GTA IV DLC <br /> The Lost & DamnedI’m eagerly awaiting the release of GTAIV’s first DLC content The Lost & Damned, as I’m sure many are. Microsoft paid a pretty penny for the exclusive rights to the first DLC release. So next Monday, 14 Feb, we could possibly see the biggest DLC release too date for any platform and I, along with millions of others will be rushing online to get their fill of new stuff in a tired Nico Ballic world.
I’m not sure why you would release an addon on a Monday, as a Thrusday / Friday release would have proved to be good days but hey its Microsoft. The obvious sometimes eludes them.

Originally this post was going to be a moan about the stupidity of a globally standard pricing structure. 1 world, 1 price system but in reality is 1 world, yet many differenct costs for said pricing system.

Microsoft has gone on record as saying they think the user wants a standard pricing structure the world over, as its easier to deal with and for them easier to promote. Um, yeah. Thats what Walt Mossberg thought too (FYI The Zune uses the same points as the 360)

“To buy even a single 99 cent song from the Zune store, you have to purchase blocks of “points” from Microsoft, in increments of at least $5. You can’t just click and have the 99 cents deducted from a credit card, as you can with iTunes. [..] So, even if you are buying only one song, you have to allow Microsoft, one of the world’s richest companies, to hold on to at least $4.01 of your money until you buy another.”

You would think with the NZ dollar tanking, that if anything we would be paying more than America, but somehow it isn’t the case. So as I hunted around trying to get the cheapest live points I could, I discovered inconsistancies in per point worth depending on where you get them from, and strangely found the cheapest place to get MS Points is from MS themselves! Not only that, but you have more point options as you can buy packs of points from XBOX.COM in 500, 1000, 2000, 5000 lots.

The cost of The Lost & Damned is 1600 Live Points. I did some hunting around and found:

1500 Points @ Dick Smith $29.95 = 2c p. 1 MS Point
2000 Points on XBOX.COM $NZ33 = 1.6c p. 1 MS Point
1600 Points @ Amazon.com $US19.49 = $NZ37.72 = 2.3c p. 1 MS Point
Lost & Damned Retail Box @ Gamestop USA $US19.99 = $NZ38.68
The Lost & Damned can be picked up for 25% less than American gamers. In Your Face.

I suppose the biggest jib of all this though, is that in NZ you can’t even buy 1600 point cards (as you can in America) so you will need to buy 2x 1500 points cards to have enough to buy a 1600 points addon. There are no lower point cards in NZ anymore so basically if you follow the most obvious process to get the addon (Buy addon card, load code, use points to buy addon) you get screwed. Thanks Microsoft, for taking something simple, then making it overly complex and at the same time, ripping off your users a little.

Of course I should also mention how last week I purchased WipeoutHD for my PS3 which uses real money and charges your credit card in a real currency $NZ33.90. Not too hard to understand, and possibly a little easier than the “Need 1600 points, can only buy 1500 points” deal Microsoft offers.

I received an unexpected email welcoming me to the 2nd batch of NXE (New Xbox Experience) testers on the weekend, and thought I would share my thoughts, from a NZ perspective. I fit snugly in the average game console owner. I’m not a hardcore gamer. I don’t have a Gold Live! account, I don’t feel I have enough spare time to play online regularly. So with that in mind, how is it?

The first impression I get with the NXE is a reorganization, a redesign and more than anything a re-emphasis to the 360 interface. There’s not really anything ground breaking, the re-emphasis all being towards Microsoft’s Live! platform and the services around it.


You’d think when you log in to your machine this would be the first menu…….

Interface
Suffice to sat it works. It’s a nicer, pettier version of much of what we’ve all used.
Sadly there’s very little customization – your previous themes have been turned into mere backgrounds. There’s no way of making a menu based on what you use often over what Microsoft wants me to see.
I’m yet to discover a way of making the first menu opened on boot as the MyXbox menu, it instead defaults to the Spotlight menu – which is basically a section of advertisements (see a pic below).
The amount of XBOX Live! ads now present is now over the top. In the old Blade system ads were displayed on a panel ad on the right and that’s all you would mostly see – now, thanks to its new found 3D menu, Live ads can go off into infinity and almost every ‘section’ has some sort of ad for either a game add-on or LiveArcade game.
Also some old interface annoyances turn up in dark corners, one personal peev is that in my house there are 4 profiles on my machine, my girlfriend has one, along with housemates past and present – yet I am near the bottom of the profile list, I don’t want to autologin but do login in a lot more than anyone else.

Another interesting thing, last week some news popped up that half of the features originally planned for NXE were dropped (*cough* Longhorn *cough*). Infact some demo’d already have been dropped – PrimeTime, an Xbox Live based online game show program co-developed with Endemol creators of shows such as Big Brother and Fear Factor. It’s meant to be a more social gaming section, with less one player and more emphasis on multiplayer.


This is the default menu to the new NXE. Advertisment city.

Game Installs
Awesome – we can all finally hear our games and not the DVD drive (easily the 360’s biggest flaw beside RROD’s). This is a mildly ingenious way around a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Interestingly this shows that some parts of the old XBOX has been used in 360 games XBE’s from day one – ie Playfrommedia switch. From what I imagine, the 360 rips the entire game, patches the XBE to allow execution off HD and then uses a quick NXE based check for original media before executing.
Sadly game start times haven’t shown a huge improvement in early tests which makes the main motivation for installing games only really a noise improvement.

Avatars
This is like the Wii’s Mii’s but in HD, and as with your Mii’s you can have a great laugh trying to create yourself on the new system. Face and body shapes and features are adequate and clothing options are good, but not fantastic. My fear is that we’ll be paying for many new outfits, jewelery and hair do’s. I wonder will Game dev’s offer items of clothing via games – will I be able to get Master Chiefs armor? or favourite bands Tee via Rock Band? who knows.

