Engadget Podcast 111 (the Xbox 360 episode) - 01.09.2008

We've wanted a long time to get our old pal Major Nelson on the Engadget podcast, and what better occasion than CES? Ok, maybe E3 -- but there's been no dearth of 360 news at and prior to the show, and no shortage of questions we've been dying to have answered on the air. If you're not down with the Xbox, you'll probably want to wait for a little bit until our next podcast, because in this one we're talking about the recent Live outages, how the console's been doing in the market, the persistence of the integrated HD DVD player rumor, the announcement of the 360's first IPTV rollout, and even waxing nerd about our favorite titles of late.

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Hosts: Peter Rojas and Ryan Block
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Guest: Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson
Music: Solvent - Instructograph (Ghostly International)

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Contact the podcast: 1-888-ENGADGET, Engadget (Gizmo Project) or podcast at engadget dawt com

[Andre @ Jan 9th 2008 1:40PM]

congrats on bringing the podcast back.

[Evan @ Jan 9th 2008 1:41PM]

Bringing us back to the good ol' days of the weekly Engadget Podcast. Thanks guys.

[nerdtalker @ Jan 9th 2008 11:02PM]

This podcast with Major Nelson is great, you guys gained a bunch of points in my book for this!

Great talking points with Major Nelson, you've talked about tons of what the key issues were circulating around Xbox/XBL in an open format!

[booticon @ Jan 9th 2008 1:52PM]

Can't wait to get details of this free XBLA title.

[Alex @ Jan 9th 2008 2:05PM]

What would I like from a Gold Membership? Perhaps a specially priced XBLA game each month. A free movie rental every month or every three months. A special group of gamerpics that only gold members can get.

[bob @ Jan 9th 2008 2:52PM]

Great ideas!

[john @ Jan 9th 2008 2:06PM]

Gold Membership suggestions to add value

- 2 movie rentals of your choosing
- make XBox Video Marketplace available via Media Center

I'd pay for the service in a heart beat.

[John @ Jan 9th 2008 2:13PM]

The Engadget Podcast returns... is it Christmas again?

[Nino @ Jan 9th 2008 2:14PM]

Can we get this to work with the Zune software like the Engadget HD podcast is?

thanks


Nino

[jagowar @ Jan 9th 2008 2:40PM]

Ive got a few suggestions about what to do to make xbox live gold better...

1. Make the current gold free and make gold have access to dedicated servers (run by ms) for all games. (and some way to tell when you are in a dedicated server since you wont always be playing on a dedicated server). IE bill it as a true "premium" service.

2. Give discounts on xbox live arcade titles, movies (like the 100 point 300 rental the europe guys got), etc (maybe even do it once a week and advertise it so the silver guys could see it). As it would also introduce people to the movie downloads.

3. Bring marketplace to zune and media center (although this doesnt really matter to this list)



As for the arcade title I really hope there is something done incase you already have the free arcade title.... I was one of those few who actually bought carcassone (sp) and when it showed up free later i was kinda pissed. would hate to have the same thing happen again.

[Luke @ Jan 9th 2008 2:41PM]

Ah! 'How do you make Xbox Live Gold members feel more loved?'

- LOYALTY REWARDS! After a year of service, maybe a free 'something'
- I TOTALLY agree with the above, in regards to Xbox Live Arcade games: A specially (i.e. LOWER :P) priced 'Arcade Game of the Month' title.
- ADD ME ( Gamertag: Popfry ) and send a love message :)

I'm simultaneously listening to the podcast AND typing, so I've probably made myriad spelling errors, resulting in something like a bad Scrabble hand.

[dbellinger @ Jan 9th 2008 2:57PM]

For gold members:

• What is the reasoning behind placing adds all over the place? If you're already paying for the service why are we having to look at companies who have paid to advertise on the service?
• Give us the ability to disable them at least!
• I completely agree with giving those that have shown loyalty to the platform a discount of Arcade Game of the Month

[Tiptup300 @ Jan 9th 2008 3:25PM]

You do not know what its like to see xbox live without ads, it feels like im in the USSR, so plain, so dreary.

[trnsfrguy @ Jan 9th 2008 4:13PM]

As of last night, Live was still crappy !! I can't believe a thing that comes out of Major's mouth.

[bry2an @ Jan 9th 2008 4:23PM]

Come on guys you are at CES and you spend a majority talking about the XBOX? I'm glad you back but this interview would have been bater after CES. Oh about the XBOX giving the consumer choice and all the talk about cost is a joke. Wifi and a hard drive should not have been a choice but standard.

