Every year Xbox announces new features to the dashboard, and each year, there are several that are fairly useless. So this year they announced Project Natal (google it, I don’t feel like making a link) and Social Media integration. Project Natal, a motion sensing technology, is pretty cool. But social media on the Xbox? Really? I have computers for that. Most people that have high speed internet have a computer they can tweet, IM and facebook on. I rarely send messages to people on my Xbox because it’s frustrating to use a joystick to do something I should do with a keyboard. Granted, I could use a keyboard, and sometimes I do…but it’s still not the right medium for social networking in my opinion.
Am I going to hide in a corner in the middle of a multiplayer battle and tweet, “Just got killed in COD4, not having a good night”? No. I’m not. I’m not going to tweet from my xbox because it’s inconvenient. There are, however, a few features I’ve wanted for awhile that Xbox hasn’t cared to build into the dashboard. They are as follows:
1. Notification of specific friends logging on to Xbox live.
Now, this might be a vague notion of convenience, but when I turn on my Xbox, I’d like to know if my best friend is online. I’d even like to know if people I play specific games with are online…it would help me to choose which game to play. Doesn’t seem like it’d be that complicated. But, I’m not an Xbox developer.
2. The ability to make video playlists.
Am I missing this feature? If I am, please tell me…I’d like to know, but I’d like to watch the entire first season of The Guild without having to back out and click “Play” again.
3. Button combinations for specific areas of the guide menu.
Now this might seem very complex, but if I held down the right trigger and pushed the guide button, it’d be sweet if it automatically brought up my friends menu — or something to that order. The guide button is so slow when you’re in the middle of a game, and it’s very frustrating.
These things would be helpful. Far more helpful than being able to tweet and post to facebook. Don’t we have enough inane descriptions of everyone’s play-by-plays already? Myself included.