhaps the designers of the system wanted to make sure that the hard drive and Internet connection on the Xbox 360 wasn't busy with any other task when gamers were playing a game. In this way, the system would appear to be speedy and there would be no risk of the sluggishness that tends to plague any computer that is tasked with too many jobs.
And yet, we still think it dumb. The download feature should allow users to select content, add it to a download queue (see the playlist feature of the music player—this functionality should be extended to downloads), and then do other stuff on the system.
Xbox 360 can't fast forward trailers (Xbox 360 annoyance #004)
This first image shows the media controls when playing a trailer downloaded from the Xbox 360 marketplace. Note the extremely simple controls. The widget is lacking fast forward and rewind, not to mention step forward, and other functions that are included on even $50 DVD players.
This second image shows the controls available when playing a DVD on the Xbox 360. Why are the controls so much more limited for downloaded content? Why is this feature crippled for downloaded content?
This is annoying.
Plastic doesn't taste nearly as good as chocolate (Xbox 360 annoyance #005)
The clock chimes once, snapping you out of your gamer's haze as your fingers continue to instinctively manipulate the controller. It's 1:00 AM on a Sunday, and you're at the turn of a nonstop 48-hour gaming marathon. Your stomach growls—you haven't eaten since Thursday. The fridge has been empty since your wife left you, and your kids have all since run away to join the Peace Corps.
Eating them is out of the question.
You wince as the pangs of hunger rack your intestines, but you can't stop now. You're pwning n00bs on Xbox Live like never before—one wrong move and your unheralded winning streak will come screeching to a halt. If only there were something nearby to satisfy your craving, something succulent and delicious, something right below the television and just a little to the left… the Xbox, of course! Eyes glued to your 50" high-def display, you drop to your knees and shuffle over to the console, fans humming peaceably, blissfully unaware of its fate. You lean over the console, jaws spread wide, and…
WHOA! Just hold on there a second, Sonny Jim. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, neglected to plan for such a contigency as yours. This here Xbox 360 is constructed of plastic; a strong, durable, lightweight material which nonetheless tastes like crap. Depending on whom you ask, this here games machine might not even be edible. Good going, Microsoft, now Sonny Jim is lying dead on the floor, his fingers continuing to manipulate his controller, pwning posthumously.
If only he'd bought a Dreamcast.
Xbox 360 power supply dunked in water to prove it's damned big (Xbox 360 annoyance #006)
Tonight we conducted an experiment. Inspired by the picture of an Xbox 360 power brick displayed next to a GameCube, we submersed both an Xbox 360 power brick and a GameCube in water to conduct a volume test. Don't worry. Each was safely wrapped in plastic.
Method:
Fill a small trash bin with water
Take note of the water level (indicated by a millimeter rule taped to the inside of the bin)
Put electronic object into waterproof plastic bag, submerge in water
Take new reading of water level
Remove object from water, replenish water to pre-submersion level
Measure how much water is required to bring water to post-submersion level
Convert liters to cubic meters
Results:
Xbox 360 power supply: 1300 cubic cm (43% of a GameCube’s volume)
GameCube: 3050 cubic cm (235% larger than an Xbox 360 power supply)
iPod Shuffle: 17.5 cubic cm (using measurments on Apple site)
iPod Nano: 24.8 cubic cm
iPod: 69.3 cubic cm
Or, to put it another way, that’s a big honkin’ power supply. It’s not as large as the photo indicates it is, but it’s still way larger than we want it to be. And that’s annoying.
We’ve heard all of the defenses, and still we say that the power supply is annoying.
”Would you rather the Xbox 360 itself be larger??!” No. We’d rather the power supply be smaller.
”STFU! It’s hidden behind your TV set anyways!” True, but in some installations, there’s really not that much room for such large items.
”What’s the big deal?” It’s not a big deal. It’s an annoyance that we’d prefer didn’t exist, all else equal.
”Stop beating this dead horse.” If you’re sick of this issue now, you’ll be real sick of it five years from now, when people are going to continue to mention the power supply as a flaw of the system.