What I want out of my Live Gold subscription some free movie rentals and a points system that makes sense or just make it use $ and not have to buy chunks at a time. I don't believe it is that for the ease of the consumer. I mean you could make it a $5 min.

Again I think your at CES shouldn't you talk more about that.

[Rubicant @ Jan 9th 2008 4:59PM]

What would I like as a gold member:
1. cheaper arcade prices scaled to member join date.
2. Podcast Support...Imagine listening to engadget or Major nelson's podcasts while sitting playing Carcassone.
3. Perks at marketers...specifically..BETTER than the XBLDiamond card.
4. Gold sxclusive gamerpics...or double gamerscore achievement days.
5. An option to kill certain ads on the blades. Like the one on the games blade and the entire marketplace background at times.
6. more Major and Trixie on inside Xbox. Maybe 2x a week guys?
7. How about a game with the ops event? (Granted, the guys in the Zoc would kill us due to superior pingtimes...but it'd be fun!)
8. more as I can think of it...

@transfrguy: Man, relax. It's a growing service. Sit back and relax, take a deep breath, and adjust your MTU on your router to 1396.

[Crusty Magic @ Jan 9th 2008 7:07PM]

One thing I'd really like to see for the 360 is expanded support for the 16:10 aspect ratio. Whenever I use my 360 on my computer monitor, the image is stretched vertically a bit which ends up distorting the picture.

I also feel like the overall stability of the system could use some work as well. Sometimes when I pull up the guide during a game, it takes a while to come up or results in a system crash.

But other than that, the 360 has been my favorite console out of the many that I've owned over the past decade. Great podcast by the way Engadget, you need to do more of these =D

[magpulse @ Jan 9th 2008 7:14PM]

Is it reliable yet?

[drseatbelt @ Jan 9th 2008 7:36PM]

Make those 120GB Xbox harddrives cheaper. That way we can all download and save high def content without a $160 overhead, and microsoft can really distract people from the HD format war.

[Chris.L @ Jan 9th 2008 9:55PM]

Gold Suggestions:
- Christmas Gift from Xbox (gamer pic, themes? something?)
- Same Marketplace content (video and regular marketplace) the US gets, but in other countries. Right now the video marketplace is in Canada, but there are no good movies, almost no tv shows...

[jayman16 @ Jan 10th 2008 1:03PM]

I don't mind paying for Live at all, as long as the price doesn't go up. Everyone keeps making these comparisons to the PSN but you pay for what you get... The PSN DOESN'T have a unified friends list, private chat, voice msg, text msg, picture msg, cross-game invites, free demo's of 95% of all the retail games, and how many 'arcade' games do they have???

As far as what I'd like to see:

1. Multi-person private chat.
2. Different sounds for different 'toast' pop-ups. ie. one sound for a friend online, another for an achievement, another for a game invite, download complete, etc... A lot of times I'm in the kitchen or at the computer, and I don't want to have to look up at every pop-up to see the one I'm waiting for.
3. I agree with the ad removal comments, either have a disable option or just get rid of them. I shouldn't pay $50 a year and THEN see ads, it's either free with ads or pay with no ads... Let me be clear, ads for Xbox games are fine, and movies aren't too bad... But for Axe or the Army get out of here.
4. Less step involved for certain actions: Like to mute player through the dash. And to listen to a voice msg, like hot-buttons. So when you arrow down to a new voice msg, all you have to do is say 'RB' to start playing the msg instantly. Instead of having to press 'A' to select the msg, then 'A' again to play voice, then 'A' again to select 'done', then 'A' one last time to delete the msg.


That's it for now, thanks for the great show Major, Peter, Ryan.

[top.slacker @ Jan 11th 2008 12:59PM]

Sorry if I sound like a fanboy, but I hate seeing comments that are complete bull****!
List of features PSN supposedly doesn't have:
Unified friends list - PSN has it. Launch games didnt, true, but every multiplayer in the last few months has (CoD4, Warhawk etc)
Private Chat - PSN has it, you can chat woth up to 6 people at once.
Text and picture messages - PSN has it. Seriously, an online console without messages?
Cross game invites - PSN doesnt have it although i wish it did.
Free demos - Might not have 95% of games available, but it has an awful lot. At the end of the day its not a PSN issue, content on the store is provided by third parties mostly.
"Arcade games" - PSN has plenty. They're not just mini game type things either, you have full blown 32 player online games like Warhawk which you can download from the store.

