It’s quite amazing how far consoles have come this generation when it comes to digital distribution. Many gamers have gone from rising up against the idea of losing physical copies of games to having several titles installed on their consoles HDDs whilst complaining that they still need their discs to run them. We’ve gone from having the launch 360 releasing with a meager 20gig HDD to 250gig being the current standard for what is for all intents and purposes the same console. Videogame distribution is changing and it’s clear to everyone that the system to deal with such new techniques is just not available yet.

I have been thinking about the way Microsoft (and Sony) deal with their digital distribution for quite some time now but it wasn’t until I read Ron Carmel’s Gamasutra article that I realised that it’s possible that the world doesn’t quite have the answer it needs to fully utilise this new way of selling quality gaming. I think Ron hits the nail on the head with everything he states in his article, in particular when Ron suggests that one of the things Microsoft needs to do to help XBLA survive is to “Solve the content discovery problem”. Let’s take a look at why this is a problem to begin with.

The Marketplace, for non-360 owners or those who simply switch their 360s to load directly to disc without any interest in the dashboard, is a place where Microsoft stores literally hundreds of games, demos and DLC for download. Games themselves range from 200 – 1600MS points (with 200 points equating to $NZ3.30) and trials for all XBox Live Arcade titles being completely and utterly free. So how is it that despite having hundreds of titles, each at a reasonable price point, the Marketplace continues to have limited success? Sure there are now four titles that have managed to snare a million sales, but with Uno topping the XBLA charts with a little over 2 million sales and the highest ranking retail title, Call of Duty: Black Ops, sitting at over 12 million sales it feels like something is seriously wrong with the system. It just doesn’t make sense to see so few XBLA titles achieve the acclaim they so rightfully deserve.

To fully understand what’s wrong with the way Microsoft deals with titles on the Marketplace you just need to take one look at the very first tab that appears when you switch on your 360 console. Spotlight is used to highlight any important bits and pieces in the gaming world, and more often than not the first thing you’ll see is a quick link to news regarding the latest retail release. As of writing this the only images viewable (without touching the controller) upon loading up my console are based around the releases of FIFA12, Gears of War 3 and Forza 4 and while it makes sense to showcase some of the 360′s biggest recent/upcoming releases, it seems strange that they decide to show items that people can’t buy RIGHT NOW, but we’ll come back to this point a little later.

Should you actually be interested in finding out what XBLA games have hit recently, it’s just a matter of navigating to the Games Marketplace tab. Sure enough, you’ll not only find a reverse chronological list of Arcade releases, but many other ways for you to find the game you’re looking for, which is great if you know which game it is you’re looking for; that’s if you can remember the name of that game you thought looked interesting six months ago which you’ve only just decided to buy now. Found inside the Game Marketplace tab is also a similarly filtered selection of game demos for retail titles, fully downloadable retail titles and add-ons for games you own. Microsoft have an incredibly full library in their hands, and anyone with a spare few dollars (and minutes) will surely stumble across a game, an expansion or some extra tracks for Guitar Hero/Rock Band that suits them down to the ground. The layout is basic, and as long as you know what it is you’re after, you’ll have it downloaded and running in no time. But what about the games you don’t know you want? Or the DLC for the game you love that no-one has told you about? Or what about the game you were kinda interested in which has dropped to a price you now think is worthwhile?

This is where the Spotlight tab should be doing its work, and where I start discussing ways in which the Marketplace stops being a standalone feature of the 360′s dashboard and starts becoming a fully integrated part of your gaming console. After all, with every game you play, achievement you earn, friend you add and item you download, your 360 knows a lot about your gaming habits, who you play with, what they play and what games/products you should be interested in.

The very first thing Microsoft should be showing you when you switch on your 360 should be the most important thing to you as a consumer. Yes, I get it, FIFA12 releases this week but considering I don’t have any achievements for any other FIFA title created in the past 5+ years maybe I’m not the right demographic for this advertisement, I’m just not likely to be the one that picks this up. Even if I happened to be a giant fan of FIFA, there’s absolutely nothing I can do from my 360, controller in hand, that turns that advert into an immediate sale. If Microsoft wants my money, and I certainly want to give it to them considering I have my 360 turned on and ready to game, maybe you should be showing me something that is relevant to ME.

First off, make the second item on the Spotlight (I’m saving the first item for later) a link to this week’s XBLA releases. YOU know you have a weekly schedule but we (the consumer) are a little more ignorant. The die-hard gamers who follow the industry know that Thursday is release day, but your average gamer barely even knows that new games come out every week let alone the day they release on. So put that in our faces! Let us know that there are some new tantalising titles that have released and give me quick and easy access to check them out. Maybe I have enough MS points to spend on something right now, or maybe I’ll load some more points onto my account to grab the release I had been eagerly anticipating or maybe I’ll see something that intrigues me but I’m unsure about. Maybe I’ll download the trial or maybe I’ll add it to my wishlist. Which brings me to what should be the VERY FIRST THING my 360 shows me when I boot up my console: The Wishlist.