We understand that no product is perfect, but we challenge ourselves here at Joystiq to make sure that we don’t lose our ability to think critically about the products that we review. To fall in love with any product would be an unforgivable sin that would undermine the quality of the writing that we bring to you every day.
As much fun as we’re having with it right now, the Xbox 360 has some flaws and some issues that annoy us that we’re cataloging through a series of posts, one by one. Because the first five posts in the series really ruffled some fanboy feathers, we need to remind readers that Sony and Nintendo will each get the same treatment once we get our hands on their next-gen consoles.
Digital lifestyle from a dumb terminal? Not likely. (Xbox 360 annoyance #007)
ChicagoOne has pinpointed a very annoying aspect of the Xbox 360. We know that Microsoft needs to encourage people to buy Windows Media Center PCs. Someone, somewhere inside Microsoft is rewarded based on sales of this flavor of the Windows XP operating system and that certain someone successfully convinced or forced the Xbox 360 product team to cripple the functionality of the Xbox 360 to limit the threat to his product. We hate it when companies let internal politics compromise product design. That's precisely the problem with Sony's insistence with using UMD and Memory Sticks in the PSP when a standard technology would be far more customer-friendly (but simultaneously more threatening to Sony's non-gaming business units).
In essence, the Xbox 360 is a crippled digital media receiver (DMR) and as such, it's hardly the magical hub of the so-called "digital home" (a term that The Economist has called "marketing claptrap"). Instead of accepting a variety of streams from the full array of Windows-based devices, the Xbox 360 is only allowed to receive streams of music and photos from the laptop used to write this post because Windows XP Pro falls to the wrong manager's profit and loss statement.
How would we fix this annoyance? Update the Windows Media Connect software and the Xbox 360 so that streaming of WMV and other movie files is as easy as streaming MP3s or JPEGs. Without being privvy to internal company financials, we have no way of knowing just how much this would hurt the Windows Media Center product line, but the aggressive strategy appears to be working: Media Center PCs comprised 27.7 percent of desktop sales at retail in the United States in August 2005, according to eweek. Even a simple move like enabling video streaming to the Xbox 360 could significantly undercut a product line that Microsoft has invested many millions of dollars into.
That doesn’t mean we still can’t be annoyed by it, as gamers.
Ring of disc death (Xbox 360 annoyance #008)
Since our first experience with the Xbox 360 disc-scratching issue, numerous anecdotal reports from around the game-o-sphere have given us a better feel for the conditions under which the issue occurs. This is a wrap-up of those issues and of the annoyance:
vertical orientation alone does not scratch DVDs
horizontal orientation alone does not scratch DVDs
movement of the Xbox 360 during play scratches DVDs
movement could be someone running through the house and sending shocks to the system through your floorboards
movement is often done on purpose when friends try to show friends the cool way in which the ring of light reorients itself with its fancy mercury switch
movement is often accidental, as when annoying controller cables are tripped over in the dark, jarring the Xbox 360
sometimes, people just get sick of poorly designed boss fights, and kick their Xbox 360s in frustration
and sometimes, customers are committing fraud by purposefully destroying games that have been played to completion so that they can be exchanged for store credit that is used to purchase new games
This annoyance falls into the "so annoying we want to kick the family pet" category. I have moved various home electronics devices while they were spinning DVDs and audio CDs and not once have I hosed a media disc so thoroughly. I regularly move my laptop while its hard disk and DVD drives are spinning, and no damage has occurred yet. Sure, a console is meant to be stationary, but if fault tolerance is the norm amongst home consumer electronics devices, it should be the norm for the Xbox 360 as well because customers have come to expect that base level of fault tolerance.
