40 Days #1: Make the download queue faster, better, smarter

While it wasn't present when the Xbox 360 launched, the download queue in the dashboard did eventually make an appearance after a dashboard update, delighting many a fan. The problem is that a year or so later, the tool is in dire need of yet another overhaul.

The root of the problem is the very success of the Xbox Live Marketplace and the ever-increasing speed of its expansion. There are now actually frequently items worth downloading, both free and paid. If you don't check the Marketplace daily, there could be a dozen or more items of interest in a given week, depending on what is being announced or released. That makes using the current download manager a pain in the butt.

At the very least, we need more slots in the queue - say 10 or 12, up from the current six. Sometimes a new game will have five or six videos to accompany it, and there goes the queue without even looking at anything else.

Another problem is that the blade does not let you reorder items. Sure, you can force a specific item to download immediately, but that doesn't reorder the rest of the queue, unless you keep doing it to each an every item. An example of when this becomes a problem is a scenario where I first come across a large demo, add it to the queue, and then add a number of smaller arcade titles, themes, pictures or videos. The smaller items could potentially come down pretty fast, and I could start viewing or playing them immediately, but the large demo is holding everything else back. I can't move the demo to the bottom of the list without canceling the download, finding the item again, and re-adding it to the queue. So give me a way to move items up and down in the queue, while only downloading the top-most item.

However, an even better solution would be to make the download queue itself smarter. I would love a new setting that I could turn on, making the queue automatically reorder items as I add them and prioritize the smaller ones to the top. This would also have the added benefit of clearing download slots more quickly, which matters when you want to queue up more items than the slots available, but don't want to sit there for a long time doing it. This happens at times like E3 when Microsoft publishes a bevy of content every day, and I just want to queue up a bunch of stuff in the morning before going to work.