It seems like Microsoft is the constant target for lawsuits. This week has seen word of two suits possibly being brought against the giant from Redmond. Microsoft has a ton of money and have made decisions in the past that have made them a huge target, but I don't know if this sue happy culture of ours really understands just how hard a target they are. In my opinion, one of these case has a bit of merit and one is questionable.

First up is the possible class action suit being brought against Microsoft in reaction to the mass banning of modified consoles from Xbox Live that took place last week. A law firm called AbingtonIP thinks that this episode of banning was an effort by Microsoft to increase subscriptions to it's Xbox Live service and to increase sales for a couple of high profile releases. Somehow that logic just doesn't make sense to me, but hey, I'm not a judge or a lawyer.

Next up is a suit by Datel, a manufacturer of accessories for Microsoft's Xbox 360. Datel reports that the recent firmware update has blocked usage of the products that the company makes for use on the 360. Microsoft claims that the block on Datel's 3rd party products was not intentional, but does not seem to be all that broken up about it. In a statement Microsoft says that unauthorized products are not tested for compatibility, and therefore, not guaranteed to work. Datel may have a chance with this one, especially considering Microsoft's previous bouts regarding competition, but it's unlikely we'll see any result from either of these soon-if at all.

Starting out on the new dashboard you have several choices that are called channels. It starts with the Spotlight channel and goes to the My Xbox channel, Game Marketplace channel, Video Marketplace channel, Friends channel, Inside Xbox channel, the Events channel, and finally, the Welcome channel (this channel can be set to hide if you don't want it). I can't stress enough how clean and uncluttered the new system is. Finding the channel I want is as easy as pushing the left stick up or down. When you hit the channel that you want, say the My Xbox channel, you will see additional tiles appear to the right of the main one. Again, using the left stick, you can move left or right to select which subchannel that you want. If you want to see your achievements for example (and who wouldn't?) select the My Xbox channel. From there you will see (if your profile is signed in) your avatar standing there in front of the second tile. Select that subchannel, then move to the right. From there you will see that each game you have played will have it's very own tile, and on these tiles, you will see all the acheivements for that game.

When I say every game I mean every game is shown. If you've played Spongebob just to pad your gamerscore, a tile will show up. Played a last gen Barbie game recently, yep, it'll be there too. On each tile you will see the title of the game, a couple of bars on the right side (signifying the gamerscore and the number of achievements unlocked from that title), date last played and all the achievements available for that game shown below. I love gaming, but I'm obviously not a gamerscore whore as my tiles show. I don't have any of the titles know for score padding and even have a pretty good amount of locked achievements from the games that I have played. Maybe I'll get to those in the future. The bottom line is that with this new system all your information for a specific title is available with just one glance. Instead of having to drill down into a couple of menu options, it's all in plain sight for everyone to see.

Now, the big question. How is the marketplace handled on the NXE? Is it still a pain to try and find that title that you want? Starting off, there are two ways to get to the Marketplace channel. The first is using the main channel options by scrolling up or down to get to the Game or Video Marketplace channels. The second way is to push the Y button while on the Spotlight channel to go directly to the Game Marketplace channel. From here you have the option of selecting All Games, Arcade, Game Add-ons, Community Games, Xbox Originals, Themes and Gamer Pictures, Game Demos, and Game Videos. All of the previous options have 3 main selection tiles asocciated with them. You can select from a New Arrivals, Most Popular, or Browse tiles. These options are pretty self explanatory and basic, no need to go into detail. Now, let me walk you through something that I found interesting. Say, you see that Xbox Originals has just added GTA: San Adreas. Hit the A button on that tile and it takes you to another section with 5 tiles in it. The first shows the price and purchase options, pretty much the same as the old dashboard did. The next title over is the featured downloads tile, not much interesting here. The next tile over is where the new stuff starts. Images and screenshots, about damn time. Now, you can finally see what you are getting before you buy it, granted, not such a big deal with the original titles, but very welcome with gamer pics and themes. The next tile shows some basic information and features that the game has. Finally, the last tile has a full description of the game. What I like about this tile that was fixed from the old dash is that you can scroll the description up and down instead of waiting for it to do it automatically. New features, I love it.

