I remember many moons ago visiting my favorite local video game store and entering into a discussion with one of the sales people about what he was currently playing. He answered that his life was filled with so many things at the moment that he found that he was spending less and less time playing with video games and when he did find the time, the only thing he could play was anything related to Street Fighter II in short thirty minute playing sessions. I pitied the guy back then thinking it would never happen to me. Of course, I was wrong.

I still manage to find the time to play video games albeit in much lower quantities than “back in the good old days.” Also, I have to admit, that it’s getting harder and harder to play in long gaming sessions. Gone are the days when I could come back home, eat dinner and fire up the video game console or PC and play from 6pm to midnight. Sure, it might happen but it’s about as rare an occasion as a complete solar eclipse happening near my house.

However, one area where I never expected to find gaming sessions on the rise is during my free time while I am out of the house. Whether it be waiting for my wife while she shops to taking a break at work I’ve found that there’s actually plenty of time to indulge in, shudder, casual gaming. These play sessions don’t particularly last long, say 10-20 minutes so the games themselves can’t exactly be epic role-playing adventures like Final Fantasy 7. Rather, they are designed to be quick and dirty. Play a round or two and then save and move on with your life.

I rarely take my PSP or DS out with me unless I’m going on a nice long airplane ride around the world but the one place I never thought I’d find quality gaming is my cell phone. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that my current model is Apple’s 3G iPhone. I previously dabbled in cell phone gaming with the abortive failure called the Nokia Ngage and while I somewhat enjoyed a few games (long live Pocket Kingdom!) the system itself was clunky and stiff.

Enter the iPhone. While I’m still not entirely convinced with iPhone gaming – it just doesn’t work in my opinion for certain genres – there are some games which are surprisingly fun although I have to say, just about none I’ve played are very difficult. I’m not bragging but it’s easy to see that developers have not made terribly difficult games as they are trying to appeal to a much broader audience than hardcore gamers.

One such game that has recently surprised me is Sally’s Salon by Real Networks where you control an up and coming hairstylist, appropriately named Sally, who attempts to expand her salon franchises to multiple cities. Much like the hit Diner Dash, Sally’s Salon is all about how you manage your daily tasks and how you successfully control the flow of customers who come into your store.

A basic example would be moving your customers from the waiting area to the washing stations. From there you move them to the stylist station then to the hairdryer and later in the game to more specialized areas to apply suntan and fingernail polish. Controls are super intuitive. Since this is the iPhone everything is controlled with light touches of your fingertips onto the touchscreen. To move a customer you simply click once on them and then click where you want them moved. Once at their new location you must click on Sally herself to move to the customer and perform her job like trimming and then cutting their hair.

The game inserts a couple of extra wrinkles to add some needed tension to the whole ordeal. Each customer has a bar of hearts above their heads indicating how happy they are with their whole experience. The more hearts they have the happier they are but also the more they’ll tip once they arrive at the cashier. If they lose all their hearts the customer will storm out leaving Sally with no money at all.

These virtual customers lose hearts if they wait too long at any given station or if you choose the wrong styles for them. For instance, once a customer is sitting in the hairstyling seat you are presented with many choices of cut. Each cut has a rating on them that shows whether that particular customer likes or hates it. If you chose the right one the customer will be pleased and their heart level will increase. Conversely, make a mistake and give them a style they despise will cause them to lose a heart.

This might sound pretty easy but it becomes frantic at the higher levels when you are pressed for time and are rushing to move people in and out of stations as it’s easy in these situations to hit the wrong style. Another element that adds difficulty is that different types of customers seem to lose hearts faster such as the Elvis impersonator who, in my games, seemed to perpetually be angry. This forces you to try and service them first in order to get them through the various areas as fast as possible.

After every successful day at work you are given a simple tally of how much money you made. If you earned equal or more money than the minimum amount set for the level you are on you get to play the following day. If not, you have to once again repeat the same day. After successful days you are given the opportunity to purchase upgrades to your salon. These range from hiring staff to help you do various tasks such as blow drying to purchasing nicer, more comfortable chairs in order to keep your clientele happier and slow down their loss of hearts.

The game itself has some pleasant hand-drawn 2-D sprites and graphics and there’s no slow down whatsoever. There is a bit of an irritant in that as your salon grows in size you have to constantly be swiping your finger back and forth since the room spans greater than the sides of the phone. I know on the PC this is not an issue as the screen is obviously big enough to accommodate the whole size of the room but the iPhone’s restrictive screen makes this not possible. Since you have to move Sally all over the salon there were times when I had to scroll left and right where I accidentally tapped a customer to move somewhere I did not want which was not exactly fun.

A bigger issue for me, and I alluded to this earlier, is that the game is not very difficult. I think I only had to repeat one day once. Also, since I was literally blowing through the game with ease, I bought all the salon upgrades long before I got to the final levels. It’s a bit of a downer to not be able to buy anything new even though I have oodles of cash on hand.

Overall Sally’s Salon is the very definition of casual gaming – short and sweet. For me though there’s not much incentive to play it all over again as I’m not one of those gamers obsessed with besting my personal high-score. Still for $4.99 this is a keeper. (It's currently on sale for $0.99 which is an even better deal).

*** out of ****

Developer: RealNetworks Inc.
Released: November 3, 2008
Version: 1.1.3
Size: 7.8 MB

So you’ve taken my advice and downloaded the NXE patch for your Xbox 360, made your avatar, fiddled around with some of the new features and...have no idea what to do next. Sure, your spanking new avatar looks pretty spiffy but they just kinda stand there on your My Xbox page. Is that all they do?

Well, basically yes, for now. At this early stage we can’t really expect too much from them as developers still have to figure out how to better utilize them in their upcoming games. About the only game that showcases avatars is A Kingdom For Keflings which gives you the option to fully control your avatar during the game. Other games such as Uno and Hardware Spades just use avatars in place of your Xbox live vision camera feeds which, while cute, don’t exactly show the avatars as nothing more than window dressing.

Currently the only games that support avatars in any form are:

• UNO
• Scene It? Box Office Smash
• Kingdom for Keflings
• Hardwood Hearts
• Bomberman LIVE
• Hardwood Spades

Until Microsoft brings their on-line quiz game 1 vs 100 to market or other undisclosed projects we’re going to have to be content with playing dress up. Since the NXE patch, Microsoft has released extra clothing for your avatars. These are easy to ascertain since they are marked with a giant gold star when you enter the clothing options screen.