What does seem sad though is that in someways this doesn’t quite go far enough – with Playstation Home being only a few months away Microsoft would have been well placed to include a few Avatar friendly mini games in NXE. It would have caught up with some of the Wii’s instant ‘I wanna play as me!’ aspect that you get with Mii’s and Wii Sport. Along with the fact Home will be offering bowling alleys and other basic social games – yet on the NXE (for now) what you get is a 3D customizable profile picture and little more. Games are in development that support Avatars – so far only a couple have been announced Scene It? Box Office Smash will add support (via an update) and cutesy SimCity clone A Kingdom for Keflings.

Media
If anything, the 360’s media capabilities have been downgraded in importance. Which is surprising as it is a terribly import part of any console beingbe the centre of your lounge (something even more the case now we have drums and guitars lying around).
Of course this shows if anything a huge ideological difference between Microsoft and Sony.
Sure, the two systems interfaces look completely different, but they both fundamentally offer almost identical features and end uses. Sadly I think this is still done best on the PS3’s XMB, with it’s Music/Pictures/Games/Online/Friends system. It keeps it simple, yet offers a wider section of uses.

The Music playback interface still blows, no new visualizations, no cover views, it seems to take 4 (Music Source->Albums->Album Name->Play All) clicks to get things playing when two should do.
There’s also some things missing, the ability to actually get your non Microsoft media on to the console – in a time of DRM there should be an easy way of moving/backing up your iPod/Zune/Harddrive to the 360’s music library – nope. Importing is still CD only.


The same as the old one but different colours……

Another big disappointment is the 360’s video playback has seen no improvements, AAC/MPEG-4 files still require a separate download and force you login to Live to playback files in those formats. The codecs package aren’t installed by default, even though it has been over a year since the update was released. Also, when I tried to see if clips I knew used to play, often wouldn’t, despite flawless playback previously – see pic.


NXE ERROR

Finally, media serving via uPnP from other sources over a network is still borked, with Microsoft still sticking to it’s nonstandard version of uPnP – meaning devices that are detectable on the PS3 and numerous other supporting devices – still fail to appear on the 360.

Add to this that one of the killer new features, Netflix, is of course tied and limited to North America. I can’t imagine Microsoft working with other companies to offer other markets to offer alternatives. Of course if Apple can offer movies via iTunes NZ then I’m sure Microsoft will planning to offer something similar sooner or later.

Over it
It’s in this end the new interface actually goes slightly backwards, all too much of the update push you to Live! and recommends and hypes Live! content – often even when you may have turned on your 360 to watch a movie or to just listen to an album.
This update hasn’t addressed the other and possibly far more serious threat – the PlayStation 3.

While not perfect, the PlayStation 3 still offers a much better package for someone who might buy just one console.
Add Sony’s short term plans of releasing a NZ compatible FreeviewHD PVR, Sony Home, and it’s more compatible media offerings, I can only see them continuing to strengthen their base.

If someone asked me which console to buy, and they said they wanted play a few games possibly online, watch movies, play music, I just can’t see any reasons to choose a 360 over it’s slightly more expensive competitor.  And I think that’s where Microsoft have an issue.

Microsoft have possibly the best games console out there – but don’t have any of the cherries that sweeten the deal.

Ups
Avatars
Installing Games = less noise.
Nicer interface design (not much better though, just nicer).
New OS = New bugs, Exploits?

Downs
XBOX LIVE Ads everywhere.
No web browser.
Media playback still lacking. no MKV, no MOV, no AC3, very hit and miss on what will actually play, even when it looks like it should. Still no true DLNA uPnP support.
No favourites menu or ability to turn off any live ads.
If you don’t play online or live in the USA there’s not as much new shit as you’d have hoped.
DRM implementation still looking as bad as ever.

XBOX 360 Fun
Pic from Splitreason.com

I just read this article over at Venture Beat, and I must say it paints a pretty bleak picture of the XBOX 360 design process. To sum it up, Microsoft cut too many corners, rushed the thing to market and at launch had a failure rate of 68%!!! Yes more 360’s were made that just didn’t work than actually did – and they just kept on shippin’ them.

Fast forward 2 years and after enjoying over a year of flawless play on my flatmates beige model, I finally brought a 360 Elite – I was willing to spend a little more on the Elite as I wanted HDMI, a  black case and theoretically a newer design that would be quieter/more reliable. Fat Chance on that last one. My Elite last 2 weeks until its first crash and then only 2 weeks later it died completely. So for my $800 I got to enjoy 2 weeks of play, 2 weeks of on and off play and then 3 weeks of waiting. Add  the cost of me shipping it to an AKL Airport based address, not a big cost but seriously – I had to pay for something that was not my doing. Interestingly I found it was shipped to Sydney for ‘repair’. For that I got a free month of Live Gold – whoppee.

Since the repair I’ve had no issues thankfully but the more I think about it the more I’ve gone off Microsoft’s console. I’m not rushing out to buy games and theres no way I’m spending $80 a year for Live Gold. Infact I was ever slightly pissed that I couldn’t download the Force Unleashed demo when it came out and instead have to wait a week to get it – which is a Gold ‘feature’.

Things that are good about my 360 –
It’s Black (is this even a feature??)
The controllers are the best weight/layout.

Things that REALLY suck –
Noise from DVD drive
Reliability
Lack of support of true DLNA uPnP – which makes DIVX support more of a gimmick than a usable feature.
Noise from DVD Drive (seriously it’s that noisy).