Painful Xbox 360 texting needs work (Xbox 360 annoyance #009)
For most gamers setting up their Xbox 360s over the last several weeks, the biggest difficulty wasn't fighting off rabid dust bunnies in order to perform a cabling reach-around. The biggest annoyance was entering information into the Xbox 360 via the primitive text interface. It should be at least as easy as entering text on the Sony PSP. Here are the issues with entering text into the 360:
When entering addresses, it should accept zipcode first and allow me to select my city from a drop-down
There's no predictive text input. Not a big deal when entering address information, but it would definitely simplify text-messages sent to other players.
It's so much slower than web-commerce with a keyboard, mouse and browser that it's simply aggravating. It's just primitive. If you've ever tried to conduct e-commerce over a cell phone, you know what it feels like.
It's insecure. In setting up a password or entering it, for instance, users must select each letter of the password with the controller. Anybody that watches this process can easily steal your password, and they're not just getting your Xbox Live password, they're getting your Hotmail password too. If Xbox Live and Passport weren't integrated, however, a more natural and more secure password comprised of controller buttons could be used (e.g., x, b, a, a, RT, LT, x, b).
reader Douggy writes, "Where this gets really annoying is ripping burnt CDs onto the hard drive. If you want to name your albums, genre, etc. the controller really sucks!"
Where's that rumored qwerty keyboard, already? And please, can we have biometric identification in the next-next generation of consoles? It's already standard on Lenovo laptops.
PS: Yes, we know that a USB keyboard can be plugged in to the Xbox 360. But this is our living room. Keyboards and other PC clutter do not belong here. That was our big beef with the so-called wireless controllers (see annoyance #002). We do not want USB hubs, wires, keyboards, and other crap cluttering the living room.
Can I have my email address back? (Xbox 360 annoyance #010)
At some point following our gala 48-hour Xbox 360 gamathon, we got the idea to check some funny gamertags to see if they were available. For the sake of this example, let's say we picked "xXDr.UweBollXx" just to have some kicks and play with the free 30-day Xbox Live Gold membership. During the signup process the system requires a Microsoft .NET Passport account to link to the gamertag. The request (though having a slightly Big Brother feel) was understandable, so I entered in my 8-year old Hotmail account (which I've had since it was called HoTMaiL). Recently I undertook the task of transferring my original Xbox gamertag, "persnfrmporlok", to the 360. Here's where it gets ugly.
During the transfer process I was again required to link my gamertag to a .NET Passport account, so I naturally punched in my trusty Hotmail address. I was informed that the account already had a gamertag linked to it and only one was allowed. No red flags yet; surely this could be solved simply. I would only need to switch the .NET Passport for "Uwe Boll" to a newly created address (let's call it
uweiswonderful@hotmail.com) thus freeing my original Hotmail account to be linked to "persnfrmporlok." Now if only I could figure out how to do it...
Right about now you should see where this story is going: I could not change the email address and needed to open a new .NET Passport account for my "persnfrmporlok" gamertag. After several calls to 1-800-4MY-XBOX I was told by a very helpful representative that the linking was "permanent." You see, Microsoft was "cracking down" on people switching email addresses, a practice that was previously allowed on the original Xbox.
Cracking down? What does that mean? How could this be abused? The functionality is for our convenience, not for billing; they already have my credit card number, address, and real name! I can assure them that's a much better way of commucating with subscribers than a easily forgotten free webmail account. The sad truth is, despite my long history with that Hotmail account, the increasingly irrelevant Hotmail service is still the slowest, ugliest, and most spammed webmail account I have. For a console that trumpets loud and wide, "It's all about choice" the decision to remove this choice is inscrutable.
Failing the boyfriend test (Xbox 360 annoyance #011)
Skipped
Red lights, no explanation (Xbox 360 annoyance #012)
During some late night shenanigans this past Friday, the power strip, which the Xbox 360 power supply and a host of other devices are connected to, was inadvertently kicked out of the wall socket. At the time, the Xbox 360 was streaming music from an iPod, while the visualization danced on a monitor. A nasty crackle & pop, followed by silence alerted us to the situation.