So far all these new items are free of charge but users waiting for “cool” outfits based on hot Microsoft video games like Halo or Gears of War better walk along as these are nothing more than casual clothing you can find in your nearest Gap store. Still, free is free, so we better count our blessings since we don’t know how long it will be till Microsoft decides to start charging for them. On a side note, a lot of these new clothing options don’t match well. I’m no expert on fashion but putting on the winter set for example, results in some garish clash of colours.
Since the NXE patch the following clothing has been added:

For Males

• Blue Tuxedo
• Black Tuxedo
• Shirt with Cummerbund
• Black Trilby
• Bowler Hat
• Winter Jacket
• Winter Boots
• Winter Gloves
• Winter Knit cap

For Females

• Elegant Ball Gown
• Little Black Dress
• Formal Trouser Suit
• Elegant Watch
• Red 60's Shades
• Strappy High Heels
• Platform Shoes
• Winter Jacket
• Winter Boots
• Winter Gloves
• Winter Knit cap

Although we can’t really find much gaming use for avatars so far the groundwork is certainly there and Microsoft has added a few online features that you can use for other applications. After you have successfully made your avatar Microsoft has given you a way to produce a PNG image of it to download to your PC. This is actually pretty cool as it looks exactly like your avatar and comes complete with a transparent background so you can use it as signatures in email or in any word document, blog or website you create. You can also download a PNG of your gamerpic as well in two different sizes.

To do so is just incredibly simple. Assuming you have an avatar and gamerpic just enter this follow URLs into your web browser and it will spit out your downloadable image. Just replace the (gamertag) section with your real gamertag without the open and close brackets.

• avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/(gamertag)/avatar-body.png
• avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/(gamertag)/avatarpic-l.png
• avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/(gamertag)/avatarpic-s.p

Another Microsoft website you can visit is Free Your Avatar at the following url:

• http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/freeyouravatar/default.htm

Here you can create custom images of your avatar either solo or with your friends . This is a simple flash based web application where you can again place an image of your avatar onto a custom wallpaper background. You can even add text to this and make a simple digital card not unlike the ones you find at Hallmark or Carleton cards. Again, not exactly awe inspiring in terms of gaming but it has its uses in terms of social networking. Microsoft seems to be giving you tools and options to expand your social friends network that are located outside of the Xbox 360 console. This runs opposite to Sony’s Home concept that encourages social gatherings within an application running on the console.

This is not to say one is better than the other, just merely different. You never know though, maybe Microsoft will develop its own social world on the 360 as well in the future. Then again, I hope not as it’s much more convenient to do on a PC or, you know, go out into the real world with friends.

The last application pertaining to avatars that has been released is the snow globe which can be downloaded onto your 360. As you might have guessed, this is a basically useless app that places your avatar and friends into a virtual snow globe that you can shake. That’s it. Really. I know it’s free and might make a few kids happy but I hope Microsoft assigns teams to make things which are a bit more useful.

So there you have it. New clothing options are a real plus as is the free avatar picture downloads that can be used just about anywhere. I can see that Microsoft is really putting an effort to expand the Xbox 360 experience outside of just the console and though these are baby steps they do point to having a master plan -- or so we hope.

Happy Holidays from everyone here at The Galactic Pillow! Wishing everyone a safe and joyous holiday season. Hopefully, Santa (or whoever you believe in) brought you what you wanted. If not, make sure you get the gift receipt! In the meantime drop us a comment on what loot you received.

A funny thing happened during the transition from last generation consoles to the current. Companies that appeared dead in the water have suddenly taken the world by storm while the console king apparently decided to abdicate without much of a struggle. Now, unlike the current rigueur de jour of Sony bashing I’m not even going to go much into detail about how the mighty have fallen. There are enough fanboys out there assailing the former console champion and just as many diehard supporters. What I will point out however, is that Sony’s Playstation Home Beta that was finally released on Dec 11 after almost three years of development is a true indication at how dyslexic the company has become.

On the face of it all Home can be construed either as a giant leap forward in online social applications or the biggest misreading of on-line portals ever devised. This seems to be the fundamental problem Sony has run head first into during this generation. The PS3 has been designed to be the “anything goes” multimedia center of the future. With the most powerful architecture, blu-ray integration and online hub capabilities the system, on paper, sounds as if it has everything covered. However, this seems to be the case of spreading your resources too thin, which by all accounts has contributed to Sony’s lack of focus on any one given area.

Home, as a concept, sounds like it could be enticing to casual gamers and those who have never been involved in on-line social applications. It is, as planned, a more robust world than Second Life that has greater integration of entertainment mediums such as video games and movies. It is apparent that Sony is trying to tie all their entertainment divisions together in Home to form and accentuate the synergy between their different brands. That is a noble goal to provide a unified space in which to hock their wares while encasing it in an on-line social network.

Installing Home, while it had a few quirks, was fast and easy. Just turn on your PS3, select Home and let the relatively small 77 MB install work. I was presently surprised that the initial installation only needed 77MB but was quickly put off as the next few screens informed me that I had to reserve 3GB of free hard drive space for future updates. Still, unless you are one of the unfortunate PS3 owners who own the now discontinued 20 GB model, this is not so bad.

After it installed I did struggle for about an hour or so as I could not connect to Home servers but as all mmorpg launch days this was not so startling and nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Finally, getting logged in and past the rather long-winded legal disclaimers you get the chance to create your avatar.

Sony has taken the opposite route of both Nintendo Miis and Microsoft Avatars. Instead of super deformed cute representations of yourself, Sony has settled on trying to make their characters as real life as possible. There are tons of options available to customize your toon but to make one truly stand out will take a lot of fiddling around with layers of menus and slider controls. Die hard gamers will no doubt have no problem here but casual gamers are going to be a bit intimidated by this and probably just stick to the basics like changing hair styles, skin colour, hair colour and a few facial features. Whether or not by design or because it was launch day and people wanted to get into Home as quickly as possible I found that every character looked eerily similar once I left my apartment. My initial impression was akin to when I was playing Lineage II and realizing everyone had basically the same body with only a few design choices for different faces.

Although the character creation was robust it also firmly foreshadows the developer’s target market to a fault. No matter what you do there’s no way to change the relative age of a character that seems to be set to the early twenties. There’s just no possible way to make a younger or older character as those options are missing. This strikes me as slightly odd and narrow minded and it makes the entire experience seem as if you are living in area of town right next to the University Campus. With everyone looking similar it’s like a bad nightmare straight out of a science fiction movie where everything is tightly controlled – shades of an Orwellian future indeed.

Another factor that contributes highly to this feeling of similitude is the relative lack of clothing and apparel currently available. It is quite disconcerting to open your clothing options and seeing only six different types of tops and pants. No matter what you choose you are bound to find many people in the same ensemble the moment you step into the world.

After your character has been created and saved to your hard drive the game immediately places you in your sparse apartment overlooking a very detailed marina. Though your apartment feels incredible sterile the view outside on your balcony is stunning and an indication that Home might be able to provide you with a flair for fantasy even though it’s firmly rooted in reality. It is too bad that at this point you can’t go into said Marina but there’s always hope for the future.

Though your apartment is sparse that’s to be expected as this is where, I suspect, most of your upgrading will come in the future. Sony has indicated that upcoming trophy support and item purchases are coming down the line which will provide you with ways to spruce up your joint. Trophy support where you can show everyone how proficient you are in various games is certainly a novel way to boast your prowess and can provide a compelling visual elan to do so unlike Microsoft’s achievement points which merely just show as a number on the screen. However, whether or not people really want to walk into your apartment to see your trophies is another matter that cannot be answered until the feature is implemented. It just seems like Home is adding an unneeded layer of complication for you to check someone’s trophies.

