Playing on Easy

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

Peter — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:52:51 GMT

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

Peter — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:56:48 GMT

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.

A premium controller with more precise sticks and most importantly a "fixed" D-pad would address the one major complaint that Xbox gamers have had with the otherwise much loved controller since it launched. Since the Xbox 360 is host to a decent number of fighting and retro Arcade games - as well as hotly anticipated brawlers like Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix - there is definitely a sizeable market segment that would want an improved controller.

Sure, one could argue that Microsoft should just redesign and fix the original controller, but the D-pad is probably good enough for most people, and if the new controller added a few other improvements, it would still be seen as a premium accessory that gamers might want to buy.

I do wonder what sort of impact backlit buttons would have on battery life, but as long as they didn't cut it much more than when the Chatpad is attached, it wouldn't be so bad. The new controller would also have to come with some sort of cool shiny surface treatment to appear truly special. Build a nice new piece of hardware, and they will come. The fighter fans, the power gamers, the gaming leagues and clans. Given that accessories include a nice and healthy profit margin, it's surprising that Microsoft hasn't pursued this product segment yet.

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

Peter — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:27:06 GMT

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.

You see, Microsoft's online store hardly ever really has any "deals" per se. Sure, last August they had a two-day sale on a few Arcade games, but that hasn't happened since then. In December they created permanent price drops for several games by launching the Arcade Hits program (an Arcade equivalent of the Platinum Hits line for full games), but nothing new has been added to that roster in months.

Since digital delivery is the way of the future (and it is), gamers need to be able to take advantage of the sort of promotions that retail stores are commonly offering. I am not talking about a weekly list of deals like the big chain stores, but why not monthly sales that drop the price of some content for a few days? It could even be on a regular "scheduled" basis: say, every last week of the month some content will go on sale, and gamers can look forward to it.

There could be "Capcom days", "Oblivion days", "puzzle days" or any other way to bundle together a few pieces of content and discount them. All Oblivion content 20% off perhaps? Or how about a "buy 2 games, get one free", even if it is from a specific list of games. Something, anything, Bueller? Sony's PlayStation store not only provides a much more flexible pricing scheme for games to begin with, but the company has also been holding sales like this more regularly.

After all, Xbox Live constantly has some sort of community events, free Gold weekends, and so forth, so couldn't some discounts be tied into them, and perhaps be "brought to you by" whichever company is sponsoring the event?

We are getting to a point where a number of XBLA games are actually getting sequels (e.g. Mutant Storm, Assault Heroes), so why aren't the original releases any cheaper? Surely the value of those games must have actually dropped, despite their digital delivery method.

Same thing with some of the promotional themes and gamerpics that tie into things like movies - the movie itself can be old news, perhaps even already be available to download from the Marketplace, yet the themes still cost as much as they did initially. The mind boggles.

And I am not even saying anything about other areas of the Marketplace that need sales and bundles desperately. Old TV shows on sale? Buy a whole season of a show as a bundle, save 20%? Nothing happening in the video store either.

Whose fault is this anyway? Does Microsoft not want to "complicate" things too much for simple-minded consumers? Do the content creators not want to re-negotiate lower prices, even though it could lead to another spike in sales? A combination of both, or just greed all around?

If digital distribution is to be taken seriously, buyers need to be able to see value in the content being offered, and that is really hard to do when you are looking at a bunch of obsolete bits that first came out a year or more ago, yet still cost the same today.

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

Peter — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:29:58 GMT

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.

Now, I understand that pretty much all of the blades feature some content that is being loaded from the service - ads, messages, friend status, etc. - but why can't the console just be smarter about knowing the status of Xbox Live? If it looks like the service may be having problems, shorten some timeout values so that all these queries just fail faster and we can get on with some local action. Microsoft could easily publish a network health flag inside the service that consoles can look for and modify their behavior accordingly. In fact, having a handy network status indicator would a good idea for the dashboard itself, so that gamers could quickly see if their problems are caused by service issues or something on their end. Perhaps a simple traffic-light indicator of Xbox Live health? I think a full description like the one above might overwhelm even high-resolution HDTV sets.

