Hands-on: Social networking on Xbox 360
(Credit:
Microsoft)
Microsoft was expected to release Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm apps for the Xbox 360 as part of a system software update that went out back in August. It was decided that the apps should be delayed for a fall release, but CNET got a sneak peek of the apps on Wednesday from Ron Pessner, Microsoft's general manager of games for Windows Live.
The company is still mum on an exact release, despite marketing materials on the U.K. Xbox.com site briefly pointing to a November 17 debut. Pessner confirmed that the new apps were indeed set for November release, but he could not provide a hard date. In the meantime the company is releasing a public preview ahead of time for a select group of users who sign up to be a part of the beta test (you can sign up here).
What we saw of the three apps was impressive but in many ways extremely limited compared with their desktop counterparts. Microsoft has had to shoehorn the three Web apps into a system with a control scheme that does not implement a mouse, keyboard, or Web browser. Instead, all three make use of the Xbox 360 controller and the on-screen keyboard, or an attached USB keyboard (or Microsoft Chat Pad accessory which you can buy for $30).
This lack of the usual top-to-bottom controls found on each service's Web sites changes each experience considerably from what users are familiar with on their computers and mobile devices. This is made even more noticeable by the fact that the Xbox 360 still does not have a built-in Web browser. Never before has this been an issue, but stop and think for a second: are Twitter and Facebook as useful, or as interesting if you can't click on any of the links? We don't think so.
That said, there are some definite things to look forward to when the software update drops next month. Read our early impressions after the jump.
The Twitter app is the most beautiful of the three new apps. It's big, blue, and can be left running on your TV for hours while it updates with new tweets on the minute.
Twitter is big, blue and pretty on the Xbox 360.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)The app lets you cruise through the last 50 tweets from people you're following. It can also drill down into each of those messages and let you quickly reply, retweet, and favorite it in about two button presses. It also includes Twitter's search tool, and a list of trending topics right from the main page.
And as a nice touch, the app is in no way tied to your Xbox Live account, meaning you can switch between multiple Twitter accounts from the same Xbox Live user profile. It can also just save your credentials between sessions, but there's no way to have it remember past log-ins.
Typing in tweets is easy if you've got the chatpad accessory, or a USB keyboard plugged in, but what's missing is a way to tell how many characters you have left.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)What's odd though is that the app doesn't give you a countdown to tell you how many characters out of Twitter's 140 limit you've got left. You're able to go over, but there are no other warning signs. We're not expecting this to be a big problem though, since users aren't likely to compose epic lines of prose using the on-screen keyboard. But those who use Microsoft's Chat Pad accessory or a USB keyboard could easily go over the limit without knowing it.
As mentioned before, it's also quite odd to read Twitter if you can't click on the URLs. Often times messages come with links either of photos, videos, or posts that add relevance to what that person was writing. With those things missing it's just not the same experience.
Facebook's Xbox app is considerably more full-featured than what's being offered for Twitter. That's to be expected though as Facebook's a much more complex service.
Beyond status updates, which users can peck in the same way they do for Twitter updates, the app can also be hooked up via Facebook Connect to send a status update when you get an in-game achievement, letting your friends, family, and employers know exactly when you were playing.
In our demo though, the big focus was on photos, which Microsoft thinks most users are going to spend their time using the app for. Users can sift through their friends' latest shots and begin viewing them in a full screen slide show almost instantly. If you've got a speedy Internet connection this happens just as fast as reading the shots off a memory card, which is really, really impressive.
As neat as the photo viewing is, what you cannot currently do with the app is take photos from your memory card and upload them to Facebook. Pessner said things like are always going to be better for a normal mouse and keyboard experience. This is despite the fact that the Xbox has very PC-like photo browsing and slide show tools built right in.
The friend linker tool can help you figure out which of your Facebook friends has an Xbox Live account and vice versa.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)Along with photos, the Facebook app can help you find Facebook friends who are on Xbox Live and vice versa. When you're signed into the app you can view this information in one of two ways: Facebook friends on Xbox Live, and Xbox Live friends on Facebook. Both of these options give you a way to add each person as a contact on the other service with just one click, which makes it extremely fast and easy to fill out your friends list on either community.
The only area where users may get into trouble with that though is in very quickly reaching the limit of people with whom they can be friends. This is currently 100, however Microsoft has alluded to increasing that number. This app is one of those things that may help tip the scales.