When you are feeling satisfied that you’ve checked your apartment out you can walk to the door and leave and are immediately (after a short load) deposited in the central plaza area. This is where you begin to feel the true potential of Home yet are immediately presented with a multitude of quirks and conundrums that make you begin to think something is amiss. Now, this is still technically a Beta so many features are not implemented or are available with stripped down features so there’s room for improvement but for a product with three years of development time there’s much head scratching to be found.

First off, I’m a long time MMORPG player. I was there when Everquest launched and played till the level cap before even the first expansion. I played Final Fantasy XI as a red mage till I got all my artifact armor and then switched to Lineage II and even RF Online. Finally, I’ve got five level 70 toons in World of Warcraft (all heading to 80 now with the release of Wrath of the Lich King) as well. With all this experience under my belt I was still not prepared for the cacophony of sheer sexism and underage hormonal bile that I found in the first 10 minutes in Home. I am actually astounded that it was so prevalent here even though I’ve played a ton of MMORPGs.

Simply put I can’t stand playing on-line games with a male avatar. Chalk it up to just not liking the male character models (especially WOW where all the human males look like 50 year old geriatrics). Then again maybe it’s just my desire to see the female form on screen. Hey, if I have to spend months of my life grinding away at levels and making money I might as well watch a shapely female form on my monitor than a lumbering hulk of muscle. If anyone remembers the Dark Elf females from Lineage II you’ll know why I chose to make one for that game!

Regardless, I’ve only encountered one occasion during all those games where some idiot tried to “hit on me” and even then a quick brush off or ignore will usually cause the fool to leave. Not so in Home. The moment my female character appeared in the plaza I was bombarded with many “can I please be your friend?” requests. No matter where I walked around the area some prepubescent moron would end up stalking me. Nearly every time I remained stationary yet another fool would come up and try to virtual molest me by using the included canned emotions and gestures. This stuck me as incredibly weird. I’ll chalk this up as being yet another odd consequence of launch day but if it persists I can imagine the real female gamers might just go create male characters in order to avoid this childish behavior.

It gets exceedingly asinine when someone follows you all over the world for no apparent reason. I remembered walking into the virtual cinema to see the trailers playing on the virtual movie screen and sitting down in a chair and I had a plethora of guys sitting next to me trying to ask where I came from. You’d think these people had never seen a girl before in real life – clichéd visions of nerds stuck in their mother’s basement flooded my mind. Surely, it couldn’t be this bad. Still, that’s not Home’s fault but rather a social problem but even my limited time in Second Life was not this grating. Admittedly, I logged on a few days later and the amount of times I encountered these juvenile antics was markedly down but still present. I pity female gamers if this keeps up.

Then again this bad behavior and constant cursing laced with racial epithets might very well be culturally based as I never encountered this once when I logged on the Japanese version of Home. There I could run around without incident. I’ll leave this social perspective on different Home regions and cultures for another day.

Home is split into numerous different areas. As mentioned before you get your apartment and the central plaza but connected to this are the mall, cinema and bowling alley. This is a virtual world after all albeit seemingly sterile and polished. The graphics are pleasant and detailed enough but at this moment there’s really not much life to it which is surprising as all the locations are chalk full of characters milling about. As forum posters and video game outlets have remarked the atmosphere is weirdly chilling in a Logan’s Run / Gattaca / Aeon Flux / A Brave New World kind of vibe. Everything seems too perfect and analogous, a feeling accentuated by everyone looking and dressing alike. To be fair, as content is added characters will no doubt begin to look different.

This does bring up new apparel, furniture and even estates. While there is no doubt Sony might get developers to add some of these items as unlockables in some future games, at present, the only way to get new items is to buy them with real world currency. That’s right, if you want a new pair of pants you’ll have to pay roughly 50 cents to 1 dollar. I’m not going to fault Sony for trying to nickel and dime consumers as other on-line worlds have already done so. Even Microsoft’s Avatars are rumored to be getting the same treatment in future add-ons. Still, 50 cents per clothing item is a bit steep in my estimation for what amounts to nothing more than eye candy on your TV. You are in no way forced to buy anything but if you don’t you’re going to look like everybody else. With scant few clothing options in the first place this virtually guarantees that it is going to be a long time before your character begins to even remotely look different.

Also, as a side note to Home developers, if you intend to stick with this route please make sure to make clothing that is distinct enough from each other. There’s no point to make fifty million colour swap jeans. The same thing applies to furniture. I have a hard time justifying buying a chair just to stick in my virtual home unless you are a player who constantly invites friends into your space. Even then, I have an inkling that your friends would call you various derogatory names for spending your cash on virtual bar stools.

Home’s developers have also made some odd design decisions that detract from the experience even though they are actually mimicking reality. Take the bowling alley or video game arcade machines they have included. At first these seem like interesting distractions you can monkey around with until you realize this is one area where it is too real – if someone is playing the arcade game or every bowling lane is occupied you have to wait in line to play. Waiting in real life is a royal pain in the posterior. Waiting in a virtual line is doubly painful. It makes no sense whatsoever to test a user’s patience when you are trying to make an immersive and enjoyable virtual experience. Yes, it mimics reality but it’s mimicking something no one wants to indulge in. It would make more sense to instance the arcade games or bowling so that you can join or start a game at any time. All this does is cause user frustration leading people into ignoring these features entirely. Alienating the user base is counterproductive and if it continues less and less people will want to log into Home for fear of boredom.

Making matters worse are the games and activities themselves. If you have the patience to wait or just get in with plain luck you’ll find these games as nothing more than pedestrian efforts. In other words, the end product doesn’t justify the time you spent in a virtual line. You’d find a better use of your time by just inserting a blu-ray game and playing after a short minute loading time.

Thus Home is ridden with a lot of design issues that are worrisome. It exudes and showcases what has turned out to be Sony’s Achilles’ heel during the transition to the current generation. The PS3 is the do everything machine and you can easily ascertain each of Sony’s entertainment divisions’ hands in its development. From the inclusion of Blu-ray to placate the movie / DVD arm to the hi-def HDMI output to match Sony’s latest plasma and LCD TVs the system has been designed with media domination in mind. The problem is that it seems that some divisions are not communicating well with others.

Take the arcade/bowling game waiting. A quick call to Sony Online that works on Everquest and Everquest 2 would have easily solved it. Everquest 2 is highly instanced and the people working on it have skills that have been developed painstakingly through the years. This is a group experienced in on-line worlds so it’s odd that they apparently have not been extensively consulted to make Home a better experience.

Home, for all its planned splendor, also seems too segmented. The developers have heavily divided each different part of the world from each other causing a high amount of obtrusive loading that takes you away from the virtual world it is attempting to create. Walking from your apartment to the mall and having to wait longer in loading then it takes to walk the distance is a major pain. Even looking at Everquest 2’s highly instanced zones one can see that each one is huge, filled with a plethora or buildings and/or scenery. In contrast, Home is made up of small areas that require constant loading. This modular approach might make it easy for the developers to add more building content in the future but it would be a real mistake if you are perpetually forced to walk wherever you want to go through a maze of loading screens.