Another option would be to add a manual "game offline" switch to the dashboard - much like in, say, Internet Explorer - which would force the console to act as if it were physically disconnected from the network.

Service outages can and will happen. However, they should not affect what gamers can do with their consoles at home, and how that experience works during that outage. Last year's service problems clearly showed that Microsoft still has some work to do on the stability and reliability of the dashboard itself, in addition to the service as a whole.

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

Peter — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 03:10:48 GMT

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.

I can sort of understand the decision to restrict the dashboard's chat bandwidth to make sure game performance doesn't get completely throttled. However, this is a feature that many gamers keep passionately demanding, so Microsoft needs to find a way around their own limitations.

One way Microsoft could easily follow its own decision would be to create a new "game" for this purpose. Just write a separate app that gets launched from the dashboard, and all it does is provide a top-notch video and audio conferencing environment. Make it an attractive and user-friendly cross between Apple's iChat and ooVoo, with lots of goofy video effects, good audio and video quality, support for at least four simultaneous users, and extra features like perhaps recording/storing/sharing clips of these chats.

Existing games already support multiple people with cameras, so bandwidth itself certainly isn't an issue. And the 360 has enough horsepower to render an attractively laid out interface to hold a conference with other gamers. This is one of those features you want to pitch as a way for geographically dispersed families and friends to stay in touch, especially around holidays.

This feature would essentially be like a souped-up Spyglass Board Games - without the board games, and also free, and part of the dashboard. There should also be full friend-list integration, so that you can easily select and invite multiple people to a chat quickly. Add to that capability to "nudge" (vibrate) other participants' controllers, and an area for text chat support so that you could bring in people connected over Live Messenger, and you have a nicely rounded conversation client. A really technically impressive solution would also go for cross-platform audio/video integration with Live Messenger clients. That would you could use the Xbox 360 to communicate with just about anybody.

I would even be curious to see how many communication features are supported in the XNA framework - could somebody actually write an app like this for distribution as a community "game"? At any rate, after over two years of user requests, Microsoft needs to step up and provide some sort of reasonable multi-person chat solution.

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

Peter — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:38:00 GMT

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.

As a result, we need a system to suspend games in progress. The Wii actually already does this for its Virtual Console titles. Also, the DS and PSP can suspend the whole handheld and thus also the game being played.

The Xbox 360 dashboard should take the best elements from all these competing systems, and improve upon them. The game suspend system should be capable of at least the following:

Save any game - disc-based or downloadable - at any point during the gameplay. Just like hibernating a Windows laptop, where the software doesn't know what is going on, and isn't written specifically to support this feature.
One save slot per game, so it doesn't become an unlimited save system, leading to cheating. Once the game is resumed, the suspended save is deleted. Allow the console to store at least one, but preferably more, even unlimited numbers of suspended games.
Allow suspending from the guide menu: bring it up, suspend game, return to dashboard.
Also allow suspending by turning off the console. Add a settings screen that would let you to auto-discard, auto-suspend, or prompt every time.
Let gamers resume from the dashboard, as well as giving them the option of deleting the suspend save, starting the game without it, with the understanding that any progress not actually saved in-game would be lost.
Add an option to the startup setting that would have the console boot up and auto-resume the most recently suspended game.
Possibly add some screen that would list all your currently suspended games, in case you forget which all games you started and later suspended.

With all that in place, the console could potentially become a simple appliance, just like the DS: play a game, need to run out, turn off the console, it auto-suspends the game, come back, turn it on, it auto-resumes exactly where you left, even if it was in a long stretch where the game itself offers no saving or checkpoints.

This would be yet another feature that would make the somewhat daunting console less frightening to casual gamers, by eliminating many games' needs for a certain time commitment. In fact, it might even get casual gamers to try more "complicated" games, since they would know they can always easily walk away at any time, and come back whenever they can.

