xBox 360: New Era, Still a Failure

The xBox 360 has finally been shown off and will be available for next holiday season. It promises a whole lot more than merely a console game system, but might fall short on real innovation.

First, the device comes with a removable 20GB Harddrive. Impressive compared to the 8GB that shipped with the original xBox, but pitiful compared to an off the shelf PC circa 2000. The Harddrive is removable though, meaning folks will no doubt be able to buy upgrades. At least MS designers caught on to the trend of people cracking open their old xBox's and isntalling new drives.

The wi-fi ready box should be able to hook easily into wireless home networks allowing users to hookup many devices. Sadly, most [read: none} televisions will be able to wirelessly recieve data making for a mess of wires. However, it might mean the xbox 360 will work similar to Apple's airport connecting to a windows xp computer and other, future devices.

The XBox 360 seems to be trying to fill a roll Dell and HP promised three or four years ago: managing home media. Users will be able to put music cd's onto the harddrive, play Dvd's, and even use media from their computers on their televisions. However, there are plenty of defficiencies with all this. We doubt, for instance, that the connectivity between the PC and the box will be as easy as they claim. Archives of thousands of MP3's that are on home computers will probably not as MS is implying, play nicely on the xbox.

Ideally, users would store their media files on their computer and simply use the xbox to transmit the data from the computer to the television or the stereo. While MS claims this will be possible, it will probably be wrapped up in Media player. Wouldn't it be great to plug an iPod into the xBox to seamlessly play thos audio files? Sure, but Apple and MS are never going to get together to do this. The iPod knockoffs that use MS's media files aren't nearly as fun as the iPod, and while Bill Gate's recently claimed that the iPod is already a has been, that's simply not true.

xBox 360 also promises free online services like chatrooms and downloading demo games. Premium pay service will allow users to actually play games. Great; just what the world needs, a giant silver box that lets people send instant messenges. This would be fine if it were compatible with MSN's chat software, AND other services like Trillian and AIM. But its unlikely xBox will be compatible with any non xbox chat service, making it irrelevant.

The xBox 360 seems to be the early stage of convergant technology. Yet, we doubt it will be successful [sure, we'd also like to tell the xbox to make dinner, walk the dog, and clean the toilet].

What we believe the Xbox 360 Will lack, but should have:

DVR: Tivo created the market and knockoffs abound. But a digital recording device within the xbox itself would make managing all this media even easier. This of course is nearly impossible since television companies would probably prevent a PC compatible device from recording television: all they would see is television shows flowing freely onto the internet. But since the xBox already comes with the hardware necessary for DVR capaibilties, all it really needs is the software from MS. They are after all, a software company.

USB ports: We don't know if the xbox will or won't have USB ports, but it probably doesn't. But with the proliferation of thumb drives, a usb port would enable file transfers to the xbox. Also, future peripheral devices could easily attach that way.

iPOd Dock: As we said before, Apple and MS would never get together to dock the iPod to the xbox. And since we doubt the xbox will have a usb port, third party hardware is probably impossible. But it simply doesn't make sense to have to plug an MP3 player into a computer, and connect the computer to the xbox just to play music.

Online Shopping: No doubt MS will have innovative ways to take people's money from the free xbox live features. But what would be even better would be online stores. Partner with Amazon to bring their catalogue to the xbox. While at this time few people would have a high speed net connection without a computer, clearly the xbox could replace home computers in the future.


Xbox 360 will probably go down as the transission home appliance; future generations will wonder why anyone needed a DVD player, stero, and toaster oven without xBlox emblazed on the side. But at the same time, the new xBox is probably going to lack many key features that would actually make life better.

UPDATE: Gizmodo is Reporting that the wireless controllers will plug into USB slots for recharging purposes. This opens up a whole world of future plugins, making MP3 docks a possible third party add on, and maybe even in the future, let you control your toaster! Also, as they pointed out, the portable harddrive will not function as a stand alone MP3 player, which would actually have been useful and possibly mean the end of the iPod. But since it doesn't, we're going to defy Bill Gates and say in fact that the iPod is here to stay.