The Joker’s last laugh at the expense of agitated fanboys

This week seems to be delivering a steady stream of small annoyances to Xbox 360 owners. First the Lode Runner XBLA pricing fiasco (that will warrant its own post shortly) and now the leaked news that the PS3 version of the very promising upcoming game Batman: Arkham Asylum will have exclusive challenge levels – aside from the main story – with Joker as a playable character, available through a free download.

I’ll be the first to admit that yes, I am jealous, since I don’t own a PS3. However, what really caused my knee-jerk reaction was the lack of any announcement about the possibility of exclusive content for the Xbox 360 version of the game. Especially when Sony might not be the only one getting some exclusive goodies.

Will the bad economy and competition finally make Microsoft integrate all the Live entertainment services?

A couple of stories caught my attention today. The New York Times reported on a reorganization within Sony. PlayStation chief Kaz Hirai will lead a division that encompasses the gaming, software, PC and portable device units. The goal is to improve cooperation between those parts of the company. This could help Sony leverage its PlayStation Network software and services across its different device categories. TVs are now in another division, so I guess no connected entertainment experience soup for you.

The other article was a CNET interview with Microsoft’s Stephen Elop, who runs the company’s business unit. The point that struck me there was the idea that the bad economy would force different Microsoft units to work more closely together.

Who watches the Watchmen? Best Buy and Xbox Live.

The dashboard has a new section highlighting a bunch of Watchmen-related content, including a promotion starting at Best Buy this Sunday.AI leaked scan of the upcoming ad confirms it, although it doesn’t really add any more details beyond what is already stated in the dashboard panel.

Apparently you just need to buy a 360 console or an “Xbox Live product” – which I am guessing is anything under Best Buy’s Xbox Live category – and you get a special package that includes 2 tickets for the movie and what I assume is a download token for some Watchmen content from the Marketplace.

Will there ever be a red battery pack for the wireless controller?

Here are the facts. The new limited-edition red Resident Evil 5 Xbox Elite bundle is awesome. I want it, despite the fact that it would be the third 360 console in the house. We have seen the press pictures. Now Major Nelson has even put up a video showing off all the goodies. It seems to match the previously released red wireless controller. All that is fantastic.

But what about the battery pack? Based on the currently available pictures and descriptions, the bundle doesn’t come with a play and charge kit, thus there is no rechargeable battery in there, just the shell to house AA batteries. The standalone red wireless controller comes with a red battery pack, but currently you can’t buy the latter separately. The bundle’s controller has the same red part, so obviously the designers intended for that bit to be red in this particular color scheme.

40 Days #39: Set up a formal beta program and offer it to other developers

One of the most exciting aspects of having a networked gaming service like Xbox Live with many enthusiastic gamers is the emergence of public beta testing programs for games.

We've seen betas for Shadowrun, Halo 3, COD 4 in the past, and new beta programs are being planned for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Battlefield: Bad Company. All good stuff, and I wish more developers joined this trend, even for single-player aspects of games.

Given that Microsoft has had an internal Microsoft Game Studios beta program available for a while, why not spin off a general Xbox Live testing program? Let the public sign up and go through a selection process that tries to establish some sort of bar for quality (good luck there), then separate the willing volunteers into various demographic groups based on age, gender, experience, and even genre preferences.

Run a tight program where you keep track of all these little details as well as tester scheduling, and then offer these slaves to third-party developers. Not every company has the resources to manage their own beta program, so being able to outsource the dirty work and community connections, and just get back the testing data should be pretty attractive. And I bet a lot of gamers would jump on the opportunity to play unreleased games and perhaps try to make them better prior to release. At least that's what we all hope happens. No need for free incentives for every single game test - people would already be getting extra play time to begin with - but perhaps institute an incentive program for active or long-term beta testers. Plus, of course, distribute any free stuff donated by the developers.

Ultimately, beta testing games by at least somewhat responsible gaming members of the public should lead to an overall improvement in the quality of games, so a formalized beta program that would be easy to handle for both game players and game developers could only help.

40 Days #38: Roll out premium precision controllers

It is common knowledge that there is a lot of money in accessories. It is also common knowledge that most third-party accessories are shoddily-made crap.

Given all that, whatever happened to Microsoft's plans for a premium wireless controller? Backlit buttons, rubber grips, a better D-pad - sounds like a winner to me. It wouldn't be a first for Microsoft either - they already produce the massively under-utilized Big Button controllers for Scene It. Sony also has a premium accessory in their recently announced DualShock 3 controller. And, of course, Nintendo keeps churning out mostly useless - yet not free - pieces of plastic for their Wii controllers too.

40 Days #37: Treat the Xbox Live Marketplace more like a retail store and have sale events

On one hand I really like the convenience of digital content delivery through the Xbox Live Marketplace. A few button presses, and you have a new game available to play.

On the other hand, I am a big fan of Cheap Ass Gamer - a site that revolves around finding deals, steals, and all sorts of discounts. People discuss weekly retailer ads, post coupons, point to online sales and discounts, and generally talk about combining all these resources to make sure you get great deals on games. It's a fun "game" to play in real life, and the site has saved me a ton of money over the years. In fact, I hardly ever buy any game at its full retail price without at least getting some sort of freebie incentive. However, that habit hits a brick wall when it comes to purchasing content on the Marketplace.

40 Days #36: Make the dashboard resistant to Xbox Live outages

This screen clip is both hilarious and disturbing, because it was actually real at one point during the Great Christmas Xbox Live outage of 2007. I am not going to reopen the discussion of why that outage happened or how it was handled - that's all been beaten to death, repeatedly.