40 Days #33: Expose dashboard features through setup wizards

Peter — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:30:00 GMT

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.

While the Xbox 360 has a solid amount of parental-control features integrated into the dashboard, Microsoft still needs to take that one final step that will let the company show that they did all they possibly could to prevent little Timmy from seeing that underwear malfunction online while playing Halo 3. The problem with all the dashboard's features is that parents just don't know about them. Sure, Microsoft organizes all sorts of events with buses and demonstrations and what not, but how many people really come to these anyway?

The other problem is that most parents are probably used to appliances like a TV or even a PS2 console - you turn them on, and that's pretty much it. No settings, no options, no menus. The Xbox 360 may have the best parental restriction system ever, but most parents will just never know about it. And you can't necessarily blame those people for tech ignorance either - they just didn't grow up in today's fast-moving gadget world.

What needs to be done is to extend the initial setup wizard from the few steps that it takes now to literally cover a majority of the dashboard features, step by step, explanation by explanation. This would take a long time at the very beginning, and might take up a chunk of the memory space for the dashboard OS, but it is increasingly necessary as the console gets more complex.

This setup process could ask questions like "Are you a parent with children who will play on this console?" Then it could offer to set up all the family's gamertags, parental controls, timer, and friends list restrictions and privacy for the child accounts.

The wizard should also be intelligent enough to know when peripherals like the Vision Camera are connected, and add appropriate steps. For example, add a warning about how the camera could be used to transmit all sorts of images, and if there are child accounts, talk about restricting camera access.

Interesting options here could include the need for at least a somewhat grown-up user needed to complete the initial setup. For example, if you sign into Xbox Live at the beginning of the process, the console can determine that you are under 13, and you can't finish setup on your own, without another, older gamertag. Of course, this wouldn't work offline and would ultimately complicate the process too much, but it would be neat if only a parent could set up the household's consoles, especially if the children are very young. That way they would be forced to read through all the features and options, and perhaps realize what all goes on while playing on today's consoles.

Power gamers would naturally want to skip as much of this as possible, but it may be better to let the minority suffer so that the commitment to family safety is stronger for everybody. At the very least, some obvious - yet clearly worded - disclaimers would be needed when skipping any of the steps.

Such setup wizards should also pop up again when new peripherals are connected after a console is already set up, as well as when new features are added through dashboard updates. The latter case would be beneficial to most users, not just parents. Although Microsoft is pretty good about detailing the changes in a dashboard update and even uploads some videos about it, it would be really nice for the console to walk me through the new features after it boots up from the update, and let me immediately change any new options that were just added. Otherwise I have to hunt down change lists or download and watch videos, and then remember to go check out the new features.

Another way to remind gamers of what all their console can do, as well as teach them about shortcuts and neat tips, would be to use the dashboard ads to periodically highlight a certain feature or tip, with a little write up and a direct link to any applicable settings screen. The Wii already does this when you use their various channels: they frequently point out features or time-saving techniques that can be used in the channel. The dashboard team could probably even take the archives of Major Nelson's Xbox 101 podcast segment and rework them into dashboard tips.

There are a lot of shortcuts on the console - like using the various controller buttons to navigate lists or media files - and it would be nice if the dashboard was trying to teach me how to be more productive while using it.

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

Peter — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 02:21:00 GMT

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.

The Marketplace really needs a new outlet, something that makes it clear to gamers that it is distributing new, original Xbox 360 downloadable games, ones with a scope too wide to fit into the notion of Arcade games. There would then definitely have to be a firm size and price cutoff for Arcade content, so that these larger games would represent a significant jump in the amount of content.

Such a new section of the Marketplace would need a catchy name to illustrate what it is all about. Something like, say, "Xbox Originals". Sigh, except that was taken late last year as the unfortunate moniker for the last-gen Xbox store. When I first heard that name I was really hoping for large current-gen games and I was crushed when I found out what it actually was. Why couldn't they have called it something like "Xbox Classics"?!