Once the power strip was reconnected, an attempt to reboot the 360 resulted in the appearance of the dreaded red lights. To make matters worse, it was the flashing three-light pattern (i.e. internal error). I quickly shut the console off and rebooted. To my delight, the welcoming green glow emanated from the circle of light and the startup logo appeared on the monitor. I watched as the Dashboard successfully loaded and then turned the console back off. It was all good—or so I thought...
The following morning I enjoyed a DVD on the 360, but when I attempted to fire up some PDZ co-op later that day, I had some trouble syncing the wireless controller with the console. I figured the battery was dead, so I plugged in the play-and-charge cable. I still couldn't get the devices to sync. I figured the battery must be really dead, so I pulled out a second controller and a fresh set of batteries. Nope, nothing.
Panic mode set in. I rummaged through some drawers and uncovered the hardware manual, but the instructions for connecting a wireless controller proved futile. I found that I could power on the 360 with the controller, but could not perform further actions. I also discovered that none of the USB ports recognized the iPod or a digital camera. I looked up the number for Xbox Support and picked up the phone.
After being led through the same useless connecting steps—multiple times—the rep issued a repair order. I was to receive a shipping box on Monday or Tuesday and would get a new or repaired unit within 8 days. There was no fee (and I didn't have to purchase the extended warranty repair plan). While the service time seemed reasonable, I was discouraged that Xbox Support couldn't offer any procedure or explanation beyond what I had already found in the manual. Wasn't there a diagnostics test I could run?
I dismantled the unit as advised, removing the cables, hard drive, and memory unit, preparing the 360 for shipping. Later I decided to plug the console back in—just the cables—so I could watch another DVD. For whatever reason, the media remote still functioned. For now, I was stuck with an overpriced DVD player. Sweet.
Nontransferable save game data (Xbox 360 annoyance #013)
With the girlfriend out of town, an old friend—we'll call him, "K BROOKS" (gamertag)—came to visit this past weekend, and while there might have been intentions to explore the great cultural experiences that New York has to offer, our time together quickly devolved into several days of nonstop gaming. Over the past month, we'd been steadily making our way through PDZ's co-op campaign (online) and we were hoping to finish off the final boss first thing Saturday.
Since K BROOKS was unsure about packing his 360 for the train ride, I suggested he just bring the detachable HDD—he doesn't have a Memory Unit. I could transfer my profile & PDZ data from my HDD to my Memory Unit, plug his HDD into my console along with my Memory Unit, and then we could continue the campaign old school splitscreen styles. Wrong. PDZ data cannot be transferred between devices.
So while we were able to play splitscreen co-op using both of our profiles, none of my PDZ data was on hand, meaning that I headed into the final battle with a P9P and came out with "0" (how ironic) gamer points. The frustrating solution was to transfer K BROOKS's profile onto the Memory Unit, reattach my HDD, and beat the game again, so that we both received the points. Unfortunately, the gamer points problem persisted when we entered the "Combat Arena."
No big deal if you're not a sucker for gamer points, but this could pose a problem if you ever need to move the data to a different memory device. Let's hope Rare takes notice and issues a patch, and that other developers follow suit. [Note: we have not experienced nontransferable game data with any other 360 titles. Have you?
Still downloading... downloading... downloading... (Xbox 360 annoyance #014)
We're all about Xbox Live's game demo service. In theory. Last night, we spent just over 90 minutes waiting to get our sweaty palms on The Outfit demo (and we know we're not alone). The problem for us wasn't that it took so long. We knew that 6 PM (Eastern) wasn't the best time to fetch the file. And we knew that our broadband connection probably wasn't optimized for this function. The point is, we anticipated a long download—and we were okay with that.
The real problem is that the Xbox 360 is crippled when it's downloading. We've known about this. We've *****ed about it before. But last night's episode warrants another post. It's not like we can't find anything to do for 90 minutes (there is a world of possibilities out there, right?). But, if Microsoft wants to claim that the Xbox 360 is all about choice, then give us that choice. Let us listen to music. Let us watch DVDs. Heck, let us play games! Let us do all of these things while we download a game demo from the Marketplace. Microsoft, are you listening?
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