As an owner of all three of the current generation this generation has to offer, I have obviously discovered that none of them are perfect or blatantly superior to the other. This is one installment of a three-part blog entry that discusses what, in my opinion, needs to be done to improve the three consoles of this video game generation. I’m only going to be covering the ‘big three’ in this;

--Xbox 360
--Wii
--PlayStation 3

The current era of handhelds will be left out of this discussion. I once again point out that these articles are my opinions based on experience with all three systems.

I’m going to kick things off by talking about the Xbox 360, the first of the three next gen systems I bought. I always thought it was ironic that the 360 was my first next-gen purchase, mainly because the original Xbox was the last system I bought from the ‘big three’ last generation. However there were plenty of reasons to feel safe buying the Xbox 360 at launch; it had promising launch titles, established online play, and the previous Xbox was a very stable and reliable system from my own experiences as well as my friends. Well the two formers were fairly true, the latter however… well we all know how that turned out. The year-early release of the Xbox 360 turned out to be quite the double-edged sword for Microsoft. It gave the system more of a head start than I think a lot of people imagined as the system established itself as the home for most of the ‘hardcore’ gamer community, even though the terms ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ wouldn’t become commonplace till another system came along, and put out a couple of solid titles. However the system’s rushed release was quickly overshadowed by complaints revolving around hardware issues from the likes of system freezes, distorted colors, to the infamous Red Ring of Death all had gamers professing that the 360 could suffer the same fate as the Dreamcast.

Despite having a astronomical failure rate as high as 30-35% (by this industries standards) the Xbox 360 turned into the must have item during its time alone in the market and it was on its way towards being the runaway success of this generation. Even after the launch of the rivaled Playstation 3, the 360 continued to outdo the Sony counterpart at almost every turn (while trying to hide how badly its own failure rate was cannibalizing its own cash intake) and it wouldn’t be till the Wii caught on like wildfire that Microsofts white and black boxes would be humbled a bit. Even to this day the 360 has superiority over the PS3, but there are a few things that could and should be done before the Xbox can without question claim victory over the Playstation for this generation.

--Xbox Live
The actual service of Xbox Live is nothing to complain about what so ever, it’s something else related to Xbox Live that has my goat. This is very simple; Xbox Live should be a free online service. Say what you want about $50 bucks not being expensive however that’s one less game you are able to purchase over a year plus in these economic times every dollar matters anyways. When you turn on your Xbox 360 and connect to Live your dashboard instantly gets filled with more advertisements then you see on PSN and WiiFi combined, I would expect this to be the opposite when comparing a free service to a paid service. It’s hard to believe that these ads alone aren’t enough to keep Xbox Live up and running without consumers dumping their own income into the service. On top of the yearly fee there’s another interesting double standard that seems to go relatively unnoticed on Xbox Live, and that is in regards to downloadable content. One thing that Xbox flaunts in their advertisements is that they have exclusive console access to downloadable content for some multiplatform games; Grand Theft Auto 4 and Fallout 3. Here’s the thing that really trips my trigger and raises my eyebrows; if we’re paying for a service that already has a steady income via ads, and this service is the only service available for GTA Lost and the Damned, then why must I have to pay additional Microsoft Space Dollars in order to actually get the content? At this point you’re paying for the right to pay for the content that you cant get anywhere else. Now yes I am aware that the developers of said DLC do want to be compensated, but don’t you think that some of the money from the unnecessary consumer charge could go towards the developers instead of making us pay even more for it? Not to mention Group X that gave the okay for making their content exclusive to XBL probably got compensated for it in the first place.

One major advantage Playstation Network users have in the console debate is that they don’t have to shovel out money in order to enable the online functionality of their games. Along with this PSN users can also say that all of their members have access to demos and content, unlike Xbox Live where it seems more and more common to limit demos to Gold members until the actual game itself launches in an attempt to convert a few more into their unnecessary payment plan. If Microsoft really wanted to deal a powerful blow against Sony they should get with the rest of the online gaming world and make their service free, because right now it just doesn’t make much sense and Microsoft’s Live system wouldn’t work anywhere else. Could you imagine the uproar if Valve decided they were going to charge $50 a year in order to let you play CounterStrike or Team Fortress? Or if Blizzard made everyone decide to pay-per-match in StarCraft?