Also, 2 of the things in your list of 360 upgrades are already on PSN (No ads and multi chat). However one area where the 360 clearly beats PSN is the in game features, which Sony needs to improve on.
Anyway, lecture over. I'm just tired of coming online and seeing people (Who most the time havent even used the service) slam PSN and make it seem unusable, which is far from the case. PSN isnt that far behind Live and considering MS have been refining live for along time whereas Sony have had just over a year, its not bad at all!

[Justin @ Jan 11th 2008 7:44PM]

It doesn't have a unified friends list. There's a PSN friends list that I guess can be considered 'unified'... But then each game has it's own friends list, how fun is that? Sweet let me make a ID for every f*cking game, and add my friends over and over again...

And 6 person chats? To bad no one uses mics on PSN, how stupid for Sony not to include one... "But you can use any Bluetooth headset..." True but there is no BT headset under $40 dollars! The 360 come with a free headset and if you want wired you can buy it for the price of a BT headset. I played Resistance and the silence was ridiculous. No team work, no cooperation... You can make the argument that a lot of kids scream and sing and make racial comments now, while that is true to a degree there's a lot more usefully info going on than not.

The PS3 has it's strong points too, online just isn't one of them. For a cross-platform game, there's just no reason to get it for the PS3... The 360 has Live, Achievements (where you like 'em or not), and in game dashboard support.

At this point the PS3 is a great Blu-Ray player that happens to play games too. You can't tell me that right now $400 dollars is worth it to play, Uncharted, Ratchet, Warhawk, and Resistance...

Even CoD4 is better on the 360. Partying up to play with your friends, no lame server list of games to look through, achievements, etc...

Come on Halo, Mass Effect, Bioshock, CoD4, HD movies and TV shows, Media Center, DivX, custom sounds tracks, easily stream pictures and movies with no additional software from you PC to the 360. The 360 does so much more than just play games and it does them all so well (like an Apple product!) I don't go a day without turning my 360 on.

[cheap @ Jan 10th 2008 1:46PM]

I want more engadget podcasts.....please......nothing else compares...unless the other readers can recommend other podcast that are on the same level. Please don't recommend Buzz out loud or TWIT or DIGG . Those are tired and not as good as engadget.

[John T. @ Jan 10th 2008 1:54PM]

|HI MAJOR NELSON!|

To make Xbox Live Gold membership even better, you could release IPTV exclusively to Gold members - thats if your releasing it. Or just give us Live Free :)

- John T.

[AerialThunder @ Jan 10th 2008 4:44PM]

I bought my XBOX 360 about three months ago, solely to play COD4, and of course I've run into the server slow-down issue over the past month or so... BUT, Call of Duty is by far, the best multiplayer shooter that I've played since the Delta Force series.
I'm stoked that you guys got to the bottom of the net congestion problem.

-WannaBeKenobi

[Chris Hayashida @ Jan 10th 2008 6:05PM]

I wanted to find Major Nelson's Internet fwad podcast that the gang referred to. It sounded funny. I did a quick Google for it, but I didn't come up with anything. Anyone know what show it was? Can you post a link?

TIA,

Chris

[J. De Luis @ Jan 11th 2008 3:24AM]

http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2008/01/03/show-261-the-first-show-of-2008.aspx

[Chris Hayashida @ Jan 11th 2008 7:22AM]

Thanks for the link. The interview portion with Stephen Toulouse starts at about 18 minutes in.

[Greg Evans @ Jan 11th 2008 2:18PM]

Ok, here's an idea for gold members of xbox live - give us the ability to sync captured videos from games onto their zunes, sync marketplace downloads into the zune...

[minasoko @ Jan 12th 2008 5:29PM]

i am happy to pay for xbox live gold, as i feel it is worth it.

if you want to do something to make it feel more valuable,
i agree that a discount on an arcade title every week / month would be good.

but! free stuff is even better. so Free gamer pics, or themes of the week / month

and! if the main dashboard menus were made to loop up and down, that would be even cooler.

[Peter @ Jan 16th 2008 1:14AM]

How about giving Gold Members the ability to download podcasts directly to the Xbox from Live.

[Laner @ Feb 6th 2008 7:10PM]

I really like the idea of being able to block ads - or at least ads for stuff I have no interest in - as a gold level perk