At this point, Xbox Originals are somewhat misleadingly named, and I wonder what most gamers think about the name. On the other hand, Xbox Live Arcade sounds very limited in scope, and all you expect to find there are smaller and cheaper games. So when Penny Arcade's game comes out this summer, where will it go? No matter how small it is, it just shouldn't automatically belong into the Arcade, because to many people it won't seem like an Arcade game, especially given its eventual episodic nature. However, there is really nowhere better right now, so I hope that Microsoft adds some sort of additional outlet for these sorts of games in the spring update.

I wonder if more developers would work on truly episodic content for the Xbox platform if they had a clearly defined method of reaching potential customers, one without a label that suggests retro remakes to most people.

I always thought that the one mistake Microsoft made when Shadowrun was released (a game, which I didn't think was nearly as bad as many people seemed to think) was that it was a retail game instead of the first full, downloadable game on the platform. It didn't come with too many maps or features, so I bet it wasn't all that big, and it would have been a great example of what the Live platform could do: a fleshed-out downloadable title and cross-platform play. Shadowrun could easily have been a groundbreaking title that started a trend instead of the disappointing dud it ended up being.

I truly hope that this year will bring us both an answer to Warhawk and some sort of strategy from Microsoft in regard to full original downloadable titles, including episodic titles that show up in some sort of new "episodic gaming store".

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

Peter — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:23:00 GMT

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.

At the very least all of the Vista-ready MSN games should be brought into the Live family. Such casual PC games are ideal candidates to be developed quickly and cheaply using XNA tools, including all the multiplayer and Live profile capabilities. In fact, how about an indie section on the PC service, where XNA developers could list their works? Perhaps a cross between the recently announced XBLA Community Games initiative and Windows Live Gallery - for games.

Then the next step would be to look at the web-based games. Move them over to Silverlight, which opens up game development in .NET, while still targeting the browser. Enable Silverlight as a target platform in the XNA tools, so that developers have yet another "recompile and run" option. Sure, it wouldn't be as simple, given the more limited processing and graphical capabilities available in the browser. But that probably wouldn't really matter for most games anyway. The core gameplay of Hexic is the same, whether you play it on an Xbox 360, as a native PC program, or in a browser. The visuals might be different, but it's still the same game underneath.

Silverlight Live Anywhere games would certainly be a novel idea, especially since the technology is coming to Nokia phones. Hopefully, it will also one day be available on Windows Mobile devices. At that point, a Silverlight game could potentially run on a number of mobile devices. Give it Live network connectivity, storage in the cloud, and Microsoft's Live Anywhere vision could all of a sudden become a reality for millions of people.

Again, if these web games (and eventually all Live games) could store their data in the service itself, different versions of the same game could share a player's progress. Certainly at least simple games - for example, casual crack like Peggle - could easily be played on PCs, consoles, and mobile devices, all the while sharing the same achievements, scores, and saved checkpoints.

Here's another angle to why the casual portal needs to tie into Xbox Live. Microsoft is constantly searching for a way to capture the casual players - to make them buy and play console games. Yet the vast majority of these casuals already belongs to Microsoft anyway - they play those games on a PC most likely running Windows.

So let's say your average housewife - a typical member of the casual game segment - wants to play a quick game in her browser. Since MSN Games already has its own version of user accounts, just switch them to Xbox Live accounts. Explain to her some of the benefits of signing up for free, and let her create a free Silver account. Right there you have another Live member. She'll start accumulating a centralized gamerscore, with a history of what she has been playing. Maybe she'll add some of her friends to her list, and tell others to join so that they can compare achievements.

Then she might come home, and her kids have a 360. She might feel intimidated at first, but if she understands that she can use her existing account to sign in, maybe it would ease her worries of playing something "too hardcore". She might explore the Marketplace, pick up some Arcade games, send some messages to her friends. And there you have another customer, ready to spend money on games and downloadable content.