It seems Sony has taken the wrong page out of Microsoft’s old playbook by adding extraneous features and glitz onto an interface that should be simple and elegant. It is fascinatingly ironic that Microsoft’s latest NXE patch has streamlined its online component whereas Sony’s Home has added unnecessary bloat to its XMB interface. Let’s say I want to watch the movie trailer for Twilight. What methods do I have to quickly get what I want? If I have access to a PC I can merely go on-line, probably to Apple’s site or Yahoo movies and either stream the trailer or download it. If I have a Xbox 360 or PS3 I can go to the PS Store or Microsoft Video Marketplace and with a simple click let it download to my console. Now, if I wanted to do it in Home I have to start my PS3, boot Home, walk my character to the virtual cinema to join other people on-line and wait for a less than hi-def trailer that I can’t scale to full screen slowly load. What is the point? Instead of taking mere minutes I have to go through an obtrusive process to eventually see a worse quality version of the same product.

So this begs the question, who or what is Home designed for? It’s easily apparent that those looking for quick and easy access to features will stay far way from this interface. So who will indeed use it extensively? This is a real mystery that no one in the press has found a credible answer. I don’t really know if Sony itself has a clear vision. There’s no doubt Home has become the public whipping boy for the press who have more or less derided its very existence since the first info on it was initially released. The ambition to create a virtual social network is definitely there but the application is adding multiple layers of confusion to wade through to get to easily accessible features. In the age of the Wii and Apple’s minimalist design aesthetic it’s a wonder that Sony has decided to go in the complete opposite direction by investing copious amount of funds to what boils down to a 3D interface that is both user-unfriendly and worse, slow to navigate. The only people who will definitely get a kick out of this are those who are clamoring for a fully 3D environment to see their characters in kind of like a high-tech version of IMVU chat. Even a chat program such as IMVU has more features and user customization than Home has in its current state although both use microtransactions to charge for items. In IMVU’s defense it has a huge array of, let’s say kinky or more risqué, clothing choices. At last check it had over 1.5 million items in its catalog.

Sony’s foray into social networking might attract some users to initially try it out and I’m willing to let it grow and mature as the months go by. Nevertheless, the core elements on display in this open Beta don’t bode well if all that will be added are more buildings and item customization. There are some serious design problems and stumbling blocks present which belie the long development cycle as many of these should have easily been rectified in the Alpha stages.

The concept of a virtual world has been around for many years now and there have been many attempts to create and sustain one. Although Second Life is the standard bearer it’s not exactly a shining beacon of fun. Playstation Home is still in its infancy so there’s plenty of room to grow but virtual worlds should be inherently more enjoyable and provide users with activities and features not available in the real world. Part of the allure of gaming is that it takes you away from reality and places you in fantastical settings where you can be a hero/heroine and save the universe or discover new worlds. Then again, you can be an all-around bad ass if you want ala Grand Theft Auto and mow down innocent bystanders for no apparent reason if that floats your boat.

If all a virtual world does is impersonate reality by having you wait in line you might as well go stand in front of the nearest wall to achieve the same level of gratification. Heck, even a game like EA’s The Sims that has your virtual characters taking a shower and eating dinner provides more escapism since it gives you the ability to mess around with societies' mores by having lesbian/gay couples or giving you the ability to make your character’s bladder explode by denying access to the latrine. Let’s hope that Home’s developers realize this and turn their attention to things that are more than the mundane. If not, Home is going to be a ghost town filled only with pockets of all male on-line chat parties.

So Microsoft has just released the famed NXE patch (shameless plug: see my review on it) and the first game they release that includes full avatar support is…A Kingdom For Keflings? What the heck is a Kefling? Worry not good sirs, although it has a rather odd title this new release from veteran Xbox Live Arcade developer, Ninjabee (Cloning Cloyd, Band of Bugs, Outpost Kaloki X), hits all the right notes while making the avatar inclusion more than an afterthought.

First off, A Kingdom for Keflings is not a title that is going to light the world on fire, especially those trigger happy first-person shooter diehards, but it has a charming appeal for those looking for a more thoughtful strategic experience. The game takes elements from past resource gathering / city planning games such as Black and White, Sim City and just about every RTS (real time strategy), like Starcraft and Command and Conquer.

The basic premise seems ripped out of your generic Disney fairytale. You play a gentle giant that attempts to help the local Kefling, basically another word for human, community build and expand their town. To do so you need to collect four basic raw materials: rock, crystal, wool and lumber. By picking up a Kefling you can then assign them to harvest any of these materials and subsequently guide them to their respective drop off structure such as a lumber mill or stonecutter. From there you can assign another Kelfing the task of transporting the finished goods to the local carpenter or other advanced industries like brick makers. Thus you begin to accumulate a stock of building materials that you then use to construct more advanced buildings such as castles or factories.

Along the way the local Kefling mayor will assign you certain quests that basically just ask you to create a set number of a particular building material. At first you might scoff at these menial tasks but the rewards the mayor gives out are actually necessary such as belts that make your giant carry more materials or others that make you move faster. Now and then the mayor will give out a heart that is necessary for attracting more settlers to your town. The more settlers the bigger your workforce you have working in the industries thus your output increases.

There are also items that are hidden on the map that reveal themselves after you harvest a particular resource. These too enhance your giant or aid in constructing certain buildings giving an extra incentive for players to walk around the whole map in order to search for them.

At the start of the game you make a choice of which giant to use from a small group of characters. There is nothing wrong with these pre-made giants but the majority of players will not opt for any of them and instead choose to play as their own avatar. What is surprising but delightful is that your avatar actually looks and feels like it belongs in the game’s design aesthetic. Whether by design or not, developer Ninjabee has created a whimsical fairy tale art style that makes your newly created avatar feel right at home. It’s actually rewarding to see “yourself” running around town helping the local population grow and expand. Not to mention, if they get a bit rowdy, or if you are feeling like laying down the law, you can order your avatar to kick a Kefling around to straighten them up. Now this is not to say you can bludgeon them to death nor can you kill them in any way. After all, Microsoft wants avatars to only be used in family type games.

What makes the game work is actually a striped away level of stress you usually find in other games of this ilk. Unlike, say an RTS like Starcraft, there is no tension created by threats to a player. There are no enemy forces to combat nor are there even environmental disasters like those found in Sim City such as the earthquake or alien attacks. A Kingdom for Keflings focuses all its attention on building and expanding your town and it leaves the pace of progress entirely up to the player. While that might sound tediously mundane the simple joys of the game are found in how you manage your building placements properly in order to maximize the creation of building materials while decreasing the amount of wasted time spent carting them around.

For instance, early in the game it’s easy to plan where to build certain structures. You can order a few Keflings to mine lumber near the town’s starting point and then direct them to move the harvested wood to the nearby lumber mill. This simple setup makes the initial section of the game seem a tad easy but things can get hectic as you continue to build new structures. If you don’t manage building placement well you might find that deeper in the game your Keflings are walking half the map in order to move the lumber from the mill to the advanced building that creates crafted wood. This inevitably is a mismanagement of time and leads to bottlenecks in your building process.