Two big features that are not included in the Facebook app are videos or chat. Pessner told us that video may eventually be added, but that it's not coming in this iteration. "We're obviously interested in what folks have to say about the desirability of personal videos," he said. "We're going to be evaluating that going forward." Chat may never arrive though, since Microsoft has a vested interest to keep live chat exclusive to Windows Live Messenger users, though it could cave if it meant selling more Chat Pads.
Last.fm
At this point we've seen Last.fm (which is owned by CNET News parent CBS Interactive) on basically every device with an Internet connection. In the case of the Last.fm Xbox 360 app it does a great job at getting newbie users into discovering new tracks. Unlike the other two apps, the app has a "set it and forget it" allure, meaning that you can just pick a station you want to listen to and leave it running for hours at a time without having to stare at your TV set.
Last.fm on Xbox is big an beautiful, although you can only listen to its streaming music as long as you have the app running, and not when you're playing games.
(Credit: Microsoft)Oddly enough, the app in no way ties into music you've ripped to your Xbox 360; instead you have to begin feeding in your musical tastes one band at a time. You can also just link up your existing Last.fm account info and it syncs up with your saved stations, favorites, and listening history.
Microsoft has also teamed up with Last.fm to curate a collection of "music for gamers" that has things like game music soundtracks, and game-inspired music in ready-made stations based on tags the Last.fm community has bestowed on particular tracks.
One big thing that really hinders the app though, is that it cannot be played in the background of games you're playing; it only plays music when you're running it--and it only. This is not unusual behavior for a third-party Xbox app, but it differs from the Xbox's built-in media player, which works system wide. The player also has its own distinct personality, doing away with the Xbox's visualizer in place of album and band art that's streamed in from Last.fm's media archive.
Our hope is that future versions will let you continue to play the music in the background of whatever game you're playing. That is, as long as it's not a multiplayer game, so your rocking out doesn't cause any lag.
Other tidbits
We also got a peek at the upcoming overhaul of Xbox Live's video marketplace, which is being rolled into its own app. Surprisingly Microsoft has chosen to go with the Zune brand for this new app, which short of a color scheme change and a few re-worked buttons is otherwise identical to the Xbox Live video marketplace that came before it.
The Xbox Live Video Marketplace is now simply the Zune Marketplace. It takes advantage of better streaming technology to give users instant playack of streaming HD movies.
(Credit: Microsoft)Why Zune instead of the less-tarnished Xbox Live brand? Pessner said that it's part of Microsoft's move to put Zune across as the music and video brand. The app also uses Zune's adaptive streaming technology, which lets you start streaming videos almost instantly. It then improves the quality of the stream within about 10 seconds of when you start it or jump around to other sections.
In our demo, the speed improvement was noticeably better than the current streaming service on Xbox Live's videos. The video would start playing in about a second without any sort of buffer to load.
For folks with that old 20GB Xbox 360 hard drive, the newer streaming technology is a major boon. It means you can watch HD movies without having to first download them. It can also let you start streaming a piece of content you purchased somewhere else, like on your Zune instead of having to store it in your waning hard drive space. That's a nice concession to people who bought the 20GB flavor of the console in 2004 and have a dwindling amount of storage space left.
• The Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm apps will all be available only to paid Xbox Live gold members and not silver. This is part of Microsoft's continuing efforts to differentiate the two levels of service and get free silver members to pony up to the gold level.
• Twitter and Facebook start up within a few seconds of being launched. Last.fm took a little longer than those two though, at around 13 seconds from launch to when you're first able to use it.
• User themes are not a part of the Twitter app. Instead, everyone is given the stock blue background of the app.
We'll have a more detailed look at the upgraded service when it launches next month. If you have any other questions, leave them in the comments and we'll try to get them answered for you.
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh. 
@goodspeed
how is greg465 being a troll?
back on topic, go get a chatpad for your controller. typing is much faster using it, it takes about 3 seconds to put on and 1 to take off. I can never type without using the chatpad. if you can type a message on the keybard in 10 seconds, then you can type the same message in about 13 seconds on the chatpad. I really like it. I've gotten so used to it that I can type without looking at the chatpad. go get a chatpad then see if your argument still stand...I got mine for $19 about a 2 years ago, you should be able to easily find them on sale now for $15 or less
yeah the comments take a bit of time to show up but what I was saying was that I already get a bunch of updates when my friends log on and off and its disturbing when I'm trying to play a multiplayer game and the little logo pops up saying "so-so is online". I could only imagine having status updates clogging up the screen constantly (not really but you know what I mean). Is that chatpad really worth it? I was thinking about getting it but I didn't know if it would be worth it. because It gets really annoying when people like to talk smack when you beat them on a game and they send you a message talking trash and it takes me so long to reply to them because of the controller.
oh i had no idea, is their anyway you can turn off only a select few people? because I have friends that I know in person and I have friends that I only play with on certain games and I want to stop having updates from them.
