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 #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 #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.

40 Days #28: Bake all the XNA launchers into the Games Library

40 Days #23: Sweet talk more peripheral makers into using battery packs

40 Days #22: WTF is up with that Auto Downloads thing?

I really don't know what to say about this one. The Auto Downloads feature has been in the Dashboard over the last few updates, originally in the Xbox Live Arcade section, now in the new Games Library.

The way it was supposed to work is that once you were in the Arcade (and I guess now in the Games Library?), new trials of Arcade Games would automatically start downloading from the Marketplace. So let's say on Wednesday morning you could go into the Arcade, and new trials would get queued for download.

40 Days #21: Quit asking me where to save my game!

40 Days #20: Let me insert a game on the sly

40 Days #18: How about some standard rules for using controller buttons to navigate games?

Not everybody is a fan of Microsoft's certification process for Xbox 360 games. At the same time, it's probably good to have the practice in place in order to enforce some technical and usability standards.

However, despite all the complaints and delays this whole process creates, it almost seems like sometimes they need to test usability a bit more and make some suggestions to the developers.

I would really be thrilled if Microsoft would examine how developers implement navigation through menus and screens in their games, because there are just way too many inconsistencies in how these little touches work across different games.

40 Days #17: Transition from Live Anywhere to RSS everywhere

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.

40 Days #16: Let gamers schedule Marketplace downloads remotely

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.

40 Days #15: Add more bounce to dashboard lists

40 Days #14: Enable a full-time low-power connected standby mode

When I first set up my Wii, I really fell in love with a quirky little feature that made me hopeful that Nintendo might actually have some sort of viable plan for an online service. Those hopes were later dashed by a constant barrage of friend-code inconveniences, but I still adore that little feature. I am talking about that exciting blue glow that I sometimes see when I come down in the morning, and immediately think that something exciting must be going on in Wii-land. (Of course, unlike the early days of the console when the glow indicated nifty new features, nowadays it tells me to go judge Mii contests, which then leads to me voting in weird surveys, and the whole thing just feels like a chore.)

This functionality is made possible by the Wii's ability to stay in a connected standby mode, and still communicate with the aptly-named WiiConnect 24 service. The Xbox 360 launched with one not quite exciting standby mode: powered off and charging devices over USB. Sometime after the Wii made me jealous of quietly connected messaging, Microsoft added another mode: the low-power background download state.

That made me excited that the hardware was actually capable of such a power state (I feared it was not) and hopeful that one day they could take that feature to its logical conclusion: a Wii-like full-time standby mode where the console is constantly connected to Xbox Live.