Other games might punish the player for lousy placement but this game does not. In keeping with the relaxed atmosphere you can easily rip apart existing buildings by basically punching them three times. This breaks the building up into its component parts that are easily moved to where you want on the map. This is a huge plus as other games would probably let you do so but apply hefty restrictions and resource fines on you if you messed up.

Controls in the game are intuitive and the developers make the prudent choice of streamlining the interface thankfully removing layers of menus and options. With the click of a button you can pull up a blueprint overlay on the screen showing the current building you are constructing and its component parts. Assigning or reassigning Keflings to certain buildings and tasks is also easy as pie. Once a new Kefling shows up they just wander around the board occasionally waving at you so you notice them. All you need to do is have your giant pick them up and move them where you want them to work. If you want them mining rock just drop them on top of a rock pile and they begin to hack away at it. By picking them up another time and depositing them on the stonecutter building you easily setup a simple path whereby your Kefling will automatically walk mined stone to the cutter. If a particular building requires one Kefling to run all you need to do is drop an unassigned Kefling right on top of it and the game AI automatically will allocate it to run the structure.

Reassigning Keflings is just as simple. After you give a Kefling a job a hat will appear over their heads denoting the particular task they are currently employed in. All you have to do is have your giant pick them up and take off their hat, in effect making them jobless. Now you just place them where you want and assign them a new job.

The game is not without its faults the biggest being a rather jerky frame rate. I would expect a lower rate when the map is filled with a plethora of buildings and moving Keflings but even at the start of the game it’s incredibly rough. I don’t have the equipment to accurately measure it but it’s definitely far below the standard 30fps. If I ventured a guess it would be in the lower twenties. This is not so bad if the game is played in short thirty-minute sessions but after spending 2-3 hours in a row my eyes were feeling stressed out.

This reduced frame rate is constant throughout the game no matter what is occurring on screen but really takes a dive when the seasons change in the game. Although it is a decent visual treat to see autumn turn to winter I’ve had many experiences where the frame rate nose-dived and in some cases the game actually paused for around a second. Not exactly deal breaking but it makes you wonder if the game could have been further optimized for another month or so to iron out the kinks.

The other issue is the constantly looping musical soundtrack that plays the same song over and over ad infinitum. At first it’s nondescript melody doesn’t intrude but 2-3 hours later you are bound to get just a bit irritated that Ninjabee didn’t include more tracks. My advice, just turn it off and play your own tunes.

Perhaps the greatest issue with the game stems from the denouement. Simply put, when you finish building everything possible there’s nothing really left to do except either start a new game or continue honing your current layout until you are completely satisfied with your building management. It doesn’t help that there’s only one included map and that there’s no way to run out of resources. Hopefully, Ninjabee will release some add-on scenarios or at least new maps in order to spice things up. Still, it took me around 6-8 hours of gaming till I reached the end which is longer than I’ve spent on most Xbox Live Arcade titles.

It is regrettable that A Kingdom for Keflings might not reach a huge audience but those who invest their time and energy in it will find one of the services better entertainment values. Fans of resource gathering and building management flow games will have a blast and be charmed by its cheery non-violent atmosphere.

Note: The game also contains a co-operative multiplayer mode where up to four players can work on building the town at the same time. However, for this review I was not able to try this feature. I’m assuming the building process and resource gathering would work at an accelerated pace but I’m not sure if the frame rate holds up or just how much more fun it would be even with three of your mates. I can imagine a nightmare scenario whereby someone you don’t know just shows up in your game to wreck or re-arrange all your buildings.

*** out of ****

Developer: Ninjabee
Release Date US: November 19, 2008
ESRB Rating: 10+

In all my years as a reviewer this is the first time I’ve ever penned a critique about a software OS update. Not only that, it has nothing to do with Windows, Linux, OSX or any other desktop or server operating system. In fact, it has nothing to do with computers whatsoever but rather, video games. That’s right, for the first time in history a video game console maker is upgrading their OS through a downloadable, mandatory, patch and will wonders ever cease, the company responsible is Microsoft. Yes, the same Microsoft that has been accused since time began as not only being an industry bully but also ripping off every original idea from their competitors. Don’t fret though, this is not a sign of the apocalypse nor are pigs flying either. For once, Microsoft seems to actually be leading and for gamers the results are surprisingly substantial, as they have managed to add enough features that enhance the current Xbox 360 skill set.

The patch, appropriately named the, “New Xbox Experience” or NXE for short, is much more than just your standard Windows patch that usually just plugs security holes but rather does a complete overhaul and extreme makeover of the GUI. Think of it in terms of scale as if your Windows XP or Vista install suddenly getting a mandatory patch they turned your entire visual interface (icons, font, background, sound) into something resembling Mac OSX. Not only that but they have added a whole wealth of features that where previously not included as well as tweaking and enhancing current functionality all in an installation process which takes less than five minutes and one reboot. Not too shabby.

I have had my Xbox 360 since launch day (although I’ve had 2 RRODs already) and I remember during the period leading up to it that Microsoft spent much time harping upon their 360 “Blades” interface which was supposedly thoroughly tried and tested to be the best and easiest to navigate. Microsoft spokesmen constantly demoed the new look and walked journalists through the various sections to highlight the console’s various functions. This new look was a definitive upgrade from the previous XBOX GUI that, nowadays, looks incredibly dated. While the original XBOX went for the quasi-high tech look with the black/green contrast it seemed that it was clunky and betrayed its PC roots while trying too hard to exude a “cool” atmosphere. How else do you account for having the GUI look like it was suppose to be from some futuristic hologram technology? Microsoft, like it has been known to do, added many extraneous graphical flourishes that seemed to do nothing but add flash.

The new 360 blade motif jettisoned most of that and instead distilled every function into four primary blades, each one having a specific purpose – Xbox live, Games, Media and System settings that clearly delineated the console’s primary features. Now, you could also buy or make your own custom themes much like changing your wallpaper in Windows that added more individual personality to each console.

Add the inclusion of the Xbox guide button (you know, that huge circular xbox logo button on your controller) that a user could call up at any time, even during game play, that made all the console features easily available and the console’s OS seemed light years ahead of it’s original Xbox predecessor.

Now there was nothing particularly bad or painful about the blade interface and for the time it was very easy to navigate but as Microsoft began to add more features many issues reared their ugly head. First and foremost in my experience was the relative lag or general slowness that occurred especially when accessing certain areas or using specific features. The original Xbox also displayed instances of this but never, in my experience, to the extent of the 360. There were times when I went to download new content such as videos or game demos where the entire GUI would freeze for an inordinate amount of time that reminded me of all the bad things that occurred in Windows – I almost expected the OS to crash but it thankfully didn’t. Sometimes as I switched between blades it too would freeze or it would take too long for simple text to even display in the dash. When I attempted to queue multiple downloads everything would stagnate causing me to curse in frustration at the apparent lack of polish.

Couple that with the logistical nightmare that occurred as more and more downloadable content was added and it was clear that the blade interface was becoming detrimental and a turn off for more casual gamers. Instead of easy access to content things became buried in numerous menu layers and that made finding a specific item a time consuming process of menu hunting.

