This article alludes to the bigger issue at hand: just how shitty the 360 dashboard has become. It utterly fails now from both a design aesthetic and as an advertising tool. The first point of that statement requires no elaboration. Everyone with eyes knows its a clusterfuck. It's buckshot advertising...just load a bunch of shit into the barrel and fire it at our audience. They're sure to buy one of those things.

In my case this has caused a thousand yard stare of sorts. I've built up a resistance to the constant bombardment of bullshit, and so now I don't pay attention to any of it.

On a related note, this will be my last time renewing Gold. And I don't even pay 60 for it...I'm one of those smart monkeys that figured out you can get it cheaper on Amazon. Even $35 a year is too much for this bloatware.

@patrickklepek sai

Microsoft should be applauded for crafting an interface that, while rightfully scrutinized in recent revisions, can prove useful to the user and creator, and help expose them to one another. That’s not as easy to do on Wii or PlayStation 3, and having to open a store will always mean some never see it. It's an important distinction.

I know there are some differences between the XMB layouts in the US and EU (when you've shown the XMB in Quicklooks there's always an ad scroller below the system clock, which I've rarely seen here), but my EU PS3 automatically opens an "What's New" window when I boot it up, which is an 18 tile grid, where the first row (3 tiles) generally is a big SCEE announcement or recent release, the second row is your three most recently played games, and the next 12 tiles are ad spaces with a selection of PlayStation store releases, both games and media, as well as some PlayStation Plus content.

Isn't that what you're talking about? It doesn't require you to open the store to see some of the new releases, though the What's New thing can be disabled in system preferences (which of course about the same number of people who would never have opened the PlayStation Store would probably never look for in the settings either).

The current contents of the What's New page is a row about the new PS3 slim, ads for Little Big Planet Vita, Machinarium, Sound Shapes, Jet Set Radio, some Pink music video at Vidzone and some stuff about the PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection.

@Tesla said:

This article alludes to the bigger issue at hand: just how shitty the 360 dashboard has become. It utterly fails now from both a design aesthetic and as an advertising tool. The first point of that statement requires no elaboration. Everyone with eyes knows its a clusterfuck. It's buckshot advertising...just load a bunch of shit into the barrel and fire it at our audience. They're sure to buy one of those things.

In my case this has caused a thousand yard stare of sorts. I've built up a resistance to the constant bombardment of bullshit, and so now I don't pay attention to any of it.

On a related note, this will be my last time renewing Gold. And I don't even pay 60 for it...I'm one of those smart monkeys that figured out you can get it cheaper on Amazon. Even $35 a year is too much for this bloatware.

Explain how it is a bad design aesthetic. What are some examples of better design in your opinion?

Many feel it is a failure of aesthetics because they are seeing things that are undesirable to them. It would be like jumping into Giantbomb.com and seeing articles about "10 delicious cake recipes" and "How to unjam your garbage disposal" all over it. It isn't that you don't want that information but in that context it is annoying. You'd wonder what they were doing right?

@MattSchwabby: It is the jack of all trades, master of none. There is a little bit of everything on that dashboard. The problem with trying to please everyone, however, is that you end up pleasing no one.

The game you have in the tray is given no more prominence than the 5 or 6 other ads that are on the Home tab. There are ads on every. single. tab. For Silver members I can understand a bit more of an advertising presence. But when my experience is this inundated with ads I have to ask "what am I paying for?"

None of this would be a problem if so much of what is on there wasn't useless trash. I want to play video games and watch Netflix. They would do well to *gasp* take a page from Sony's XMB and limit the ads to the store front for Gold members. That would be a nice start.

Bottom line, it does not look cool. It looks like an interactive billboard. Marketing department loves the design, consumer does not.

Good article. Thanks for bringing this up as a full feature, Patrick.

huh. I haven't seen any mention that: maybe it was intentional?

Marketing can be a sort of black magic (or a giant war with many battles). Maybe some marketing guy was curious how an indie game would sell based on reviews and word of mouth, separate from front page promotion to the masses. the best way to gauge this would be to give word of mouth a few days before you drop the ad.

When Zero Punctuation videos pop up on twitter and facebook at different times, hours after the video debuted on the site, I assume it's an experiment in gauging visitor traffic. Seeing which push delivered the most eyeballs, each time. (I know it could be incompetence, or a way to stagger traffic so the site doesn't crash. but in this modern world of massive marketing power, I tend towards thinking Marketing was experimenting with something).

The 360 dash if far from perfect these days but I really disagree with you on this Patrick, I think the vote thing is much more important to be on the home blade because otherwise you wouldn't know or expect it to be on there. I check the games tab every few days to see whats new and if I need something to play I have a dig around, download a couple of trials to see if I like any of them. This game got the main slot in the games section and I don't think anyone not willing or bothered enough to click across 3 or so tabs to the games is going to download anything so putting it on the home blade wouldn't have helped it much more. I think the home blade is the best place for ads if we have to have them, I like that I have a place (the games blade) where all the stuff I'm interested on for Xbox is together, I don't do movies or music on my Xbox so I can ignore them parts.

