Seven Things That the Xbox 360 Does Better Than Anyone Else January 11, 2006 Alan /.effect Dang, Pfucata.com

Introduction

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#1: Well-balanced development environment

But why is ease of development so important now? The market has changed. First of all, gamers have gotten more sophisticated and we're demanding more in our games. We're asking for high-definition graphics, sophisticated storylines, reference quality soundtracks, and online/multiplayer features. A storyline like Perfect Dark Zero would have been fine in the N64 era. Now we want presentations like Call-of-Duty 2 or Metal Gear Solid 3. When it comes to racing games, we don’t simply want to drive real cars on real tracks, but we value the time developers such as Polyphony Digital and Bizarre Creations spend at the dyno shop. A game that takes 8 hours to beat is considered short, but I remember beating games like Area 88 or Street Fighter II in a fraction of that time. When Sega brought out Shenmue, it was amazing that they had gone on-location to cities that were featured in the game. Nowadays, we expect our developers to have on-location experience for even genres like racing games. Developers now must spend more and more money than they ever have before on the art, sound, and creative assets needed to make a world-class game.

There's a second facet to this argument. More people are playing video games today. You just need to compare the PlayStation 2 launch (can you imagine a more hyped launch?) and the Xbox 360 launch (which even today has less "consumer interest" than the PS3). It wasn't too difficult to find PS2's on day one provided that you rushed out to a few different Target, Wal-Mart or Best Buy stores. You couldn't do that with the Xbox 360. Even Gamers.com was able to give away 100 PS2s away. FiringSquad is only able to give away one Xbox 360 this year because it's so hard to find.

As a result of the need to produce bigger and better games, and a bigger market that makes it economically possible for these companies, we have more developers trying doing multiplatform development.

Historically, multiplatform development was something gamers hated. Often, games ended up being developed for the least common denominator meaning that the graphics power of the more advanced consoles remained unused. That was then, this is now. As I said before, gamers are more sophisticated today. Games for the Xbox 360 that offer little improvement over their Xbox or PS2 counterparts are not going to sell well. We're smarter than that. Even in multi-platform games, developers are focusing a substantial amount of time to bring unique features to each of the platforms they are developing for, and an easy development environment is going to help developers achieve this goal.

It's hard to really get a sense of how good the Xbox 360 development environment is in comparison to the competition. While PS3 and Revolution developer materials and hardware exist, there's still time for Sony and Nintendo to evolve and improve their documentation and tools. At the same time, while Xbox 360 has an existing development environment, you can be sure that it too will evolve over time to meet new requirements. That said, in a chat with several multi-platform developers, it's unanimous that the documentation and tools of the Xbox 360 are exemplary. They've told us that it substantially better than the PS3 and is even better than Nintendo's development tools in some ways. This is an important comment because Nintendo has long been considered the benchmark and because the Xbox 360 is inherently a more complex machine.

Ease of development means that developers need to spend less time figuring how to make a feature work, and more time figuring out if the feature is *fun* and right now, the Xbox 360 has the best development environment.


SIDEBAR: Microsoft claims they will "put the game back into Windows" in 2006 and re-establish PC gaming as a flagship platform. It's a good way to combat Apple.

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2. Wireless controller

The console-integrated support is a clear benefit, but the significance of this is that the wireless gamepad "just works." While the newer-revision PlayStation 2 has the built-in IR port allowing gamers to power on/off the console from a DVD remote control, the Xbox 360 has integrated this feature into the controller. Second, the Xbox 360 maintains its 30 foot range with no noticeable lag even in an environment where you have several 2.4GHz 802.11g networks, several 2.4GHz cordless phones, and a microwave running. The controller auto-configures itself for the correct user as well. You don't have to think twice about whether you're holding the player 1 or player 2 (or player 3 or 4) gamepad. The first gamepad to connect gets player 1's spot and each subsequent controller joins in line. Battery life is also superb even when the rumble feature is enabled. Although Microsoft sells the Play-and-Charge kit, my recommendation is to get an Energizer 15 minute NiMH battery charger and a few 2200 mAh NIMH AA Sanyo (Kodak/Energizer/Maxell) or Panasonic-brand batteries.

