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Favorite Features?

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If you have a favorite feature you've been dieing to know more about,
here's your chance.  Let us know the features you're interested in
learning about - how they were designed & implemented, etc.  I'll
see if I can round up the folks responsible and get them to post about
it.

Hint: say voice chat.  It's my feature :)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    I'd love to see some discussion of how you go about deciding the priorities of features for XBox Live? Is it just like any other software development life cycle? Or is there something unique to the 'gaming' industry? And what would constitute a failure, given the large user base? If for example only 40,000 people use a feature but your user base is 400,000 is this good?

    Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    I'd really like to see 'voice chat'

    Also, backwards compatibility and a few getting started bit, ie linking to media centre
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    Since you mention voice-chat...

    Are we going to see a dashboard based voicechat similar to the original XBOX? I enjoy the talking over different games feature but do miss the ability to have a room where everyone can communicate together.
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    Hey, I'd like to know more about how you offer updates to games (eg Call of Duty 2) dispite the games being based on DVD.

    I understand on the first Xbox it used its hard drive, but what about on the 360 Core?

    Thanks :)
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    Triz: sorry, but as a policy, we can't comment on the work we are doing in the future - whether we are doing it or not, how it's designed, etc. until we announce it, we can't talk about exactly what it is :/
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    Nimrod: updates can be stored to any valid Xbox 360 storage device. Both the harddrive and memory units qualify.
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    Triz: sorry, but as a policy, we can't comment on the work we are doing in the future - whether we are doing it or not, how it's designed, etc. until we announce it, we can't talk about exactly what it is :/
    ------

    There go's my question about supported codecs and the exclusion of video streaming from windows media connect and portable devices :)
    but im interested in what you guys have to say about the voice chat feature,
  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2006
    shaheeng, can updates be available for every game (as in, done by the console) or do the developers have to develop a update system for their games?

    I know for a fact Namco are dismissing making a patch for Ridge Racer 6 to fix the online lag problem saying it’s not possible to make patches for console games. (If you have a connection to a PC or Media Center, the game lags online)

    Thanks!! :)
  • Anonymous
    February 05, 2006
    Hey Nimrod, while I don't speak for the Xbox team, it seems like any game should be able to be "patched" as long as the new game code is loaded to the ram in place of the old (buggy) code.  However, in Namco's situation you may have to design your game around the fact that there could be patches later on, and perhaps they cut a corner in allowing them to fix things later on.

    While it's hard for me to pick a "favorite" feature of the xbox itself, I'd be curious to learn more about the wireless controller, and specifically why the play 'n charge kit couldn't be designed to send information over the cable.

    Also, I know that many people applaud the design of the new controller, and I am far from disliking it.  However, it seems that the d-pad's ability to "slide around" on its mounted surface necessitates me to reposition it on 2/3 controllers that I have about every hour; which would be pretty frustrating if I really needed it for anything except guiding through menus.

    And lastly, I can't for the life of me get confirming evidence of this, but are the 360 controller face buttons pressure sensitive, and if so has that functionality been disabled for BC games because of a differing level of sensitivity?

    And just wanted to let you all know that it's been a great experience as an xbox consumer to get all this information and support from the people that made the console...Not to say that I've been happy with every decision ;-)
  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2006
    Voice chat is a great one.

    I too would like to be able chat with multiple friends in private chat though. We were playing Quake4, and they have that great team leader and group thing. But if we had a private chat that supported multiple people, we could have that same experience in every game.

    I would also like to hear about downloading in the marketplace. Specifically, why did you guys set it up to where you can't do anything else if you are downloading content? What is the reason for this? Thanks.
  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2006
    Triz: sorry, but as a policy, we can't comment on the work we are doing in the future - whether we are doing it or not, how it's designed, etc. until we announce it, we can't talk about exactly what it is :/

    Shaheeng - I understand your stance on releasing this information and thanks for the reply, so take it as a suggestion :)
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2006
    How about some hints as to what your working on right now, and what will be added to the 360 dashboard in the future... cough, URGE integration, cough, Video Chat, cough, MSLIVE, cough...etc..
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2006
    My favorite feature is the upgradability.  I like that I have the hope that one day I'll be able to just have it boot up in the dashboard instead of running up to the machine and booting it up by ejecting the CD.
  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2006
    "How about some hints as to what your working on right now"

    I would live to give you hints on what we're working on, but it is very difficult to say anything without creating big expectations in our customers and providing valuable hints to our competitors.
  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2006
    I would just like to know why the voice quality for the 360's Live is so much poorer than the original Xbox's. Also, why hasn't this major issue been addressed publicly, and are you working on a fix to greatly improve the quality?

    Thanks.
  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2006
    Hi,

    What I'd love to see, and this is more Media Center Extender side of the Xbox 360, is support for sending a "Magic Packet" to the Media Center PC to wake it from Standby.

    I believe this requires the MAC address of the PC to be sent 12 times quickly, so the Xbox 360 will need special support to do this.

    I just think it would be great to allow the Extender to wake the PC up when it tries to connect rather than failing like it does today.

    Thanks,
    Shane.
  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2006
    Sorry - MAC is sent 16 times, not 12. (oops)

    Regards,
    Shane.
  • Anonymous
    May 23, 2006
    Is there any hint for not having to pick my hard drive (my only storage device hooked up) every time I load a game?  All of my friends that have a 360 also only have a hard drive hooked up and it's very annoying to have to pick the only option everytime we load a game.

    Is there a way it can detect there is only 1 option and automatically pick it or be able to select a default device?

    Thanks
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2006
    The platform has the option to do what you ask; is up to each game to take advantage of this option.
  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2006
    I'd like to see more connectivity between my pocketpc xbox360 and windows xp (not media center). Would like to be able to take my gamertag anywhere I go...laptop..home pc..pocketpc phone...