Xbox Engineering Blog
Kinect Tuner: Tracking and Audio
Posted January 28, 2011 by Theo Michel (SDE Lead) – manic
The Kinect Tuner (the “Tuner”) is a new feature of the Xbox 360 console that allows users to “tune” their play space and audio settings in order to get the most out of Kinect. If you suspect that Kinect is not tracking you or hearing you as well as it should, the Tuner is the place to go.
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How You Become the Controller
Posted December 29, 2010 by Ron Forbes (PM) – RonS0L0 and Arjun Dayal (PM) – urge man
"You are the controller." If you've been following the buzz surrounding Kinect, you've probably heard this phrase tossed around. From plugging leaks with your hands and feet in Kinect Adventures! to changing songs with the flick of a wrist in Zune, Kinect opens up a new way to naturally experience your entertainment.
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Staying Safe on Xbox LIVE
Posted November 10, 2010 by Sarah Michael (SDET)
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Improving Console Safety
Posted November 1, 2010 by Raymond Arifianto (SDE Lead)
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NATs and Xbox LIVE
Posted October 22, 2010 by Adam Dare (SDET) - Major Havoc
Have you run the Network Troubleshooter and had it warn you about having a Moderate or Strict NAT (Network Address Translation)? There is a lot of information on the Internet that explains how to configure routers to fix this issue—for example, the Xbox.com support article “Error: Your NAT type is set to strict (or moderate).” But why is this necessary? Why is an Open NAT better than a Moderate or Strict NAT? To give you a better understanding of why one NAT type is better for gaming than another, in this post I give you a peek under the hood to see what happens at the network layer when Xbox 360 consoles try to connect and communicate with each other.
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Avatar Marketplace: Open 24/7
Posted September 2, 2010 by: Randy Santossio (SDET Lead) - Randy No Arms
"Wait a Minute. Are You Telling Me that My Avatar Gets to Wear Halo Armor and I Don't?"
I actually had this conversation with one of our Program Managers, when I heard about Avatar Marketplace for the first time. Avatar Marketplace -- known as AMP to the internal team -- was something that had been talked about for a while but hadn't really started to take form until the summer of 2009. By that point, Xbox already offered multiple forms of downloadable content through the Marketplace -- Games, Themes, Gamerpics, videos, and so on -- and there was a full closet of existing clothing for Avatars, but we really wanted to make Avatars as customizable as the users who created them. Basically, we wanted a full marketplace.
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New Content For Your Dashboard
Posted August 13, 2010 by Angus McQuarrie (SDE) - Syntonic Thief
Almost two years ago, we released an update to the Xbox 360 dashboard called the New Xbox Experience (NXE). This update came with a host of new and exciting content, as well as a huge graphical refresh to the look of the console. What you may not realize is how much more dynamic the content is in the NXE dashboard for Xbox 360. Unlike the old dashboard (commonly referred to as the blades), what you now see when you boot up your console is, in fact, tailored for you. This is the story of how our team of content authors toils daily to create fresh, new content, and how that content makes its way to your screen.
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Game Developers Customize Xbox LIVE
Posted July 28, 2010 by Raphael Mun (SDE) – Tennis and John McPherson (SDET) - Curse of Doom
One great feature of Xbox LIVE is that it provides a way for users to connect online with others and play video games together. Xbox LIVE offers many consistent experiences across games, including leaderboards, achievements, and presence (“Tennis is browsing Netflix”). But what about games that want to interact with LIVE in unique ways? How do all those Halo® 3 stats, pictures, and videos, for example, make their way onto Bungie.net?
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Achievements Unlocked
Posted July 15, 2010 by Vince Curley (Xbox LIVE & Platform Architect) – V
What is the happiest sound in the world? The roar of coins pouring into a metal tray when you hit a jackpot playing slots? The final school bell of the year, signaling the start of summer? The cheer of the crowd when your team wins a match?
Sure, all those things are great, but I think the happiest sound is one heard over 4 million times a day, all over the world: the notification beep that your Xbox makes when you earn an achievement.
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How Do I Get a Job at Xbox?
