Xbox 360: Little Treasures

By Ryan Treit

Hardware specs and game features—that's all I ever hear about. Yadda yadda yadda this spec, yadda yadda yadda this game. It's all quite fascinating, that much I'll confess, but lost in the next-gen shuffle of spec sheets are all the little odds and ends that get me excited.

It's the little features like the avoid/prefer system on Xbox Live®, the Xbox Guide button on the Xbox 360™ controller, the industrial design, the faceplates, and the gamer profile that really make me warm and fuzzy with anticipation. Toss aside the phenomenal horsepower and great games for just a moment, and cast your ever-loving gaze on some of the smaller features: the itty bitty stuff that marks our next-gen experience for the better every time we pick up a controller.

One-Click Wonder
I take the same perspective to software and hardware that my teachers impressed upon me for writing. Less is more. If you can describe it in one sentence accurately, why take two? The same can be said for any high-tech toy, and the Xbox Guide button on the Xbox 360 controller (and Universal Media Remote for that matter) is an utterly pure example of that notion.

Want to turn on your console? Hit the Xbox Guide button. Want to check your friends list? Press the Xbox Guide button. Need to look at a setting or fiddle with your gamer profile? That's right, click the Xbox Guide button. All the power of your Xbox 360 resides in that button in the middle of your controller. That's functional simplicity at its finest.

Simply Clean
You could probably argue that the original Xbox® put function over form. It isn't the prettiest of machines sitting there in your entertainment center. The Xbox 360, however, combines form and function. It's got that sleek little concave/hourglass thing going on. It's not bad to look at, and let's just leave it at that before my analogies get off track.

More importantly (to me at least) is that it continues to look nice. While a wet-nap and a paper towel might do the trick for most occasions, the key to keeping a clean and sexy look is no add-ons, or at the very least no external add-ons. I don't need any dongles hanging off looking like a controller cord's stumpy cousin. I don't need a hard drive sticking out the front or back, or antennas for wireless controllers jutting out every which way. Again, Xbox 360 scores a win here, as nearly everything is internalized. The wireless adapters for the controllers are internal, the hard drive is internal, the memory cards are small and innocuous, and if you sport all wireless controllers, you'll have no ugly cords streaming out from the console.

Change faceplates at a moment's notice.

Facelift
I'm a sucker for customization, and while I don't see myself buying a host of different faceplates so I can play dress-up with Xbox 360, I very much like the idea of swapping one out for another. It's the lazy inner modder in me. Even more exciting (and I'm speculating here) is the idea of third-party faceplates dedicated to games, shows, movies, comic books, or whatever else we dig. Personally, I need myself a FF or Annarchy ("your chariot awaits!"—priceless) faceplate from the folks at Penny Arcade, so get cracking on that design, Gabe and Tycho.

Prefer/Avoid
I like a nice simple friends list with people I know and trust, so my enthusiasm for the prefer/avoid system borders on fanatical. Put simply, if you find people you like to play against or with, but aren't ready to send a friend invite, you can hit them with a preferred tag. Essentially, this increases your likelihood to play with them (the system actively looks for them when searching available games) in the future. Conversely, if you run into a jackass griefer, you can label them with an avoid tag, which tells the system to do just that; avoid matches if they're in them.

Xbox 360 is fully loaded with features that don't get a whole lot of love yet. From the Windows Media Extender functionality, to setting preferences on your gamer profile, to listening to custom soundtracks in any game at any time, to the Universal Media Remote that controls every aspect of the system, to the 720 progressive scan and widescreen standard for TVs that support that, Xbox 360 is proving that next-generation gaming is big on the little details.

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