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One of the most thought-provoking screenshots from the now seemingly forgotten Windows Mobile Live Anywhere client is the image seen here on the right. It depicts a notification that a new piece of content is available for a particular game title.
That doesn't seem so far fetched, until you consider that the current console and Marketplace system has no provision for granular notifications like this. The 360 only ever "knows" about new content when you go into some Marketplace screen, and it refreshes the content from the servers.
But what if it could know? How would this work? If Microsoft had a PC-based Marketplace, it would make sense to allow gamers to use plain old RSS feeds to subscribe to various sources of news from the Marketplace itself. Just like buyers can create RSS feeds based on the results of a specific query search on eBay, the Marketplace should be able to provide custom RSS feeds for content searches. For example you could subscribe to a feed about new items for Call of Duty 4. Then any time a new piece of content matching those criteria hits the Marketplace, your favorite RSS reader can let you know.
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Once Microsoft puts in place some of the infrastructure features like the connected standby power mode and a web-based version of the Xbox Live Marketplace, the resulting combination logically culminates with a need for a method to remotely tell the waiting console that you want to download a particular item you are looking at in a browser on your PC.
Remote downloading is a feature that Sony already has working through their PSP/PS3 remote play integration. Microsoft themselves showed off a prototype version of a mobile means of remotely scheduling downloads when the company showed off their Windows Mobile Live Anywhere client. Better yet, Microsoft already has such a system working elsewhere: it's exactly what their MSN Remote Record service and client do for Media Center PCs. The system consists of a small client that connects to a web service, and the TV guide program listing website, which lets you schedule individual and recurring series recordings right from your browser, even when you are away from home. The Xbox version would work pretty much the same way: the console would be turned on or in the online standby mode, be connected to a download web service, and add items to the download queue as necessary.
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Another day, another story about the "broken" DRM in the Xbox Live Marketplace. Sadly, these days I can actually relate. My launch 360 died just before Christmas last year (Mass Effect did it in), and after a few weeks I got an apparently pretty old refurb. That of course meant that all my downloaded content - which was tied to the original, now dead console - was only accessible while my account was signed into Xbox Live.
There are really two issues that people encounter when this happens. First, you can't use the content when you are offline. I personally don't really care about this scenario, since apart from actual service outages (like the month or so after Christmas), I am usually signed into the service all the time anyway. The second problem, which unfortunately affects our household, is that other gamer accounts on the console can't use the content on their own. So for example, Monica can't play the downloaded Arcade games while signed in under her account. That's annoying.
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I was really disappointed last year that Nintendo - the company that doesn't ever seem to do very much right in the online department - beat Microsoft to the one obvious feature that you'd want to see in an online network that has both users and content to sell: the ability to gift downloadable content to other members. Months later, with just hours until Christmas, Microsoft debuted a lame point-gifting system that was in beta at the time, and seems to be completely deactivated now. How it is that Microsoft - who celebrated the fifth anniversary of its Xbox Live service - still hasn't implemented this sort of thing, is beyond me.
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