Here's something else new, Community Games. As the description on the NXE says "user-created indie games that are not reviewed by ratings boards." So, some fruit off of the XNA tree has arrived. These are independently developed games that are being sold for 200-400 Microsoft points. These games follow the same basic description format as all the other titles do on the Marketplace, to include a full description and screenshots. There is one difference though. Since these titles are not reviewed by the ESRB they do not have a rating attached to them, enter you and me. These titles are reviewed instead by the community. They are rated from a 0 to 3 scale (0 being none) on violence, sex and mature content. This way little Timmy's mom knows what he should and should not play, just as she would with traditional games. There are only 16 Community Games right now, but expect that number to grow in the next few months.

I think that covers all the basics, oh wait. I forgot about the new harddrive install option. How could I let that slip my mind. This is one feature that I have been really interested in. My main question is not about load times (I really couldn't care less about that) but whether or not the 360's loud disc drive will be silenced by this addition. Let's try it out, shall we? My choice of game to install first is Fallout 3. A decently sized game to start things out. After you insert the disc, go to the My Xbox channel and hit the Y button. This will bring you to a tile with a couple of options on it. One of these options is install to hard drive. After selecting that option the installation begins. Installing the game itself took about 10 minutes to do, not so bad, after all, it'll be worth it if I could actually hear the game while playing it. Now the verdict. The 360 is indeed quiet while playing the game after the install. I started up Fallout 3 to hear...nothing at all.

OK, now I'm completely sold on this NXE thing. There are some great additions to the old formula that make the 360 easier to use and better looking too. I haven't spent any real time with this yet, so I can't say that everything is perfect. I just haven't ran into any problems yet.

Imagine my surprise when I checked the inbox of my humble e-mail to find a message from Microsoft. Well, I get messages about hotmail all the time (damn unblockable spam), but this was different, this was about the Xbox 360. So, what could Microsoft be telling me that I didn't already know? Then I saw the subject line. "Xbox 360 NXE- You have been selected." Me? Selected for the NXE preview? I know Major Nelson said that several thousand would be able to get in early, but since that logic didn't work for me with the LBP beta, I didn't expect it to work this time either. Well, on to the preview.

Downloading the update and installing it only takes 5 or 6 minutes. This is one advantage that Microsoft has over Sony, faster downloads and updates. It took 3 or 4 times as long to update LBP (which I also got yesterday, but that is for another post) to version 1.03 than it took to completely change my Xbox dashboard. Sony, you really need to fix that. Anyway, after the download and install is complete I was then required to select a virtual me. Yes, avatars are mandatory now. Is that a bad thing? No, I actually had a bit of fun selecting my avatar from the 8 standard choices, then customizing it to my liking. The change features tab has 9 choices in customizing your virtual dude (or dudette). You have the option to adjust your hair, eyes, eyebrows, ears, nose, face (facial features such as moles and freckles and facial hair are selected here), chin, mouth, and skin color and body (height and weight are adjusted here). Plenty of options for everyone.

Is that all you can do to your avatar? Nope, you can also select what clothes you want him or her to wear. There are 8 options for adjusting your avatars appearance here. You can choose what top, headwear, makeup (eye shadow and lip color), bottoms, head accessories (glasses and earrings), dress up (a white morning suit and a tan formal suit are here), shoes, and body accessories (wristwear, rings, gloves). The last option is the ability to save and name that special outfit that you just made. From here you get to take your gamer picture. You can zoom in or out, turn your avatar to the left or right, move his or her head around, and take whatever picture that you like. You want to take a picture of the top of your head? Feel free. How about the back? That's OK, too. You can preview the picture and then save if you like it. If you are done messing around with the digital you, you can either start over (if you are break mirrors ugly, you may want to take this option) or save and exit. After saving your avatar he does a little fist pump and a little jig. Now, onto the meat of the update, the dashboard itself.