However, during that troubled period there was one thing that really worried me. Seemingly because the Xbox 360's dashboard is so closely linked to the service, when Xbox Live was broken, so was the console.

Signing in took forever, bringing up the various dashboard blades was massively delayed, and in general the whole console was acting flaky for weeks. Given the 360's already tarnished hardware reliability reputation, I - along with many other gamers - was seriously worried that my console was dying.

This console flakiness just worsened the already pretty unhappy service situation, because not only were gamers unable to play online, but even doing anything offline was an awful experience. At one point it was so bad that I was contemplating just yanking the network cable, but ended up just not using the console during much of that period.

40 Days #35: Turn the dashboard into a videoconferencing powerhouse

A common complaint about the Xbox 360 dashboard is the lack of the multi-person chats that were available on the original Xbox. Microsoft says it comes down to how the available bandwidth is allocated. Despite assurances that the Xbox team is "listening", nothing much has changed since the launch of the console. This has led to pretty sad how-to articles like this one, which describes how to use Xbox Live to provide chat capability for Super Smash Bros. Brawl - with the caveat that you actually need a game like Halo 3 to establish a multi-person chat environment.

40 Days #34: Let the dashboard suspend and resume any game in progress

Look, games are getting longer these days. Some games let you save at any time, some do not. Some have frequent checkpoints that you can use to resume the game when you come back to it, some handle this much less gracefully. Even Arcade games like Commanders: Attack of the Genos now have levels that can last 30-45 minutes.

On the other side of the coin, gamers have less and less time these days. They have jobs, families, responsibilities. The casual folks are looking for bite-sized game experiences, and even the hardcore sometimes just have to go do something else. You know, to an event with the spouse, to feed the kids, to run out when somebody calls. Life sometimes cuts in, and in a lot of cases the next save location or checkpoint is just too far away.

40 Days #33: Expose dashboard features through setup wizards

Another day, another story about a kid experiencing something inappropriate over Xbox Live. Sadly, these things will happen and Microsoft can't do all that much about it. The Xbox 360 already has a fairly robust system of parental controls, and Microsoft recently even launched a family timer to physically limit play times.

In a way, Xbox Live is a victim of its own success. The Wii has such restricted online features that nothing too offensive can physically be done at all, and because of the limited functionality, not all that many people play any given game online to begin with. Sony's console had (and still does to a lesser extent) a high price tag, so its adoption rate into families was much slower. Also, the online network isn't quite polished yet, so again, you have fewer people using it.

However, Xbox Live is not only the most popular online system on consoles today, but it is also the most full-featured one, so the millions of active users have many ways to send something inappropriate through the network. Microsoft is trying to push it as a family console, it has good brand recognition and a reasonable price. As a result, a lot of families and kids play games on the console and on Xbox Live. And again, Microsoft can't do much more than the user reporting/banning that they take care of already.

40 Days #32: Come up with a strategy and a name for large new downloadable games

Every so often I get jealous of a specific game or feature that PS3 fans can enjoy. One of those games is Warhawk, a seemingly fun downloadable title that also demonstrates one thing that the PS3 currently has but the Xbox 360 does not: the availability of large original downloadable games.

The Xbox Live Marketplace offers original games, but just within the smaller Arcade size limits. There are also large pieces of new content like the Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion, and later this year GTA IV's expansion pieces. Then there were temporary large "games": the online beta programs for Halo 3, Shadowrun, and COD4. Finally, you can now download full copies of last-gen Xbox games. However, none of these channels of the Marketplace currently allow for something like Warhawk.

40 Days #31: Open up XNA and Live Anywhere to browser-based gaming

Every so often, when Cindy Lou Grue would post on the Gamerscore Blog (by the way, is she still even on the team?), I would get a little shocked because she would remind me that Microsoft's MSN Games casual game portal still exists. The other bloggers would be going on about their gamerscores, friends lists, multiplayer experiences, and Cindy's posts would always feel oddly "disconnected".

That makes you wonder why exactly Microsoft isn't doing something, anything, to somehow integrate the casual portal into the rest of its gaming network. They even have a section of of MSN games for Vista - the perfect example of "games for Windows" - and yet none of those integrates with the Live network. I'm not even asking for them to be distributed through a PC marketplace (well, sure, eventually, but anything at all would be a start), but why aren't those games part of the Games for Windows Live program? Some of them even have counterparts available on Xbox Live Arcade, so it just seems weird to see them as completely isolated experiences.

40 Days #30: Store everything in the big fluffy Live Anywhere cloud

So let's say that we can actually save an extended gamer profile and all of our console settings onto a memory unit or hard drive. But then the Xbox 360 overheats and explodes, and there go all the hard-earned game saves and console tweaks. Where's the backup plan?

The real question is: where is the online backup plan? Xbox Live is one big network service in the cloud, which already stores a ton of information for each user. So why doesn't each Xbox Live account - the paying ones at the very least - have an "online memory card" that can hold a gamer profile, console settings, and game saves?

40 Days #29: Have a theme, will travel? Not quite!

Ever since I got my second Xbox 360 console and started shuttling my gamer profile between the two on a memory unit, I noticed a peculiar thing that happens to my profile with respect to themes.

The usual scenario when I get a new theme is to first go download it on one console (the "primary", now replaced console where Monica can also use the content), and then go re-download it on the second console. Usually I will also switch to the new theme on the first console after it comes down.

When I first sign in on the second console, the new theme isn't available just yet. However, my gamer profile on the memory unit seems to know what my current theme should be, and since it can't find it, resets it to the default built-in one. Makes sense, right? Well, not completely. The thing is that if you bring up the Guide or if one of those notification blades slides out, you will notice that the Guide is still skinned with the new theme - despite the fact that it is not actually available on the second console.