Microsoft's current fragmented approach to its gaming properties just means that potential and current gamers aren't getting the full benefit of service and network synergies that only Microsoft can bring together right now. And that's a shame. So let's see Silverlight game development in XNA Studio 3.0, or at least 4.0 at the latest, and let's bring in the millions of casual browser gamers. After all, they need to get started on their achievement addictions too.

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

Peter — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:24:00 GMT

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?

Not only does it seem like a glaring omission for a service that seems ideally suited for such a feature, but such functionality is already being offered by Microsoft across many of its online offerings: SkyDrive, Hotmail, OneCare Online Photo Backup, Office Live Workspaces - they all offer gigabytes of collective storage for free, usually ad supported. Even Halo 3 benefits from online storage for user-created content, a service which even has a premium version in Bungie Pro.

Microsoft obviously has the data center capacity, so why not offer similar features to its gaming customers? How about 2-5 GB of storage for Xbox Live Gold customers, with perhaps a 500-1000 MB variant for Silver members? Let us upload all the valuable data from our consoles into the cloud. That way, in case of a catastrophic failure of the console, or after getting a new replacement 360, we could just download everything back from the service and be back up and running in no time.

Given that saving to a possibly slow and unreliable network storage location wouldn't be practical, consoles would still need a local storage unit, and the dashboard would just use downtime during its low-power connected standby to upload the locally cached profiles, settings, and game saves. In fact, the synchronization could be two-way: in a multi-console household like mine it would be nice to have all the consoles connect to the storage locker and share game saves, so that I could boot up any one of them and continue a game from where I left off, wherever that was. Of course, since a gamertag can only be signed into one console at a time, the consoles would have to upload and download this information one at a time, but even that's better than nothing.

Online game save storage could also lead to some interesting cross-game or cross-platform possibilities in the future. How about a Games for Windows Live title that can connect to the service, find my game saves from an Arcade 360 game, and integrate it into the PC game, much like the upcoming cross-game Fable 2 tie-in? This would take that idea across platforms, even to the Zune, if it can one day connect to Xbox Live.

Perhaps even a web-based casual game that can share its data with a 360 Arcade title. Why isn't there a browser-based Hexic that is part of Live Anywhere anyway? Nobody ever thinks of the people stuck in the office who want to improve their gamerscore! MSN Games really needs to be converted into both downloadable PC Arcade games as well as Web Arcade experiences, all tied into the same service, with unified Xbox Live profiles, and centralized storage.

One day, I should be able to start an Arcade Anywhere game at home on my console, continue playing it on the bus on a connected handheld device, and then finish it off in the browser - all while the network seamlessly hands off my one shared gamed save among the different platforms and updates my profile accordingly.

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

Peter — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 03:29:00 GMT

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.

So somehow the guide image (which is the fifth discrete graphic that can be part of a theme) gets copied into the gamer profile itself, and then travels along with it on the memory unit. The rest of the theme does not. This inconsistency is frankly puzzling. Is it a size issue? Would the 5 MB or so of a large theme make the gamer profile too large? But then why insert the guide image at all, and not just reset to the default plain color? Is that somehow the only misguided way for the profile to remember which theme I am using?

I also doubt that it is a DRM issue, especially for accounts that directly bought the theme, since they would always be signed in when using that content, no matter what the console.

Unless there is some restriction with the size of themes making gamer profiles too large, or somehow not being able to be uploaded to the service (I'm not sure if this even takes place, since themes - unlike gamer pictures - are not visible outside of the local console dashboard), the profile should just store the whole theme. That way I could take a memory unit with my profile to any console, and the dashboard would be re-skinned according to my preferences.

While on that topic, what about saving a complete console configuration on a memory unit? Sort of like a backup for all the settings. This may or may not belong directly into the gamer profile (although it would be nice to be able to recover it from the online service), but there should be a way to save the complete current configuration of the console, and dump the information onto a memory unit.

