Things I want my 360 to do...
As I sit at work anxiously awaiting the release of Crackdown, I have learned that a new demo for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 has been released on XBox Live Marketplace. It is a rather large file and for some unknown reason downloads on the console take much longer than I think they should (which I will address later). I would love to use the My Xbox portal to wake my 360 and start the download while I am at work. Thereby allowing me to jump in and start whooping terrorist butt when I get home, but alas I am unable to do that. This situation brings me to a list of things I want my XBox360 to allow me to do, or that should do - but for some unknown reason doesn't. So if you lovely Xbox360 devs are listening, get cracking on these things darned it!!!
- Faster Downloads: What the heck is up with the download rates??? I mean honestly, I was downloading the 50 megabyte Gears of War map pack and it took far longer than a similar download on my PC. Why don't they support some sort of peer to peer torrent type client. HD movie downloads will never fly given the speed at which they come down and the size of the hard drive that is in the machine.
- User upgradable hard drives: Sure I understand the whole "hacking" thing, but the drive sits in a cage that then plugs into the 360. Why can't I get a huge drive and insert it into the cage and have the machine do its "protection" thing on it. Then I don't have to worry about MS gouge factor that will occur when they finally release a larger drive option.
- Remote Control via the network: This is what I touched on above. MS has stated that the details regarding my XBL account is stored not my 360 but in my Microsoft Passport account. Therefore, I should be able to initiate purchases via some secure website, and then have my 360 initiate the download. Ideally this would be all automatic, but I could handle it in two parts. First would be the purchase, and then via a Wake-on-LAN request cause my 360 to come alive and commence the downloading.
- Web Surfing: The Wii does it, and why can't my Xbox do it?? I have a connected system in my living room, and I should be able to pull up some websites or at least read RSS feeds that I have subscribed to via the Xbox portal (see yet more use of that wonderful web technology). I know the control scheme will be a little off and rendering may not be perfect, but I think they could make it work. Or maybe Nintendo is just smarter than you guys up in Seattle (see taunting them should get it working.)
- VOIP Calls: I love the voice chat in Xbox Live and the ability to initiate a conversation with my friends by selecting from the list is darned near perfect. Now, why can't this be extended to allow me to make calls to family similar to Skype? Sure charge me points or cash for making a call to a landline, but much like websurfing, I have a connected system that seems somewhat crippled from touching content outside the games and some media on my local network. I know some of this may come with the Live Anywhere initiative, but I want it now darned it and I don't want to install Vista to make it happen.
Now I am sure there are other things I am missing, or will somehow be handled via future updates from MS. I still want them now, but I open the floor to you (our readers and spammers) to offer some other ideas on these topics.
