I am a very simple man.

I am not the world’s biggest gamer. I mainly use the Xbox as a distraction, for cooling down, or as a tool in helping me regain my muse when I’m flaming out.

As a result, my requirements for Xbox 2013 are very few, just four in number.

No more nonsense about it being always-connected to Microsoft
This idea, if true, has got to be the stupidest idea ever to come out of Redmond!

Believe me, it is.

If Xbox 2013 has this feature, it loses this generation of consoles. It also shows that Microsoft is calling its users thieves out of the gate, an enormous measure of disrespect, and disdain for them.

I will reciprocate by staying away.

Leave 2nd-hand (previously owned) games alone
Seriously, what’s the BFD about the secondary market for games? I would think that it helps people stay loyal to the platform.

Take me for instance: I started the H.A.L.O. franchise midway, and now, I’ve gone back and acquired, and played all the titles in the series.

Would I have paid top-dollar for those old games?

No!

Allow background downloading of games & console updates
(1) You crack open a new game to play. But, Xbox 360 has to take an incredibly annoying amount of time – I only get 5Mbps symmetric in my rural town – to download a required update before I can play the friggin’ game!

How happy do you think I am?

(2) While even that may be acceptable, how does it feel when you want to get into a previously-played title, and Xbox 360 needs about 30 minutes or so to download updates for that game?

How hard could it be for the device to keep a lookup table or something and perform that download during idle times?

(3) You turn Xbox 360 on, and it HAS to download a series of updated before you can even do diddly squat on the device!

Who at Microsoft this this is ideal?

Who?

What I am getting to is simple: allow background downloads of device, system, and game updates.

Sheez!

Transfer media to Xbox or allow attached local DASD
Xbox 360 will allow you to rip music to the hard disk.

Cool!

However, Xbox 360 will, inexplicably, disallow the copying of MP3s that you already own to the device.

WTF, right?

The last time I mentioned this, some people tried to inform me of the benefits of streaming.

To them I say give me a fcuking break, bokay?

Are you freaking kidding me?

In order to play songs on the Xbox in my office, I have to send the media through the CAT-6e to the router in the basement, where it then gets beamed over Wi-Fi to the Xbox? Or, I send a command to the Proliant Microserver in the server room to initiate streaming of a song via Wi-Fi to the Xbox?

Which is less than 8 feet away from me?

This is ideal?

Who at Microsoft came up with this?

What sense does it make?

What I want to see is ether allowing the copying of media files to the Xbox, or absent space on the console, an easy, effortless way to allow users to plug in a DASD.

Simple.

Oh, and by the way, my sons would like Microsoft to remember that it is an Xbox, not the bastard offspring (my kind interpretation!) of a cable box and a TIVO.

And give them stupendous gameplay.

That’s it.

Nothing major.

© 2002 – 2013, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

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