This would allow gamers who buy a new console - or get a replacement back from a repair - to boot it up with such a memory unit inserted, and have the console ask whether they want to go through the initial setup or just load everything from the backup. This will sound awfully "corporate", but such functionality would make it easy to set up, say, a dozen brand new consoles for an event or local multiplayer just by going around with a memory unit and quickly loading the same configuration on all the boxes.

There aren't all that many settings on the Xbox 360 - it's just a game console after all - but having the option to save all those little tweaks on a memory unit sure would be handy.

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

Peter — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:08:00 GMT

Ever since the recent announcement of the Xbox Live Community Games initiative, I have actually motivated myself enough to download XNA Game Studio 2.0 and start looking at the integration between the development tools and the console. Sure, local connectivity between Xbox 360 and computer already existed before, but the the announcement added an Xbox Live launcher to the mix.

What immediately struck me was just how complicated the launcher situation is right now. Regular, non-developer gamers need quite detailed instructions on how to download the new launcher and then the preview games. Part of the confusion is the availability of a number of seemingly different launcher bits - some for Xbox Live, some for connecting to a development machine, and so forth.

Microsoft really needs to combine all of these versions into one XNA client which can figure out whether you have a Creators Club subscription, then enable extra connectivity options when you do, and let everybody else download games over Xbox Live. One smarter client with maybe an extra button or two, and it should take care of all the possible combinations. Games written using the current development tools seem to exist outside the launcher anyway, so there really shouldn't be a need for another copy of it. And, of course, the whole thing just needs to be rolled into the spring dashboard update, so that all Xbox 360 owners have direct access to future community games, without the hassle of figuring out which XNA bits they need to manually download.

40 Days #27: Emancipate the Games for Windows Live dashboard

Peter — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:47:09 GMT

Making Games for Windows Live free to play online should lead to more users on the Windows platform and more developers using the functionality. However, all those parties probably won't be very impressed with the current state of the "dashboard" part of GfWL software.

The biggest problem with it, all the more incomprehensible, given that Microsoft is a huge software company, is that the dashboard can only be accessed through the individual GfWL titles. It doesn't exist independently without them. Ironically, as far as Windows is concerned, the software actually is a bit independent, as it represents a separate item in the list of installed programs, with seemingly one shared set of libraries and code. Any updates to it are shared among all the installed titles on the system.

Given that the dashboard is already shared between games, it really needs to be spun off into software that can run on its own. Some time ago there were hints that this might happen at some point, but just like the rest of GfWL, progress has been slower than molasses.

A standalone client would form another anchor for Microsoft's Live Anywhere vision, and just seems like such a no-brainer, that it's shocking it still doesn't exist. Of course, after spinning it off, Microsoft would need to put some work into giving PC gamers at least a semblance of the features found in the console dashboard. Ideally, the PC client should support all of the following:

Gamer profiles, presence, current activity (along with nice little features like marking you busy if you run non-GfWL software full screen, just like Windows Live Messenger).
Full friend list functionality, including friends of friends.
Integration with your messenger contact list. This might seem redundant, given the availability of the standalone messenger client, but I'm sure a lot of the code could be reused, and frankly I wouldn't even mind if you had to install the messenger client ahead of time, to provide the necessary libraries.)
Text, audio, and video chat support, including the use of the Live Vision camera and the Chatpad keyboard connected to an Xbox 360 controller running under Windows.
Full account information access, including membership details, points balance, redemption of codes, etc.
Full gamer profile editing, including the recent name, location, and bio fields. Personal picture support for cameras as well.
Vanity features like an expanded and regularly updated selection of gamer pictures, and skinning/re-coloring of the dashboard interface.
Even throw in some smart contextual ads like in the console dashboard - but only for content available on Xbox.com, so that I can actually select the banner and open the link in my browser.

At the very least, the PC client needs to be a souped-up messenger client that you can use to communicate with your gaming buddies, see what they are doing, and manage your account and gamer profile. This way even potential gamers could download the free software, sign up for a gamertag, personalize it, and see what the Live network is all about. No commitment, and you can see what your buddies are playing, and how communication across the service works.