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3. Free Downloadable Demos

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4. "Always On" Xbox Live

With the integrated Friends List, I can easily see if any of my friends happen to be playing online and join them, or do a voice chat. Since the voice chat is integrated into the network, it doesn't matter if my friend and I are playing the same game are not. Certainly, there are flaws to the system such as poor organization of the Friends List when it gets too large, and no good conference call options, but it's still something that Microsoft has done better than any of its competitors. On the PC, a lot of us with traditional IM clients end up going off-line while we're playing games to prevent the messaging client from bringing us back to the desktop, and even if you're running X-Fire, only a certain subset of games are supported. There's only one online gaming service that covers all the games of an entire platform and that's Xbox Live. It's just too bad Microsoft couldn't offer an hour or two of free online-gaming a month for Xbox Silver owners…

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5. WMA/MP3 playback with Online Metadata

Although the original Xbox allowed you to rip WMA files to your CD too, the Xbox 360's always-on connection means that you get the same metadata support as Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 or Windows Media Player 10. Simply put, for the vast majority of music CDs including many esoteric "audiophile label" and "independent label" discs, the Xbox 360 will be able to provide track and artist information. Additionally, the Xbox 360 is one of the few consumer electronics devices capable of handling WMA Lossless playback. Although CD-TEXT support would have been a useful addition, the online database remains a nice feature should you choose to use your Xbox 360 as a media server or prefer to take advantage of the custom soundtrack feature. Although this article is focused on the strengths of the Xbox 360, I should mention that the system won't allow you to configure your WMA bitrate and that it re-encodes stereo music into Dolby Digital.

6. High-Definition Media Center Edition Extender

Windows Media Center Edition 2005 is proof that Microsoft can get user interfaces right. It's visually appealing, highly intuitive, and allows both novice users and expert users to get the most from the interface. Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 even outperforms Apple's Front Row competitor in terms of having an interface that "just works." The Xbox 360 allows owners of MCE2005 systems to use the Xbox 360 on a second TV by streaming the video over the network. While you can't play DVDs over the network, you can play recorded and live TV. This means that someone with a MCE2005 and several HD tuners could watch/record several different shows on different televisions, all in high-definition.

The original Xbox had Linux-based Media Center software and the PlayStation 2 had software like the QCast Tuner. Nonetheless, the Xbox 360 works substantially better than both of those two solutions when dealing with recorded television, music, and pictures. Although, the lack of MPEG-4 support (meaning H.264, Divx, Xvid, etc.) limits the overall versatility of the system, the Xbox 360 still offers a better solution than any other machine at the moment. Unfortunately, unless Sony makes MPEG-4 support a feature of the PS3, we are unlikely to see MPEG-4 AVI support in the Xbox 360.

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7. High-Definition Gaming

1080p support is essential for video and photos. It's less important for games. The first comment I always hear is that "no one can afford 1080p televisions anyway" and that's just being silly. These consoles are intended to have a shelf-life of about 5 years. Likewise, the transition from analog to digital TV means that there will be a big increase in television sales shortly – and many first-time HDTV buyers are waiting for 1080p displays. To say that "no one can afford 1080p televisions anyway" is equivalent to saying that "no one can afford a 500GB hard drive anyway."

For video and movies, de-interlacing 1080i to 1080p is important. Having the playback device reconstruct the full frames of a 1080p24 Hollywood film ensures that all of the original resolution is faithfully reproduced. Likewise, when using the Xbox 360 as a photo slideshow unit, the extra resolution is clearly helpful.

For 3D games, 1080p support is less important in the sense that if you were fill-rate limited (i.e. anti-aliasing), you'd be comparing a 60 frame-per-second 720p game against a 30 frame-per-second 1080p game. In many cases, you'd want the 720p60. Likewise, if the graphics are so complex, 30 frames-per-second refresh rates may only be achievable at 720p resolution. The need for both 720p and 1080p gaming is identical for the need for 720p and 1080i broadcast formats. There will be certain games that benefit from the higher resolution while others will benefit from the faster frame rates.

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Summary

Despite some initial launch stumbles and a lukewarm reception to the Xbox 360 in Japan, we still remain optimistic about the Microsoft Xbox 360's success worldwide. In our list of "The 11 Mistakes Microsoft Made with the Xbox 360," we necessarily focused on many non-gaming problems with the system. When discussing the features that the Xbox 360 does better than the competition, virtually all of the strengths are gaming related. Microsoft already has a robust software development environment and sufficiently powerful hardware to last for the next 5 years. While Sony will be bringing additional horsepower and blu-ray support and Nintendo will likely bring an SDK of similar, only the Xbox 360 incorporates the best of both worlds.

I am reminded of the Nintendo DS. The DS launched to a lukewarm reception internationally – it was ugly, the touch screen and microphone were mostly gimmicks, and the Sony PSP was so much more flashy and cool. Today, while the PSP still remains popular, sales of the Nintendo DS have reached 13 million units as developers have been able to take advantage of the programming environment and bring new gaming experiences made possibly the dual screens. The Xbox 360's killer feature is in Xbox Live. The real question will be how developers will choose to use the "always on" network connection to bring new gaming experiences.