--Xbox Live’s Marketplace
While I could have written this into my Xbox Live section I felt I needed to break the Marketplace out into its own section. The XBL Marketplace since the launch of the 360 until the NXE update was an utter mess and was painful to navigate through. The NXE update resolved a little bit of the pain, however there are a lot of issues left that warrant me to dub the Xbox Live Marketplace as an inferior product to the PSN Store. Categories on the Marketplace are still rather bland and make navigation a tad frustrating if you aren’t launching a specific games marketplace directly from your games library. Loading times on the marketplace seem virtually identical do what they were pre NXE, so if you’re just perusing through things with no real idea of what you want the marketplace can turn into a time consuming experience. When viewing content for a game there is still an issue with too little information being displayed at once. Now while this isn’t as bad as the pre-NXE marketplace I’d still like to see a much larger list of products displayed at once.

The other thing that just needs to be fixed, if not removed, is Microsoft’s stupid Bill Gates Space Dollar system known as Microsoft Points. There is no true dollar-point conversion system when it comes to the cost of products, and the point values XBL lets you purchase are always slightly higher or lower then what you actually need meaning that you’ll seemingly always have leftover Microsoft points. For the first time in three years I managed to get my Points back down to a balance of zero and the joy I felt was like I had balanced the United States budget. I’m to the point where I almost don’t want to purchase anything on Live anymore because I don’t want to feel like I’m getting jipped on cash. Microsoft, lose your space money and use REAL money.

--Hardware Stability
This one is a no-brainer. Microsoft has lost billions of dollars due to the hardware failures with the Xbox 360’s red ring of death, and with assists from the Zune and Windows Vista they’ve lost a large amount of credibility in regards to putting out quality products. Thankfully Microsoft has seemingly been trying to resolve this problem by extending the red-ring warranty up to three years and have been improving the hardware of the systems themselves. Now while the number of red-rings has seemingly been dropping (though I’m curious to how many single-light errors have increased/decreased) the system still has numerous small issues to be addressed. Parts in the system are still prone to failure, even light movement of the system can result in your DVD being shredded, and there are a great deal of systems using old hardware formats that are out on retail shelves awaiting purchase. The only way to improve these issues with the Xbox 360 are probably impossible; speed up the process of calling tech support (aka India) and increase the speed of returning a broken console to the consumer. However, the issues plaguing the 360 are probably going to be around for the long haul and the only way to prevent an episode like this from happening again is by putting a lot of research and testing into whatever next system Microsoft puts out once the 360 is put out to pasture.

--Integrate Peripherals Into The System
The 360 hasn’t been a very future proof system since day 1. While it pioneered high definition graphics on consoles most of the other items on the system were rather dated.

--The system itself can only play standard DVDs and has no high definition format support, it only supported external HDDVD drives until that format became overdone by BluRay.

--The 360 supported no wireless capabilities what so ever until the Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter was released as an add-on for a rather ridiculous price.

--While it was has now become a standard, HDMI support was non-existent on most launch and second generation Xbox 360s and was basically a marketing ploy for a while for consumers to buy the Halo and Elite Xbox 360s. Since this has become a standard now, HDMI is no longer an argument against the 360 but it just needs to be pointed out.

--Controllers for the system ship only with a battery pack and rechargeable batteries came later, and for an inflated price over the original.

Now while not every consumer wants or needs these functions within their gaming system, the people who do want these have to pay a pretty penny in order to get them. And the cost of an Xbox 360 Pro edition with wireless and rechargeable batteries ends up costing the same if not more than a Playstation 3, which has all of these features bundled together. If Microsoft doesn’t want to give in and lower the prices of their peripheral items to something reasonable, one of their Xbox 360 bundles should have their peripheral items built into the system at a cost to rival the Playstation 3 (perhaps an Xbox 360 Ultimate). BluRay support would also be very welcomed for the Xbox 360 at least in regards to making it a system that would become a full Media Center. I’m not saying that actual Xbox 360 games should be put on BluRay, but the support for BluRay discs would be nice and would take another advantage away from their competition.

Luckily most problems with the Xbox 360 are on the hardware side of things as software has given very little to complain about. Games are no such problem for the Xbox 360 and the NXE dashboard is a very good console OS, even if its an ad-filled 90 degree flip of the PS3’s cross-media bar.