My first impression of the NXE? I like it. The old dashboard just didn't do it for me. It felt like a step backward on a machine trying to be a step ahead. I never had an original Xbox, but the blades felt like they would have been more appropriate on that machine, not a next gen console. This update changes that for me, it looks cleaner, is easier to navigate, and seems to be organized a lot better then it was. I know some people will disagree with me for saying this, but the NXE has a similar setup to the XMB. Turn the XMB 90 degrees clockwise, use phrases instead of icons on the up/down portion of the bar and use tiles with descriptions and picures on them instead of the option choices for the left/right bar and you have the NXE. Look, I will be honest here, I think the XMB succeeded where the blades failed because of simplicity. The XMB was uncluttered with too much unneeded information and advertisements that the blades were littered with. Having an NXE that takes a few cues from the XMB is not a bad thing, and I applaud Microsoft for realizing it.

Continued in part II

You know what I hate? I hate having money and seeing something I want, but am unable to buy it. I hate it even worse when other people can do what I can't. What am I getting at here? I'm talking about not being able to buy certain games and downloading certain demos from Live just because of my location. I am an American that is serving in Germany. I have a US Live profile, but I can't buy every game on Live.

I first noticed this annoying little situation back when I first got my 360 in June of this year. Having just got the system (and in a location with a very limited selection of games) I decided to get the best of what was available, which ended up being Mass Effect. I loved the game, and then decided that boning up on the Xbox history wouldn't be bad either. I really wanted to try the first Halo, but without many options to get a copy, I wanted to get if off of the Xbox Originals section in the Live Marketplace. Oh, the cruelty involved. I could not purchase the game because it was not available in my region. How could it not be my region? I have a US profile in for the Marketplace, so I should be able to get all the games that people in the US get, right? Wrong. I have to assume that Microsoft doesn't want my money.

If this was just limited to Originals titles, I might understand, but it's not. I can't even download demos of certain games. I tried to get the Crackdown demo, a game that came out in the first few months of the 360, and got that same infuriating message. And here's what gets me. People are paying $50 a month for this service, for completely unavoidable reasons that I'm not going to go into here, I do not. Yet, the free service of the PlayStation Network does allow me to download EVERYTHING with a US profile. Hell, if I was so inclined, I could also sign up for every region that is available and get ALL their content, too. I have yet to see a "you can see me, but you can't buy me" message on PSN.

Don't get me wrong, I do like Live, and if my situation was better I'd have a gold account right this minute. I just can't stand to be told that I can't spend my money on what I want. I tried to download the Duke Nukem demo yesterday. Guess what happened? Yep, you know it. "Nah, nah. Can't play me." This also extends to trying to add payment options for Microsoft points. I can't buy any of those damn things off of Live due to the fact that my address is an APO address. APO stands for Army Post Office. APO is not an option, I know, I tried to buy points last night and couldn't. It wouldn't be so bad if I could get points cards here, but there aren't any in our PX (Post Exchange, the locale department store, of sorts). The last time I saw one was 2 months ago. Well, no Braid for me.

Microsoft needs to make Live more accessible for people like me. Often, the military community is completely ignored. And it's very frustrating for an active gamer, like myself, to not be able to get the games that I want. I know, we aren't a huge population, and I'm not going to question anyones patriotism, but enough already. Let us spend our money and support our favorite games. PSN does it, why don't you?

Well, I finally did it. I finally plunked some of my hard earned (and government returned) cash on a shiny new Xbox 360. Shiny is just a figure of speech since I bought the flat black Elite model, but you get the point. All I can say is thank you U.S. for having tax returns and stimulus money.

Sorry, back to the Xbox story. I'd been thinking about picking up a 360 for quite a while, but I initially held out due to the whole nasty RRoD business. Two conditions finally seemed right for me to risk buying one of Microsoft's machines. The first was the shear lack of any news on the RRoD subject these last few months. I haven't seen one article recently in regards to the whole general system failure fault. I know Microsoft has been working to fix the faults, and it seems like they have made some progress. Even so if it hadn't been for the increase of the warranty for 3 years, I don't think I'd ever have purchased one. That was the second positive change. Not quite the full disclosure on why the consoles were failing, but better then nothing. After that, I just had to get one. Why? As any true game would tell you, "it's the games stupid".