Posted May 17, 2010 by Eric Doty (Community Coordinator) – DMZilla
Before we get rolling, some of you may have noticed that my title is Community Coordinator. Unlike my peers who have posted to this blog before me, I am not an engineer. My role spans across the Official Xbox Forums, the MVP program, competitive analysis, community events, etc. As part of my role, I feel it is my duty to step up and answer the one question that I and everyone here at Xbox HQ get asked more than “I can haz Recon?”: “How do I get a job at Xbox?” Please note that I’m writing this from the angle of helping out someone who is still in college or very early in their career development, but I hope this serves of some use to anyone looking to get into Xbox regardless of professional experience.
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Xbox 360 Wireless Networking
Posted April 30, 2010 by Jon Caruana (SDE) – Jon
I'm a developer on the Xbox shell and platform team. My corner of the team tends towards the platform and is responsible for some of the lowest levels of the system including the kernel. (Shell is focused more around the user interface of the guide and dashboard.) That is what led us to working on the driver for the recently released Xbox 360 Wireless N Networking Adapter which added support for the new 802.11n standard. In this post I will try to clear up some of the confusion around wireless technologies and give some tips for improving your connection.
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Xbox LIVE Avatar Technology
Posted April 7, 2010 by Dan Kroymann (SDE) – Trango
Introduced nearly two years ago with the New Xbox Experience, the Xbox LIVE Avatars have quickly become a signature piece of the Xbox story. We’ve all seen them chatting to each other in your friends list, waving at you in the dashboard, wielding light sabers, driving remote control warthogs, or even rocking out as the front man for your band in Guitar Hero 5. Yet have you ever stopped to wonder what goes into making all of that possible? As more and more games incorporate avatars, both as playable characters and through unlockable clothing and props, now seems like a great time to take a peek inside the avatar system and the team that brought them to the Xbox.
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Xbox LIVE Parties
Posted March 23, 2010 by Eric Heutchy (SDE) - Jesiatha
Motivation
Xbox LIVE Parties was a new feature added in the New Xbox Experience, launched in 2008. Before that time, Xbox LIVE was a great place to play multiplayer games with your friends. However, as soon as you and your friends wanted to switch to a different experience, everything fell apart. The minute you quit your multiplayer session, you would lose voice communication. This meant that everyone would have to decide which game to launch and who would host the new game session prior to leaving the previous experience.
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It's Virtually Xbox LIVE
Posted March 11, 2010 by Raphael Mun (SDE) – Tennis
Ever wonder what it’s like to be an Xbox engineer working on new Xbox LIVE features? Of the number of behind-the-scenes challenges we try to tackle at Xbox LIVE, one that affects us every day is the ability for us to develop and test our work efficiently and independently without affecting the progress of our fellow developers. Being able to experiment and try out various ideas without having to worry about affecting other developers allows us the freedom to get creative with how the Xbox 360 connects and interacts with the Xbox LIVE services. This also enables us to help make sure our features are working correctly before releasing the bits to our production servers.
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Business Cards and Software Testing on the Xbox Platform
Posted February 24, 2010 by Sean Haneberg (SDET) - PointySwords
As far as business cards go, I’ll venture to say that they are moderately impressive. They have my name on them, a cool Xbox 360 logo, my Gamertag, my email address and other important information. The back of each card has a cool pattern or art from one of the more popular Xbox games.
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Would You Like a Side of MB with that Game Install?
Posted February 3, 2010 by Thomas Soemo (PM) – HSDPhantom
Today I am going to discuss the details of the packaging format for “Xbox 360 Games on Demand” and “Play from hard drive” features. The “Play from hard drive” feature allows you to install Xbox 360 games to your hard drive, increasing the game performance. “Xbox 360 Games on Demand”, launched in 2009, allows you to download full Xbox 360 games directly to your console without needing a disc.
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A Look Inside Netflix on the Xbox 360
Posted January 22, 2010 by Shaheen Gandhi (SDE) – Visigoth
We wanted to share with you some of the neater features of the latest release of our Netflix application and give some insight into how things work under the hood. Many of you provided a ton of feedback on the first version of Netflix, so we took that to heart while developing the next version as well as taking some of the cool work that Netflix did to further enhance the experience.
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Welcome to the New Blog Post
Posted January 13, 2010 by Laura Massey (SDET) – lollip0p
Happy New Year! Welcome to the new home for the Xbox Engineering Blog. This is a place where the Xbox development team will communicate directly with you. We’ll share information straight from the people that develop, test, manage, release, and maintain the Xbox 360 and its services. I am a part of this team as a software development engineer in test, working on community features such as friends and parties, and I am happy to introduce you to this new space.
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