Thus it was time for a change although I doubt anyone except those in the know at Microsoft had the slightest inkling at how much different it would end up. Let it be said that there is no doubt that the NXE upgrade has two primary functions one of which is the aforementioned upgrades to the GUI but perhaps the greater goal that can’t actually be seen is Microsoft’s changing business plan to bring the 360 into better direct competition with the Nintendo Wii’s core “casual” audience that has so far eluded both Microsoft and Sony. The Wii might have started as a fad but it has become much more than that as it has energized and drawn in people who traditionally have not cared about video games. This new market of “casual” gamers is propelling the Wii to unimaginable heights all the while leaving Microsoft and Sony far behind in its wake. A cursory glance at monthly NPD sales figures shows the Wii outselling the 360 by a comfortable 2:1. About the only bright spot for Microsoft is that the 360 is currently outselling Sony’s PS3 by the same 2:1 margin which makes Sony’s position all the more precarious. Who would have thought the once great Sony Playstation brand would be languishing in last place at this point in the race?

Regardless, the new NXE update coupled with the recent price drops that put the 360 Arcade SKU at a lower price than the Wii show that, if nothing else, Microsoft is gearing up for a serious attempt to win over more fans and increase the 360s installed base. So what exactly has Microsoft done with this new patch?

GUI MAKEOVER

XBOX One Dashboard ----- >














XBOX 360 Blades Interface ----- >














XBOX 360 NXE Interface ----->














As you can see the Xbox dashboard has come a long way since the original Xbox’s overtly green design all the way to the NXE’s almost Apple-esque influenced motif. Actually, the NXE seems like an amalgamation of Apple’s OSX, Sony’s XMB, Microsoft’s own Media Center with a dash of Nintendo’s charm.

Gone are the huge horizontal scrolling blades of the 360’s original interface, replaced with sharply defined box islands that can be scrolled either vertically to different categories or horizontally for added features within that particular grouping. The top half of the screen is made up of your background theme or wallpaper while the bottom half is a shiny grey that reflects the various boxes giving the whole presentation a high touch of polish.

The NXE separates everything into seven distinct categories:

Spotlight: This is the first category you see after your 360 boots. As evinced by its name this is the area most like online advertising where Microsoft highlights its current picks for games, movies, current contests or new hardware like the 60GB Live Starter Pack. It also draws attention to new NXE features like the Photo Party (only currently available to Gold members) where you can share photos with your friends through Xbox Live.

My Xbox: This category contains all the relevant info on the current user as well as showing you what is currently in your Xbox 360’s DVD drive. This is a new feature that is pretty cool. If you are connected to the Internet it will show you a nice picture of the game you have in your drive which is perfect for those of us with lousy memories. Your gamertag, current achievement points, the last few games you’ve played as well as your spanking new avatar are here as well. This is also where you access your game library like your downloaded demos, videos, music and arcade games. Finally, this is where you have the commands available to connect your console to Windows Media center as well as the console’s system settings.

Game Marketplace / Video Marketplace: The old marketplace blade has been split up into two now, one for gaming and another for videos. This is a welcome relief as now you don’t have the two entertainment mediums rammed into the same menu system. As expected the games marketplace contains all the game demos, add on content, and live arcade sub areas. What is new is that you now get much better segmentalized information when you pull up a certain item. For instance if I were to click on a new live arcade game like Street Fighter II Turbo HD, I now get boxes showing up that contain info such as: all other related downloads to this game; numerous screen shots of the game that I can enlarge to fill the whole screen, details on the developer and publisher, box art, how many players can play, what the max screen resolution is and finally a nice summary of what the game is about. The video marketplace functions more or less the same way although there you get different information displayed like whether or not the download is in standard or high definition, what language is the movie or TV show, whether there are subtitles available and short credits that list the various actors and director/producers.

Friends: One of the nicest upgrades in the NXE is your friends area. Now, not only do you see all your friends in your list you get to see their avatars as well (more info below) as what they are currently playing or even if they are on-line or off. It’s kind of cute to see someone’s avatar who is sleeping denoting they are off line. The only problem I can see here is if you are some sort of social monster and have hundreds of friends. If you did you’d be scrolling horizontally for ages to find someone you want – or you can use the Xbox guide button and call up the text based menus for easier navigation.

Inside Xbox: This is another new category and it works similar to the spotlight one although this one focuses more on short streaming videos showing you things like tips for certain games, developer interviews, or short tutorial videos helping you create avatars.

Welcome: It’s kind of funny that the first category you see is spotlight instead of Welcome but that’s Microsoft’s design choice. This area is probably the one you’d use the least with the only real purpose as being the “Hide Channel” command that, you guessed it, removes the Welcome channel from your view. About the only people who would use this category would be newcomers to the Xbox 360 console. You can pull up a condensed 360 user guide explaining the overall features of your new console but the information is a bit redundant if you’ve already read the instruction manual. Then again, this might be good for those who never read the manual at all. The only other feature in this channel is the NXE intro video which is rather odd as I doubt you’d want to watch this over and over again unless you are some sort of sadist.

AVATARS

Perhaps the most glaring example of Microsoft’s newfound thrust into the casual gaming market is the inclusion of Avatars in the NXE patch. Now, before you shout the obvious that these avatars are just knockoffs of Nintendo Miis let’s at least agree that the very idea of having an onscreen representation of yourself belongs to no one person nor company. Nintendo was not the first company to invent or use them nor do they have some sort of legal patent pending to that affect. Avatars have been used in numerous other online internet applications like instant messengers and even some massively multiplayer on-line games like Second Life. Heck just about any mmorpg like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Age of Conan etc uses avatars although, in those cases, they are not meant to resemble the real life you.

That said, Microsoft’s avatars reek of that perpetual stereotype that the company just steals everything from their competitors not because they have decided to include them but precisely because they bear a striking resemblance to Nintendo’s cute Miis. Microsoft seems to have instructed Rare, the video game makers of Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Conker, and previous second party Nintendo software firm to make their avatars a natural progression from Miis. Even the sound effects that play while you are creating them bare more than a passing resemblance to Nintendo’s aural style. I swear you could have both a Wii and a NXE patched 360 playing at the same time and not know which console was which if you had a blindfold on.

More so than other thing else in the NXE patch, the inclusion of avatars have drawn a decidedly violent reaction from hard-core gamers who want nothing to do with them – they didn’t care for them on the Wii and they care even less for Microsoft’s version. I found it amusing when I read online comments where gamers damned Microsoft for having the gall to turn their 360 into a kiddie Nintendo-like console. You would have thought the world was coming to an end listening to these folks.

However, although Microsoft’s avatars might seem “inspired” by Miis the end result is more than a decent upgrade. With high definition graphics and a plethora of clothing and facial features available these avatar’s look pretty spiffy. They have a more humanistic feel and proportion than Miis albeit still exuding a decidedly non-threatening visage and, for the most part, most people can create a close approximation of themselves using the available templates and styles.

