My XBOX is not a computer!

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One year ago, december 2010, my family got a PS3 and an XBOX. I was very impressed with the hardware. We like the popular dancing game for the Kinect, and we needed our Katamari fix. Oh, you kooky prince.

But when we got everything home, the joy of receiving new gear I’d been waiting so long for was abruptly severed. Trepidation set in. I braced myself for what was to come. You see, I am a programmer, and this is my story. An update story.

Of course, the XBOX is a computer. It is a network connected computer, and that means that its system software can be updated. And that means that its software will be updated. I understand this. But for the love of Nyquist, please keep the frequency of updates low.

Sure enough, the first thing both these things greeted me with was a cheerful “Welcome! Would you like to update?”

No! No, I don’t want to update. I want to turn the bloody thing on, play a few games, and get on with my life. The whole point of console gaming is simplicity and accessibility. If I wanted complexity, I would spend the requisite 2 months researching which CPU, RAM, and graphics card to get, wind up with a water-cooled Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (with unlocked multiplier), 15 MB of shared L3 cache, six execution cores capable of executing 12 threads concurrently, a 3.3 GHz base clock that scales as high as 3.9 GHz via Turbo Boost, a 130 W TDP, add twin GeForce GTX 570s, or some other such nonsense, and then spend 5 hours patching windows, and scrupulously monitoring the version of DirectX on my machine.

The sad part is that the preceding paragraph is in no way hyperbole.

I just want to play Pac Man.

Now, 2011 is almost over. I wanted to try a few indie games and see if I could find some worth spending time with. I haven’t interacted with the thing in a few weeks

As I belly up to the bar, I am greeted warmly. “How about a nice update, friend?”

You know me so well, XBOX. I press the green button. The barkeep starts pouring. He twitches in a disturbing way. 5 minutes later, he’s still pouring.

“You can STOP, now!” I yell. The XBOX can’t hear me. It reboots again. Now it’s installing ANOTHER UPDATE. My finger edges toward the red button. My wife can sense my frustration from the kitchen “No, Don’t cancel it,” she says. I find something else to do.

Later that same year, the install completes. Psych! You thought you would get off that easily? The download finished. Now it’s updating. I go back to not playing with the XBOX.

Weeks later, there are no more cats left on the Internet left to click on, and I look up. After waking up the controller, I flip through the new interface.

“They … they’ve m-made it better!” I manage to blurt out. Then the ads load. “Nope – it’s worse!”

“Well, at least the complaining is the same.” Thank you, Dear.

Hey, there’s headers up at the top – neat! Wait, pressing right highlights each submenu. I have to click right 12 times to get to the games submenu! (Thankfully, I later figured out that you can use the top level menus by pressing up. From home, that’s only 5 clicks to get from home to “My Games”, but still an amazing 11 clicks to get from “Home” to Indie games). What’s more, Indie Games is not even visible at all times. it’s in a square that is currently a slideshow/animated billboard with Transformers and Fruit Ninja Kinect as its neighbours (congrats, guys!))

After that, a mere 3 more clicks will get you to a screen where you can view the games.

So much for keeping the signal to noise ratio high. This thing is not a game console. It is an advertising media kiosk that just happens to play video games as a sheer afterthought.

The PS3 is worse in some ways. Forced updates? Compromised servers? The PSN debacle?

OK, my rage is used up for this post. Now you know what I think of “modern” gaming consoles.

P.S. I found some really neat games eventually!