40 Days #11: Give the Xbox Live Marketplace a web-based front end

As I already mentioned a few days ago, previewing gamer pictures and themes on the Xbox Live Marketplace isn't exactly a shining example of user friendly interfaces. Part of that problem is that there is no easy way to look at the plethora of Marketplace content on your computer when you are away from the console.

It's not that people aren't trying to fix this in different ways. For a while there was a site called Dashboard Themes which let you preview and comment on the various dashboard themes in the Marketplace. Unfortunately, it has since gone under due to a lack of resources. Individual content suppliers like Disruptive Publishers maintain their own preview sites, but they don't cover all the content. Microsoft also has a Marketplace section of Xbox.com, but that site isn't the easiest to navigate, and it also doesn't always include all the latest content that is available on the console.

What Microsoft really needs to do is launch a complete interface to the Marketplace which can be accessed through a browser on a computer.

This wouldn't even put the company ahead of the competition. Sony already has a scaled down version of the PlayStation Store available on the PC. It's not a full equivalent of the in-console store, but it's a start.

Launching a web front end to the Marketplace would be a good opportunity for Microsoft to showcase its Silverlight technology. There have already been rumors that Microsoft's web properties could be transitioning to Silverlight, so why not a Silverlight-based PC Marketplace? Of course, a more compatible AJAX-based version might be necessary too, but the Silverlight site would probably be able to come really close in design and functionality to the way the Marketplace looks on the console.

And that would be key - the PC store should look exactly like the contents of the Marketplace dashboard blade. Why confuse your customers with two ways of looking at the same information? Maybe even bring in the same advertising areas that are present on the console. Make sure to include the account management features complete with download history.

Ideally I would like to be able to launch the site, see the same (current and up-to-date) items that are visible on the console, see prices and descriptions, have an indication of which items I have already purchased in the past, and even have access to the user rating and gifting/recommendation functions. The store should also let people who are not signed in to be able to see what is available on the Marketplace, without the personalized account and membership features visible to them. This would serve as a sort of marketing tool, since potential console buyers could easily check out what all would be available to them - as well as how the 360's dashboard interface works - if they took the plunge and jumped in. That, and gamers stuck at work could finally browse the Marketplace and see what is tempting them enough to take up another chunk of their already too full Xbox 360 hard drives.