These design features are quite robust letting you change not only your clothes but your hair, nose, face shape, ears, eyebrows, eyes, height and weight. About the only questionable design choice missing is that you can’t change the colour of any of the clothing which is somewhat a downer. Hopefully, Microsoft doesn’t get greedy in the future and charge players for extra clothing downloads that are just recoloured versions of what is currently available.

As an extra feature, Microsoft has included a rather neat feature where after you create your avatar you are given an option to “take a picture” of its face for use as your new gamer picture.

Still, if you want to create some sort of mutant looking homicidal avatar, chances are you are going to be out of luck as all the features you can customize are designed specifically to avoid those looks. Microsoft is serious about reaching out to the casual gaming market and staying away from anything that might jeopardize that.

Which brings us to perhaps the bigger reason why Microsoft doesn’t allow you to make psychopathic avatars – you can use them in select games. In a brilliant, albeit easily ascertained move, Microsoft has allowed software developers to incorporate your new avatars in their games. This means you can actually play “yourself” in upcoming games, a feature currently not found on the Wii. It is actually incredulous that Nintendo has never ventured into this particular application for their own Miis. Anyways, this feature potentially opens up some really cool avenues that companies can use in future software. Now there are sure to be restrictions and as I mentioned earlier this is the reason why you can’t make psycho avatars. The games that will use this, “play as your avatar feature,” will be non-violent or as family oriented as possible. Thus games like virtual quiz shows or something like Electronic Arts, The Sims, sound reasonable but I don’t think Microsoft will ever allow a company to make Grand Theft Avatar where all your avatars go on a murderous rampage killing each other. That’s NOT exactly family orientated.

Your new avatar’s don’t really do much in the new interface after their creation. In fact, they just stand around when you are in the GUI’s My Xbox area. You can use your controller to issue them basic commands like wave at the screen or turn their heads to look at different areas of the screen. You can see however all your friends’ avatars in the friends area. Now you can see what your friends looks like in their virtual form which is both good and bad I guess depending on how they made their avatars. Of course, you can always buy a Xbox Live Vision Camera (Xbox’s version of a webcam) and see how they really look like but in my experience this is something I’d rather not know.

In the end the inclusion of avatars adds a bit of spice to the xbox experience but only time will tell if Microsoft has managed to integrate them more into their console’s features. It seems they are already a step ahead of Nintendo’s Miis in their application but we really have to wait a good 6 months or more to see if software developers find new and innovative ways to use them in real games.

MULTIPLAYER PARTIES

This is one of the features I haven’t been able to try out for myself but in essence it should allow groups of friends to easily follow one another from one game to another without going through the tedious process of dropping out of a game and then finding each other to reconnect in another. If you are currently in party chat you and your friends don’t need to drop out of the call – in essence you can keep chatting away while you drop out to a lobby or during loading screens all the while not being disconnected.

I must admit since I don’t have many friends (sniff) on Xbox live I can’t really comment much on its functionality but I can see how it would affect those who constantly play with the same group of mates.

HARD DRIVE INSTALL

One of the biggest issues surrounding the 360 is what is known as the dreaded RROD. For those who do not know what this means it translates to, “red ring of death.” As you may or may not be aware, the Microsoft X360 suffers from an unusually high failure percentage due to overheating that causes the graphic chip to basically dislodge itself from the motherboard. Even if you take extreme care in not running your system too long and give it the proper ventilation there’s still a chance it will eventually, literally, melt. When it does the green ring of light that appears on your system turns a hellish red which is usually, although not all times, fatal. The only way to fix your 360 in that case is to phone up Microsoft to ship you a box, affectionately named a coffin, so that you can mail your dead console back to Microsoft for repair.

The other big negative surrounding the 360 is that it is LOUD when it plays games. I don’t mean mildly loud, I mean LOUD. If you are really unlucky your 360 will have a combination of loud DVD drive coupled with a rather loud fan. This doesn’t matter much when your speakers are turned up high as they drown out sound anyways but it can be extremely irritating especially if you are playing a horror / intensely atmospheric game that relies on subtle sound effects to heighten your senses. In these cases the jet engine noise coming from your 360 console is sure to drive you up the wall.

Thankfully, Microsoft has included the new feature of full game installs to the 360 hard drive. If you chose to do that you still need your original game DVD to be in the drive but thankfully it only spins when you start the game in order to verify that you indeed own it. After the initial boot the game runs straight from your hard drive thus eliminating the jet engine noise from your DVD drive. This is a great upgrade as the console becomes super quiet – not quite as soundless as your Wii or PS3 but darn close anyways. Also, supposedly, this cuts down on fan use as well and generally will hopefully reduce RRODs from happening (although I have no idea how someone can prove this without some sort of high-tech equipment).

As great as this new NXE feature is, it predisposes the fact that you have a hard drive with sufficient space on it or any hard drive at all. For those gamers who only bought Xbox 360 Arcade units you are flat out of luck since you don’t have a hard drive anyways. Those users who bought the previously available 20 GB Xbox 360 Pro unit will undoubtedly find that they are going to be pressed for space. Although it says you have 20GB in reality you have around 12GB as the rest is taken up by reserved space. You can basically install two games onto your drive before you run out of space. In other words, you are going to have to use your hard drive space wisely. Of course, those gamers with Xbox 360 Elites and 120GB drives are going to be laughing in their sleep with this new feature.

My advice if you haven’t bought a Xbox 360 yet is that you’d be doing yourself a favor if you buy the new 60GB Xbox 360 unit or the larger 120GB Xbox 360 Elite. If you, unfortunately, have a Xbox 360 Arcade at least Microsoft has done the right thing and released a new 60GB upgrade kit that comes with 3 months of Xbox Live, an Ethernet cable and a wired headset as well for about $100. Trust me, once you install a game to the drive and basically kill the jet engine wail coming from your console you can never go back to playing games straight from the DVD drive again.

PREMIUM THEMES

With the changes in the GUI Microsoft has also seen to it to include, for purchase of course, new premium themes that, when done right, really integrate well with the new look. A lot of these themes contain 3D elements which add a lot of character to the interface especially on the friends menu. Depending on the premium game theme you purchase your online friends will be seen lounging around (or asleep if they are off line) 3D replicas of game assets such as different cars if you bought the Forza theme or carriages and carts from Fable 2. Depending on the developer, some of them really stand out such as the Forza theme which makes the entire bottom half of the screen seem like an extension of the race track replete with concrete and tire stack barriers. Others seem to have been rushed to market looking more like upgraded wallpaper. You can really tell if a developer has put a lot of thought into their design.

However, in a bizarre and frustrating move Microsoft still has not included a way for you to preview how a particular theme will look like making the whole process hit and miss. It is like asking you to buy a new car without ever seeing how it looks like. The only way you can preview these new premium themes is to go online and do a search for them hoping someone or some developer has posted pictures of them on their sites. This inconvenience wouldn’t be so bad if the price of the theme was like a throwaway cheap purchase but at 250 Microsoft points the cost is too prohibitive to just wing it and hope that you like the theme you end up buying. Remember, there are no refunds so if you get a theme you are not satisfied with you are out of luck. I’m sure there is a higher cost to program these new premium themes as they add 3D elements into the landscape but does it really justify shelling out $3.57 Canadian for what amounts to fancy wallpaper? I don’t think so unless it is your favorite game of all time.