@Tesla said:

@MattSchwabby: It is the jack of all trades, master of none. There is a little bit of everything on that dashboard. The problem with trying to please everyone, however, is that you end up pleasing no one.

The game you have in the tray is given no more prominence than the 5 or 6 other ads that are on the Home tab. There are ads on every. single. tab. For Silver members I can understand a bit more of an advertising presence. But when my experience is this inundated with ads I have to ask "what am I paying for?"

None of this would be a problem if so much of what is on there wasn't useless trash. I want to play video games and watch Netflix. They would do well to *gasp* take a page from Sony's XMB and limit the ads to the store front for Gold members. That would be a nice start.

Bottom line, it does not look cool. It looks like an interactive billboard. Marketing department loves the design, consumer does not.

Ahh ok. I misunderstood. I thought you were actually talking about the aesthetic qualities of the dashboard, not the content. Yeah if ads bug you then I can see why you wouldn't like the dashboard. Aesthetically speaking, it is very well designed.

@EXTomar said:

Many feel it is a failure of aesthetics because they are seeing things that are undesirable to them. It would be like jumping into Giantbomb.com and seeing articles about "10 delicious cake recipes" and "How to unjam your garbage disposal" all over it. It isn't that you don't want that information but in that context it is annoying. You'd wonder what they were doing right?

Funny you mention that. Lately, I have noticed some ads below giantbomb articles that aren't video game related when I'm not logged in.

All of this could be fixed if you could customise your dashboard completely, but Microsoft won't do that because then you wouldn't have ads in your face on every portion of the bar. I think the only two spaced that don't, in my beta version, is the friends tab and the settings tab.

@MattSchwabby: Yes, there was just an ad for dove soap in front of a video. We know gamers don't bathe so wtf is that doing here?

Man, I really like Patrick as a person and agree with his opinions more times than not, but this article has numerous, dumb mistake typos that I feel should've been caught in editing. I know these types of comments are nit-picky and shouldn't bother me, however, it honestly takes away from the legitimacy of an otherwise very thoughtful observational editorial.

Wow, looking at the pictures, the difference between those pictures and how the dashboard looks where I live is huge.

First of all I have two ads on the right side instead of four, and I have never had an ad this isn't for either a game for the 360 or a movie on the 360 service. And I think the only movie ad I have seen was for Halo: Reach...

For a pay service it does have an obscene amount of ads.

@runnah555 said:

For a pay service it does have an obscene amount of ads.

Yeah for real. I pay almost ten times as much for my television service and there are NO ads on that. Wait...

@Terramagi said:

Oh boo-fucking-hoo, your pet game didn't sell very well and isn't going to get ported to other platforms because of it (and the fact that Microsoft owns the property). Normal people just deal with it, as opposed to trying to guilt people into maneuvering through 5 menus to buy a game that clearly nobody cares about.

It's coming to Steam. Eat some crow.

@MattSchwabby said:

@runnah555 said:

For a pay service it does have an obscene amount of ads.

Yeah for real. I pay almost ten times as much for my television service and there are NO ads on that. Wait...

Touche`

Well said Patrick. With that being said I need to actually go buy Mark of the Ninja.

@runnah555: Wait until you see Windows 8! The store is almost front page and is nothing but ads. fun stuff..... not really

The more I read about XBOX live the more I'm happy that I packed my XBOX 360 away in favour of my PS3. I know I'm missing out on games and what have you but with Steam and the like I already have too many games *eyes Backloggery list with guilt*

But who actually navigates to the games tab to learn about new content on Xbox Live? I don’t. Do you?

Yes, I do. And I do it every week to see what's new. I do the same on PSN.

It's a habit I picked up when the services launched and it continues to this day.

I used to love xbox live. I used to think the service I was paying for meant I had better server connection in online games, a higher support rate for DLC , digital games and anything that had some connected to live element. Now I feel like I am paying my subscription fees to find out how amazing JCVD thinks Coors light beer is, or why BT broadband is far more superior to play my online games with (even though my orange broadband runs from the same exchange in my town and is a fraction of the price). Like I said I used to love xbox live. Now I just feel like its whore who got tricked into a false sense of security. I am still waiting for the "it will never happen again" statement, but I know its coming!

@EXTomar said:

Many feel it is a failure of aesthetics because they are seeing things that are undesirable to them. It would be like jumping into Giantbomb.com and seeing articles about "10 delicious cake recipes" and "How to unjam your garbage disposal" all over it. It isn't that you don't want that information but in that context it is annoying. You'd wonder what they were doing right?

hahahahaha. That is gloriously epic. Lost it at the garbage disposal bit.