Canadian Duo Tag Team Xbox 360 Dashboard Themes in True Northern Style

If you’re like me, (some would say picky, but I say frugal) you like to check your goods out before you buy them.  Take them on a little test drive if you will.  Well, thanks to two clever Canadians, you can now do just that before you lay down your precious gamer points on a dashboard theme.  Matt Brett and Andrew McTeer are helping you get a good look at Xbox 360 Dashboard Themes before you hit confirm purchase.  And it’s also a fun site to let others know which are your favourites and to upload your own theme creations.  I took some time out to chat with the guys about their site and what it takes to make a truly stellar theme.

Jade: A site like this is a great addition to the Xbox and the Xbox Live community! But considering the hosting and bandwidth costs of running the site, how and why are you guys doing this?

Andrew McTeer:  Well, we didn't do this project for the money.  We knew there was a problem out there that we could solve, so we focused on that. Matt and I have been looking for a project to do together and Dashboard Themes was the perfect fit.  Through donations and hopefully some official sponsors, we hope to keep the site a float.

Jade: I see that gamers can register and submit their own ratings for dashboard themes. What are the most popular and highest rated themes right now?

AM:  "Halo 3: 1st TV Spot" is easily the #1 rated theme on our site. It started as #1 and has a very strong lead.  This is surprising seeing as the #2 is a free Gears of War theme.  You would figure cost would factor into the voting, but it doesn't seem to.  At #3 is the 

Viva Pinata theme, which is equally as awesome as the game.  This should be evidence for the publishers to put some serious effort into their themes. The Rainbow Six Vegas theme could have been great, but fell short when they released 2 themes at full price (150 points) that consisted of a single image across all 4 blades.

Jade: That’s some good feedback on theme creation, that’s why sites like this do such a great job of making it better for Xbox gamers.  How quickly is the site updated with new themes?

Matt Brett:  One of the first things I do on week day mornings is check Xbox Live Marketplace to see if there's anything new.  If I find some new themes, I head down to my work space where I have a dedicated Xbox 360 for capturing and get them on the site.  The whole process from purchasing a theme to capturing and uploading to the site takes about 3-5 minutes per theme.

Jade: That’s dedication!  How many gamers are using the site right now? And what has the overall response been like so far?

MB:  On an average day we get about 1,000 people stopping by who view 6 or 7 themes each.  There are over 1,400 registered members who are the only ones who can cast votes and leave comments.  At this point, we've received over 4,500 votes on the 71 themes we have on the site.

Jade: What’s really cool about themes is the ability to customize. Are there a lot of theme uploads to the site?

MB:  We actually didn't realize people were full out designing their own images to be used as themes until a member emailed us and asked if we had considered allowing user submitted themes.  My interest was definitely piqued, so I posted an entry on our blog to see what others thought of the idea and it's currently our most active entry.  

There seems to be a lot of interest on this topic and Andrew and I have already got something in motion to give those that create their own themes a way to share them via our site.  We can't spill all the details just yet, but members will be able to contribute in more ways than one very soon.

Jade: That’s great news, we have a lot of interest in the Xbox Canada community in unique customized themes, so make sure to keep us posted on this.  So what dashboard themes are you using to trick out your XBOX 360 at the moment?

AM:  "Gears of War: Multiplayer Map Pack 1" or the Battlestar Galactica ones :P

MB:  Heh, Andrew was actually over at my place recently and had a good laugh when I fired up my Xbox 360 and he saw that I was using the Carbon theme.  I have the Live Vision camera and love the "watery" effect and you can't really see it on a lot of the themes, so I end up going back to Carbon pretty regularly.  I'm also very picky and don't like a lot of clutter.  There's only a handful of themes that have really appealed to me.  "Halo 3: 1st TV Spot", "Prey: Theme 1" and "Halo Wars: Theme 1" are among them.

Jade: So you’ve given a lot back already.  How can gamers get involved to keep the site rockin’?

AM:  Dontations really help, but to really be successful users should leave more critical feedback in the comments.   We know there are several publishers reading the site (we've been contacted by a few of them directly) so the more feedback, the better.  Hopefully, as a result they will learn from previous themes that maybe didn't do so well and improve on future themes.

Jade: Okay, what are your gamertags and give me the deets behind them?

AM:  SNKguns - short for "sneaky guns" from my Counterstrike days.

MB:  PlainBlack

Jade: No explanation needed on that one Matt – we get it, clutter free gamertag.  Favourite games on Xbox Live?

AM:  Test Drive Unlimited, Texas Holdem, Crackdown, Gears of War... everything!  In fact, I get very stressed out that there are so many great games to play and not enough time to play them.

MB:  Gears of War (co-op and multiplayer), Crackdown, PGR 3, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Call of Duty 3, Battlestations Midway,LOTR: Battle for Middle-earth II.

Jade: Running the site sounds like it takes up a chunk of your time, but what do you do when you aren’t making the world a better place for Xbox gamers?

AM:  As a C# developer, I've recently started making XNA games.  So far, I've made Pong and 4 player co-op Tetris.  I hope to really make some fun party games for the Xbox 360 in my spare time.

MB:  I work from home as a freelance web designer and spend my off time playing lots of games on my Xbox 360, writing on my blog and hanging out with my family.

Well Matt and Andrew, we the Xbox Community salute you!  Got a favourite theme of your own or one you are dying to see on Xbox Live Marketplace?  Be the squeaky wheel. Hit the forums.