Of course, the PC is supposed to one day get its own Live Arcade - which means it will need some sort of Marketplace accessible through this dashboard. I have already mentioned the need for a PC-accessible web-based Marketplace, so the real question would be whether these two would overlap and how.

The issue here is concurrent sign-ins, or more specifically the low probability of them happening. If I have to sign in to the PC dashboard, it will likely sign me out of the console, in which case I won't be able to remotely schedule downloads from the PC. At the same time, having both a console-oriented web store, and a dashboard integrated PC store might be confusing to consumers, in much the same way as Sony's currently fragmented methods of downloading content to the PSP.

One way around this would be to have a shared web-based marketplace that could perhaps detect whether the gamer is currently logged into the PC or the console. Purchase/download choices would then be enabled/disabled according to the intended platform, with all the content visible to all users.

Say you have Uno available for both console and PC. If the store detects that you have a console at home signed in under your account, you can schedule a remote download of the appropriate version to the console. If it sees that you are signed into the PC dashboard, it enables the "remote" download of the PC version. This would work the same way as the console download queue: the site would tell the PC dashboard to download this particular piece of content. It would be "remote", but to you it would be happening all on the same PC.

The PC dashboard designers would have to take care to integrate the PC marketplace as seamlessly as possible into the client, so it wouldn't look like it was just opening up a browser window.

Another nifty feature that the PC dashboard should have is essentially an equivalent of the console's Games Library - a game launcher/browser that would perhaps integrate with Vista's Games folder, show you information on all installed GfWL games (including ratings and so forth), let you "twist" through the list based on categories (full retail, Arcade, etc.) just like console, and then let you launch the game right then and there.

A lot of gamers will probably clamor for some of the more media-oriented features of the console dashboard - like music playback, access to videos, etc. - but these aren't necessary at all right now. If you are already on the PC, you probably know how to fire up your favorite media player to listen to music. Sure, the little tweaks in the way games integrate custom soundtracks on the console would be nice, but at least initially this isn't a needed feature, and the dashboard team would have to deal with too many formats, DRM schemes, and media player applications to make this universally compatible and reliable.

40 Days #26: Make Games for Windows Live more attractive to developers and free to consumers

Peter — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:48:43 GMT

Once online play on Xbox Live goes free, it only makes sense to maintain parity on the PC side and extend the same benefits to Games for Windows Live customers. In fact, that's what it should have been to begin with. GfWL should have launched as a completely free service from day one for a number of reasons. For one, PC gamers don't normally pay for online gaming anyway, so charging for it over Xbox Live doomed the brand right away and labeled Microsoft as a even more of a money whore in the eyes of PC gamers than before. Also, even if Microsoft eventually wanted to make money from premium add-ons, the service should have been free at least for an initial "introductory" period of, say, a year or so.

The problem with forcing PC gamers to pay for online gaming is twofold. It alienates the user base, which is just not used to being fleeced like that on the PC. Current Xbox Live subscribers get online play on the PC "free" as part of their existing subscription, but they shouldn't be paying for it on the Xbox side to begin with, so the "value" of this additional feature is dubious at best.

Developers get shafted too. In addition to whatever it costs them to implement the extra requirements needed for the GfWL logo, they know that they are developing features that only a very small percentage of PC gamers will ever use, simply because of that pesky fee requirement.

Making online play free would attract more PC-only gamers to the Live platform, which Microsoft needs in order to grow its user base and eventually tempt the PC folks to buy some consoles. It would also not immediately turn away casual gamers, who are used to free PC gaming, and could then easily hop onto the (hopefully) upcoming Arcade games that work over Xbox Live.