Now, the Wishlist isn’t something Microsoft have incorporated into their Dashboard/Marketplace yet – and I say “yet” knowing that there’s a new Dashboard update coming in November and that maybe there’s just a tiny possibility that they’ve added this ingenious idea to it. Needless to say, this Wishlist button would start off by showing me whatever item on my wishlist is currently a hot item or if an item is on sale. Selecting the Wishlist would take you to a magical place, a place where every XBLA game you’ve marked as being interesting is shown in an order of your choosing. Maybe you’ve decided to show them in lowest to highest pricing or maybe you’ve asked to have games that are currently on sale at the top of your list; either way you’re shown a list of downloadable games/items that are incredibly relevant to you and your gaming. This Wishlist knows which games you’ve completed and therefore knows which DLC expansions you’re likely to be interested in and instead of just listing them all in some cumbersome list, will group them via game title. The Wishlist knows you often play online and that a high percentage of your friends have been playing a certain online XBLA title and brings this to your attention before you’re out of the competitive loop forever.

Of course, this could be deemed as a rather intrusive way for Microsoft to advertise specifically to you, and should therefore be an optional entity in the 360 Dashboard. In the end Microsoft are going to advertise something to you so it might as well be relevant to the games you already play, or something you’ve indicated being interested in. Who doesn’t want to be notified when a game you’re interested in is going for a lower price?

A system like that outlined above surely is well achievable in the hands of someone like Microsoft, and while new offers and releases can be found through navigating the Dashboard it isn’t a simple process. Next up on the Spotlight tab should be the next most important piece of data collection that your 360 can offer you: recommendations. As I’ve mentioned before, your 360 knows what games you like, it knows if you’ve been following a series and it knows what that group of friends you’ve been playing with recently are all playing now. These factors along with the fact that you can rate the games you’ve played (and for some reason the ones you haven’t) should be the starting point for the best filtering system on any console. With a simple press of a button you should have an instant list of recommendations tailored to your gaming tastes and styles, and it should let you know, through the image shown on the Spotlight tab, if any of these games are on one of the many specials the XBLA seem to have. If my iPhone can do this then surely my console should be able to as well.

While I haven’t fully discussed finding games that aren’t new releases, recommendations or titles on your wishlist it doesn’t mean I won’t continue pondering ways for this to be fixed as well. Is it possible that developers can ask to re-release their titles in a bid to garner more sales from either veteran 360 owners or new gamers that didn’t have a console when the title first released? Maybe give random spots on other sections of the Spotlight tab in favour of simply advertising a retail game that a gamer can’t purchase until they walk away from their console? I understand that in the end there needs to be a section of the Dashboard that is similar to what Microsoft already have in place otherwise it’d just be impossible to find an older game that no-one’s talking about any more, but any evolution of the Marketplace can only be good from here on in.

A lot of these things I’ve mentioned above I do personally believe will arrive on our consoles eventually, albeit probably next-gen, so now is a good a time as any to discuss one other feature I would love to see show up sometime between now and when I boot up my XBox 360-2: a Friend News Feed.

I’m sure a lot of you are rolling your eyes as you picture a Facebook clone filled with gaming spam from your list of online friends, but to fully understand where I’m trying to go here you really need to push Facebook from your mind. A few games this generation have shown glimpses of what could be the evolution of socialising online with XBox Live. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit allowed gamers to have a list of their friends times show up while they were racing and challenges could be thrown on a “wall” inside the game itself. You could select any challenge from this menu and with a button press you’d be doing your best to beat your friends time. Fight Night Champion allowed gamers to record and edit replays and then upload them to an EA server so you could send it to your mates over the net and let them see your devastating finishing move. But there was one thing that stopped both of these from being perfect, one thing that made sharing more of a chore than it needed to be: you couldn’t do it from one unified place.

Imagine a Friends tab where instead of just seeing a picture of an avatar and some box art, that screen actually meant something. Not only would it show you who was currently online and what they were playing but it’d also show a timeline of sorts. Something that shows challenges from friends, achievements they’ve earnt and possibly incorporate a system that allows a gamer to take and post snapshots from their gaming session. There needs to be a way that I can show off to my mates that I managed to get a hard to earn achievement with a pic just to rub it in.

As I said above, these changes or suggestions aren’t something I’m expecting to see this generation, but I feel that if implemented correctly we could start to see XBLA sales rising (although Microsoft probably need to sort out a few of the other things Ron Carmel mentioned) and a great new way to interact with the gamers we already interact with.

Please leave comments, thoughts or questions below or let me know what you feel is needed to help XBLA games to be seen.

Originally posted on www.GameCulture.co.nz