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.

Playing on Easy : Themes

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