Developers would know that they can reach a much wider audience with integrated Xbox Live features, and hopefully more studios would jump in as partners of the program. Although last year it was announced that Epic's Unreal Engine will support GfWL, Microsoft still needs to push developer tools more. Integrate with more engines and provide more features - including cross-platform play improvements - to developers using XNA tools. Developers have to see value in the system - be it in cross-platform play, achievements, or unified presence and friend lists - so that they can justify spending the extra resources to tap into the Xbox Live network. And it's a network that could potentially offer them quite a lot, if only Microsoft would make it cheaper and easier to implement. In the meantime, you have competitors like Valve's already developer-friendly Steam platform beefing up their features and trying to become the online social standard in PC gaming.

It seems a shame that despite the (very) slow growth of the Games for Windows portfolio, GfWL titles are still very rare. Since Microsoft pretty much owns the PC gaming segment as the maker of the dominant operating system that all these games run on top of, they need to push this aspect of their Live Anywhere vision. Make it free for users to play online, make it enticing enough for developers to jump in, market the crap out of it, and then maybe we could see some growth in this segment.

40 Days #25: Set online play free across Xbox Live

Peter — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 04:33:55 GMT

Microsoft's big trump card in terms of competing with Nintendo and especially Sony is Xbox Live. In 2008, in order to combat Sony's recently improving luck, Microsoft will have to make some drastic improvements to their online service, so as to remind people that they still have something special that nobody else has.

The two basic ways of accomplishing this are introducing a host of massive improvements and making online play free. The latter really needs to happen this year, and not even primarily because Sony lets their gamers play for free.

No, the real reason why online gaming on Xbox Live needs to become gratis is the one segment of the gaming populace that Microsoft still doesn't seem to be able to snag: the casuals. The thing with online gaming is that it has become completely commoditized. Even simple little flash games offer leaderboards, gamer profiles, and sometimes actual online play. Then you have even more fleshed out online efforts like EA's Battlefield Heroes. Most (non-MMO) PC games have had free online multiplayer components for years. And, of course, both Sony and Nintendo allow free online play on both their home consoles and portables.

The way Microsoft needs to look at the issue is not in terms of earning subscription fees for letting people play against each other, but rather as a way to grow their customer base and snag that elusive casual segment. When you have a bunch of retirees in nursing homes across the country who want to play a card game on Thursday nights, you don't want to be charging them to play online. Same thing with a bunch of soccer moms who may want to play puzzle games online and talk about their parenting struggles. There are a ton of such scenarios, where casual gamers may want to hang out online socially, get together with relatives from far away, or with friends from across the country.

These aren't hardcore Halo 3 or COD4 players. These gamers would probably play Arcade games, or lighter mini-game fare. They could certainly eventually "graduate" to more full-featured games, but that isn't the point. These types of people see the all the free gaming taking place on the popular Wii, and it would be really hard to explain to them - gaming novices who don't have insights into the hardcore world - why they have to pay to play with a friend living a few towns over. However, opening up a nice new Xbox 360 console that comes with free online play for all would seem a lot more friendly to everybody involved.

Apart from drawing in all the casual players, universally leveling the (free) playing field for everybody would also make it easier for publishers to charge for premium experiences like MMO games. This has already been done with titles such as Phantasy Star Universe and Final Fantasy XI, but those games always looked like a rip-off to Xbox Live Gold members who were essentially charged twice to play them. With free online play, premium subscription services like these would seem priced more "naturally".

Giving away online gaming for free certainly wouldn't put Microsoft behind its competitors (just on par, in fact). It also wouldn't hurt the bottom line, if done right. Most web services these days (e-mail, file storage, picture galleries, etc.) give away the farm, but still make money from premium and add-on services. Of course, the Xbox Live Silver/Gold membership levels would have to be restructured, but Microsoft could also provide everything from more DLC for games to enhanced service quality and features. The hardcore gamers could easily spend enough money on the extra bits to essentially subsidize free gaming for everybody else. As a result, the community as a whole would benefit: more gamers would play online, buy more games, more content for them, influence more friends and family members to join the service, and buy more consoles. The install base grows, developers crank out more games, and quite possibly provide better multiplayer experiences, since they now know there are more gamers waiting to try them out without having to fear extra fees.