If you haven’t checked lately it’s 2008 but we still have the same basic options as we did in the 90’s, some games are much better but EVERY SINGLE GAME MAKER IS STILL MISSING THE SOCIAL focus of the games! GTA 4 is an amazing game but made a critical error in the social side.
Hey good point, it’s all about friends and the social connections, they took out the most important feature for most gamers. We were all looking forward to finally being able to just handout with our friends in other cities online without being shot at in COD4 or run over in GTA4. Then go shoot at people in COD4.
What does Niko Bellic do at the end of the day after he kills the mob boss and pulls the plug on his dreams?
He goes to a bar with another Niko Bellic who lives 1500 miles away and has a virtual beer and shoots some darts with a friend online. Maybe with the current game on the LCD TV in the virtual bar.
Maybe they would get some more friends together and go water skiing or suba diving under the bay.
You know I don’t know because some deveopler up there at Microsoft isn’t creative enought or they’re to proud to ask the gamers and the core community what they want. They are just like to movie industry and they will fall the same way if they don’t change.
We have been asking for a social virtual world since Trade Wars 2002, with the bathroom wall and secret passwords.
If the social network advancements and myspace and Army of Two concepts haven’t proven that there is a major gap in the social focus of gaming and entertainment then nothing will.
Just 4 or 5 guys and gals in distant cities playing some darts, bowling, water skiing… together over xbox live. It’s so sad the one most important feature and main reason everyone gets xbox live is to connect with others but there isn’t anywhere to do other then in the middle of a war.
Why can I play darts with someone that is fake but not someone real, when the focus of Xbox Live is to allow Social interactions between gamers, family and friends. This shows a critical failure of understanding by the developers and Microsoft in what our expectations are of them.
Other points.
I wrote this to Major but we don’t get any answer from anyone at Microsoft. No, company in this world ignores its customers like Xbox and Microsoft because we’re talking about games the customer doesn’t seem to matter. Well I’m not a kid, I am a customer that spend a large % of my yearly budget on technologies but yet no one will talk to us or write us back. Yes, I know there are a lot of emails and questions but we are paying you to deal with us, not ignore us.
Xbox live was built to be a place to game and connect with gamers across the world but after 3 years there is still not ONE single social focused program or application. Video conf, voice conf have not been upgraded ever! No, new features have been added to help us continue to make the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live our core media center. We’ve made the change but Microsoft has stuck us with, we might get to it someday… I have 4 Xbox 360, 1 Home Server, 4 Vista PC’s and we fully use Media Center yet we are told to wait for features year after year. We have the most advanced setup in our area but yet we can’t do some of the simplest things because Microsoft won’t listen to us.
· I still cannot meet with a group of friends anywhere outside of a game. On Xbox Live even after paying $50 a year per person per family. (that’s $150 a year for my family alone yet we still can’t meet with more than one person at a time)
· I still cannot manage any type of social network on Xbox Live, even when Microsoft owns Live Spaces.
· I still cannot manage any type of clan or pro grouping system, no top friends nothing
· I still cannot share video mail with family and friends, and have almost no video effect when video conf
· I still cannot video and audio conf with more than 1 person on each side, no room Mic
· I still cannot 3 way call (a simple feature free on land lines and cell phones but not xbox live)
· I still cannot meet in a open 3D world with my friends and family
· I still cannot access my gaming statistics online or anywhere
· I still cannot get gaming release dates, news or rate features or xbox live content
· I still cannot access Video over IP tv (MSN Video performance on a 15MB cable is very poor and not Video over IP)
· I still cannot access web content from my Media Center with good performance. Even when cable and sat both have On demand streaming video options but Microsoft and Xbox Live still don’t? There should be a yearly option for unlimited downloads of shows and movies from Xbox Live, no one wants to pay per movie, PLEASE, BLOCKBUSTER IS DEAD let their failed business model go with them. Unlimited access is the name of the game we don’t want to rent anything!
You tell my 10 year old daughter why she can’t watch hairspray day after day for a week because we can only rent it for 48 hours then we have to pay to rent it agein even after we’ve downloaded it? What are we paying for?
But yet I’m spending $15 a month for netflix? Why doesn’t Microsoft take that money and give me FREE unlimited content from Xbox Live?
· Add-ons for Media Center have been poor, with few useful applications, even fewer that work on extenders.
· Even with the Xbox 360 I am yet to be able to use Microsoft Word on my Xbox 360, even when most USB Keyboards work great and Microsoft has Office Live in Beta
· I am unable to access my Microsoft Live Mesh dashboard and data from Xbox Live Dashboard on Mesh
· I am unable to change the Dashboard Nav type (there should be a 3D option for Navigation in the Xbox 360 Dashboard)
· There are few Video Cam application, even fewer effect, no full screen for video conference….(this is just stupid) Should I go on with missing video features there’s a lot
· There is no touch screen support, also should include multi-touch support before Windows 7 does. Must be supported in media center!
· Unable to use a Mouse or wireless style pointer or Wii style remote
· Unable to Backup my game data anywhere but a USB memory card (Mesh, DFS, MS Home Server integration…) and only sometimes, viva piñata still can’t be copied
· Unable to stream video content for game previews, reviews…. Why must I download everything I want to watch even if just one time just to delete it a few minutes later, this is a great waste of bandwidth and storage.
· Why can’t I get Fox News or the News of my choosing on my Dashboard as a tab? Why no rss feeds?
· Why can’t I Picture and Picture my duel tv tuners in Media Center?
· Why are the music visuals so poor? Winamp style anyone, why can’t we control the effects in a visual editor and then save.
· Why are there no advanced features, there are more than just stupid people using these tools and consol’s and we should have the right as consumers to have at least some control and advanced features. Just like in Windows you can default the settings stupid but please give us the options to control visual and feature based options.
· I don’t care if the core of Xbox 360 OS runs in 64MB give us more options and make it run in 256MB. Same with Windows 7 you can make it lean by default but you better give us the advanced options too or we’re out.
I’m tired of being treated like a kid because I play games and use an Xbox as my social connection to my family. Microsoft better start focusing to the GTA, Mature crowed soon before we leave for PS3 as they do have social focused networks online and do give advanced options.
Time is passing and year after year we wonder why Microsoft vision of Xbox Live and Xbox 360 are so short and limited. We see that based on the comments of the Xbox Live Director telling us no Spring update because they only built the Xbox Live library to hold 15,000 titles and must upgrade and expand the network.
This shows a critical lack of vision for Xbox Live and show they don’t get it. We have been demanding since BBS days for a 3D social network in a free world. Server/client based I don’t care, even if it can only host 8 users at a time.