See, here's the thing. I don't care about the consoles themselves, just the games. I didn't buy a PS3 because it was a Sony machine. I bought it due to the fact that it had some great games currently released for it and more coming soon. The whole Blu-ray thing didn't hurt either. I bought my PSP instead of a DS because of all the potential that that little machine was capable of. Did Sony influence my decision in that regard? No, it didn't. And that's why I had no problem with picking up a 360 two days ago.

For my Microsoft purchase I decided to go big (see, I actually paid attention to the box) and pick up an Elite. I thought the large hard drive and the black color was a good match for my shiny (actually shiny) PS3 that I already had at home, plus the whole white thing is too shabby chic for me. I don't care what Games Radar has to say, black is better. The harder choice was deciding on the one game that I had enough money to buy. Picking up the Elite plus one game is a heck of a lot of money for my meager budget (the government wasn't that generous). The choice definitely wasn't easy, but I finally narrowed it down to two. The finalists were Halo 3 and Mass Effect. I decided to go with Mass Effect. Like I said, one game, and since I haven't played the first 2 Halo games, picking up the third really didn't make much sense. The Halo series is most definitely still on my list to buy in the future. Maybe the government will be generous and send some more money my way. I know, wishfully thinking. I just tend to be optimistic.

So finally, I have my game, I have my console and since I'm on vacation, I have the time to play. Speaking of which, Mass Effect - and it's achievements - are calling my name.

Shane Kim is confident and not afraid to speak his mind. We all know this because the guy loves to talk about the 360 and Microsoft Games Studio. He also tends to give out great quotes and sound bites. Reading an interview with Mr. Kim recently one of these quotes caught my eye and I just had to throw my 2 cents in about it.

"In no way would I say that Halo, or what we know of Halo today, is the peak of what's possible. Far from it. It's another benchmark, another milestone to exceed in the future."

There's no doubt that Mr. Kim has a lot of confidence in his company and developers. It is also no secret that Microsoft has quite a few excellent game studios under it's umbrella. What is missing though, is just how Microsoft can top the biggest franchise - and the reason they're in the black - it's had? Ever.

"But if you look at the initial success of Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360, that's been super, and we have exclusive [DLC] content coming too. Gears of War 2 is going to be huge, Fable 2 is going to be huge."

I have no doubt that GTA IV and all the other games coming out in the next few months will be impressive for the 360, where my doubts lie is in the success of these titles compared to Halo 3. Collectively, the Halo franchise has sold more than 20 million copies and counting. Looking at the upcoming line-up, I don't see the possibility of any of those titles achieving that kind of success.

I know I'm just the average gamer, but I don't see the possibility of sales number like those seen for the Halo titles ever happening for the 360 again. I know that Gears Of War 2 and Too Human will be big titles as well as the eventual Mass Effect 2, but there's nothing coming that has the immediate pull of a Halo title. Even with Halo Wars coming out sometime in the future, I don't think the old Halo magic will be there. Mr. Kim says it himself here:

"So I don't know. I believe that we're going to have just as big of a year in terms of content on Xbox 360. Maybe we don't have a particular exclusive that's as big as Halo 3, but I do think that Gears 2 and Fable 2 will be really big hits."


Big hits? Sure. Bigger than Halo? Not a chance. I think what I'm getting around to here is that the possibility exists that the 360 has already peaked. Hardware sales are slowing in North America and virtually nonexistent in Japan. Rumor is now that the Xbox has another price cut coming or the possible announcement of a new hardware configuration out of E3. Either way, expect sales to increase in the short term. Long term, though? The Wii will own hardware sales, and with Sony bringing out it's big guns in late 08 and early 09 expect to see the 360's attach rate drop from that magic 7.7 number that they are touting today.

This is by no means the end of the 360. There are still several years to go in the life cycle for this Microsoft console. Just don't expect it to last in the marketplace as long as Sony's machine. On the good side, the 360 will definitely outlive the Wii.