Another annoying little quirk, or huge issue depending on your point of view, pertains to themes bought before the NXE patch. These old themes were designed with the old blade GUI in mind and though they do work in the new interface they just don’t look optimized in the least. In the worst case scenario they look absolutely dreadful and resemble hastily created images by some Photoshop novice as all the crops and sight lines are in the wrong areas. Anyone who spent a ton of Microsoft points on old themes might just end up cursing as they are basically less the ideal in the new GUI.

NETFLIX

Of all the new features added to the NXE, the addition of Netflix seems to be the one that people have been most enthusiastic about. It’s a feature that basically brings your local Blockbuster store directly into your Xbox 360 console. Think about that – no more trudging through the snow to return a DVD or pay late fees! Actually, this new functionality adds so much more than that it’s actually mindboggling. Basically, if you are a Netflix subscriber (with the unlimited plan) and own a Xbox 360 with a Live Gold you can now stream a ton of movies and TV series through your console directly to your television. In fact, save for new releases you have virtually unlimited access to over 12,000 movies and shows which you can watch at your own convenience.

Netflix previously offered unlimited watching through your personal computer but the very fact you can stream from your 360 direct to TV makes this new feature of the NXE a godsend as the whole family can now join in the fun. The integration is super easy to set up. Just download a small Netflix patch from the NXE, get the code generated and then enter said code online at the Netflix website. Now you have access to all the available content. You then just pick what you want to watch through your PC and can even queue up multiple titles to download. Once you enter the Netflix part of the NXE interface you’ll see nice digital DVD covers from all the items you’ve added to your queue on the screen. Just pick what you want and start watching. You even get regular DVD commands like fast forward, rewind and pause. Let me say it again, this is almost unlimited content. You can keep queuing up content and watch for days on end and in some cases you can watch TV shows which are in their current season.

Picture wise the quality is around what you’d expect from a regular DVD (albeit with not as many frames per second) and like Quicktime or Real Player the movie will buffer the information for about 30seconds to 1 minute before actually playing. If you have a good internet connection you should be fine as the movie will play smoothly although bad connections will degrade the experience with frequent pauses.

One point of contention though – this is only available in the USA right now unless you “know” how to get around the restrictions. Hopefully, Microsoft will roll this Netflix integration out ASAP to other regions of the world. If they manage to do that you can cancel your movie cable channel subscriptions altogether and just sign up for a Netflix account.

COMMUNITY GAMES

One of the most overlooked features of the NXE is the inclusion of community games. I’m actually surprised that more video game blogs and outlets don’t draw more than a passing mention of this new feature as it has the potential for truly making gaming explode on the 360. So what exactly are community games and why should you care? To put it simply these are games made by amateur programmers using Microsoft’s XNA development tools that anyone can download for free off Microsoft’s website. Actually, downloading and installing them on a PC are free although you later need to pay $99 per year for a premium membership that allows you to play and debug your games on your Xbox 360 console. Basically, you download XNA, program your game and then release it to the XNA community for peer review. If it passes you then get the opportunity to sell it through Xbox Live. Presto, you are on your way to a career as a video game developer and you can earn money to boot!

The closest example I can think of is Apple’s app store for the iPhone and iPod where you can buy content like applications and games through your PC iTunes interface or directly through your iPhone apps link. I’m not sure of the process Apple uses to filter and approve content for its store although many developers online hint that it is a very draconian process. Then again, the Apple app store has been a massive success and one of the defining features that differentiates the iPhone from its nearest competitors like the Blackberry.

Regardless, the new community games section of the NXE really opens up a whole new arena for amateur developers to ply their wares and gives the 360 is huge arena that its competitor’s cannot come close to matching in opening up the console for independent game makers. It gives a perfect opportunity for any novice programmer to try and break into the industry while making cold hard cash and it’s surprising that this initiative comes from Microsoft, the very company which guards their code for Windows with an army of lawyers and super-robot killing machines.

I’m actually surprised that in a short few weeks since the launch of the NXE to find over 50 new community games available although I have an inkling many of them were completed long ago and were just waiting for the NXE to come out.

Although this could be the start of something exciting there are two huge hurdles for Xbox 360 owners. First and foremost is the hugely varying level of quality of these games. Many of them are, for a lack of better word, junk, showing little or no polish and a lack of intelligent or compelling game play. This is no surprise as even Apple’s app store is saddled with the same problems with too many underachieving titles. However, there are many diamonds to be found if you decide to try everything available which is easy since every game can be downloaded and played for free for two minutes. At first glance the 2 minute hard cap might seem to be too constricting but for these types of games you really can form a decent impression of the overall competency of the product in such a short period of time.

The other quirk with these games is how they are priced. While you can find many games available for 200 Microsoft points (roughly $3 Canadian) there’s a surprising number of them at the 400 ($5.71) and even 800 ($11.42) price points. Now, I’m happy to support independent developers and the creativity that this feature represents but at these higher price points these community games cost as much as full-fledged professional Xbox live games from industry giants such as Capcom, EA, Namco, Sega etc. I have no doubt that some community games can be worth this price but a few of them have left me baffled why their creator’s have placed such a high cost for their products. I think you can ascertain part of this reason as the same phenomenon that occurred when the Apple app store launched a few months ago. Developers had no idea what other developers would charge nor how much the public would be willing to pay so prices were all over the map. You could search for, let’s say a mahjong game, and find four or five offerings ranging from free all the way up to $9.99. I have no doubt the developer who released his game at $9.99 was probably cursing when he found out his competition was way below his intended price. Hopefully, this price adjustment will occur for the 360 as well as I just can’t see many users shelling out close to maximum price for independent software unless the game is truly extraordinary.

OVERALL

In the end the NXE patch comes off as an unequaled success, changing the very nature and feel of the console through software without a hint of hardware revision. This is the same physical Xbox 360 as ever but now the focus has been fine tuned with a more user-friendly GUI and a plethora of feature upgrades that leave Sony and even Nintendo scratching their collective heads. That is not to say that this patch will somehow magically make more XBOX 360s fly off the shelf or cause their competitor’s to panic but rather it plays up to Microsoft’s core strength. Regardless of how you feel about Windows or Office as products there’s no doubt that Microsoft’s primary competency lies in its software. People can deride and flippantly use Microsoft as an example of shoddy programming but this is just fanboyish mutterings from people who use the old clichés about the company. After all, how many jokes have you heard in your life about Microsoft sound speakers blaring out the Imperial March from Star Wars whenever Bill Gates enters the room? Say what you will about Microsoft and their business practices but there is one other cliché we need to highlight as well that might be more apropos here -- Microsoft never seems to nail a product in version 1.0 but watch out as they inevitably “get it” when 2.0 rolls around.

The NXE is a patch which certainly showcases this. It takes all the elements which made the original blade interface a joy to deal with and multiples it by 10. The final product is quick, robust and easier on the eyes. There is definitely room for improvement but it makes one begin to wonder just what exactly Microsoft has in store for the Xbox 720.