Depends what the plugin actually does. There's a Last.FM plugin that posts "what am I listening to now" update to your profile. Mebbe the FB and Twitter things might do something like that?
Thanks
afaik that's the normal behaviour with retail games. They take control of the audio when thery're started...
XBLA games work differently, they turn off their music if the console audio player is working in the background.
I don't think this is an optional update. Everyone will be required to download it because of the marketplace changes.
We've seen the same idea years ago when Gateway made TV based pc's, missing the point that the p in PC stands for personal. These apps are and their interface are personal even though they are social in nature. The reason for XBox is playing games, games, games. Movies as an adjunct, but the focus is games, at least that what MS said.
there are some people who dont' want a PS3,
there are some people who like to talk to their many friends and family online even though each is playing a different game,
there are some who likes to use their console to watch netflix because it's already hooked up to the really big HDTV in the living room,
there are some who likes a really good online experience,
there are some who likes to have a reallly big achievement index,
there are some who preffer to connect their console with wires and not wirelessly because they know that a wired connection won't drop the signal unexpectedly so paying for something you won't use is complete and utter idiocy.
there are some people who preffer to stream or watch the DVD so again it would be complete and utter idiocy to paying for a blueray player that they're not going to use.
there are some people who like the ease of use and wonderful UI of the Windows Media Center on their console
there are some people who like that they can stream videos/audio from their computer to their console that is hooked up to that big HDTV in the living room without needing any extra software on thier computer.
The People who are like these don't want a PS3, the XB360 is the better choice for them. so you saying that the "PS3 IS 100 TIMES BETTER THAN THE XBOX360" is complete and utter idiocy on your part.
your opinion is not fact, so please stop shouting at others.
That said aby26 does have a good point. While anything that is on another system xbox fan feel it's useless crap, but then comes bog'O MS and adds something that should have been implemented from the get go and all of the sudden it's the best inovation since KY jelly. They ridicueled the Wii mote now they have NATAL, they bashed PSN now they try these add ons for things PSN had access to since day uno; it's allways the same crap.
About the other things you stated I'de like to add its idiocy to think that wifi and bluray isn't nessesary. If you have a high end TV bluray is what takes advantage of it to the fullest. Like I have a kick a$$ PC so then why wouldn't I want to go all out on a monitor that can handle all the FPS (frame per second) or vis versa? On the wifi thing you realy shouldn't talk about something you haven't experianced yourself. How do I know you haven't? simple I, my brothers, and brother in law, along with my friends that own a PS3 and connect via wifi all have no issue of lag or drops.
So I?m just saying do'?tt troll a troll if all you speak is troll?? troll. lol
However, M$, curse their souls, don't seem to want that happening. I bet it will eventually.
Answer? Nobody.
It's a horrible experience... unless you set up a keyboard and mouse, which nobody does, and even then it's hardly compelling since most web sites don't work that well from a ten foot experience and using a keyboard and mouse from your couch sucks. If people want that, they'll set up media center / HTPCs, which is more what the PS3 tries to be. On the other hand, the Xbox is all about real ten foot experiences with a remote or game controller. Mainly that means *games* (something the PS3 could learn a thing or 10 about), but it also means TV-like experiences (video streaming, etc) and enables new ones like viewing Facebook photos in your living room. Lots of stuff is going to move in this direction so get used to it.
Writing a traditional web browser for a gaming console is a waste of time.
i use the browser on my ps3. so the answer is not "nobody"
The rest you had to say gave me a good luagh so thanks for that. Sony is doing fine on the gaming area and getting better with every exclusive you wish you had. Or should Sony developers follow in Halo's foot steps and make the same game over and over and over, then charge full price on an add on? LOL
the is the same reason you won't see MSFT release an MSFT Phone because if they do so it's like slapping their partners in the face with a big fat back hand.
But I won't bow down to something like "forcing your customers to buy your propitiatory hardware YEARSs after the fact. That's sickening to my stomach.
I'll definitely be watching this closely.
- by jets2400 October 23, 2009 8:46 AM PDT
- Josh,
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(38 Comments)Are these going to be strictly run from the XBOX Dashboard, or will some aspects be accessible from XBOX Guide Button? I'm guessing strictly from the Dashboard but being able to access them from the Guide would make a huge, I mean huge impact on the functionality. Input please??