Xbox 360 - Hardware Impressions

Unwrapping the 360 was a long awaited moment. I extracted each plastic item from its bag carefully, and lined them up on my computer desk for easy installation. My first surprise was the power cable, which has a AC/DC converter on it about the size of the original Xbox. Ok, so it wasn’t quite that big, but bigger than a GameCube for sure. The converter is also located half-way down the cord, so it’s pretty inconvenient to find a place for it. Mine ended up dangling ¾ of the way down the back of my entertainment center because the cord simply wasn’t long enough to reach the floor. Installation itself wasn’t too difficult, with only three wires to plug into the back; Ethernet, power and audio/video. I especially liked that the component cable is completely separated from the audio cables, leaving you with a lot of room to reach your T.V. and your audio equipment without a stretch.

Visually the design of the 360 is very pleasing. It’s definitely the classiest item on my entertainment center. According to the “making of” video included on the 360’s hard drive, the concave design is intended to give the feeling of an inhale, as in inhaling before the plunge. After looking at it squint-eyed for a moment, I guess you could get the impression that the 360 was preparing to leap off your entertainment center. However, other than causing you to move your 360 to the bottom shelf, I don’t really see how this adds to the design aesthetic. I couldn’t tell you about the face-plates for the 360 at this point. Most of the retail stores I looked at had only the plate that looks exactly the same as the no-plate version.

Turning on the 360

Now, I consider myself to be a pretty intelligent guy, so I don’t lightly mention that I had to check the instruction manual to figure out how to get my wireless controller to work. I was pretty excited about the whole turning on from the controller feature, but it turns out you really have to hold the power button down for a while before it turns on. I assume this is to prevent accidental turn-ons. However, it had me baffled for quite a while. Once I got it figured out, I noticed that the green ring on the controller seemed to be chatting with the green light on the 360, blinking at each other at different speeds until finally settling on lighting up just the upper left quadrant. Any new controller you turn on in the vicinity of the 360 will negotiate in this fashion and connect to the next available channel. We haven’t tried this with multiple 360s in the same room yet to see how the wireless controllers will handle LAN parties, but I will let you know how that works out.

The GUI

The graphical user interface (GUI) on the Xbox 360 is for the most part, very intuitive and simple. Navigation is accomplished simply by pressing right or left on your control stick to reach different folders. The visual design matches the concave curves of the hardware perfectly, and all transitions are smoothly animated. The 360 started me out at 480p (640×480) resolution by default when using the high definition cables. My first goal was to change up to 720p (1280×720). This was accomplished by heading over to the system folder, and navigating down to video settings. It took all of 3 seconds to find it.

Once in 720p the GUI really begins to shine. I began to notice the subtle gradients and shading that make the functional elements pop out. Also, there is a nice use of shadows to highlight your currently selected menu item. Nothing is too cluttered looking or too sparse. The dev team put a ton of work into this GUI. Now, if we could only get them to do the same for Microsoft Windows.

My adventures in the 360 GUI were not all a bed of roses. My first problem popped up when trying to discover how to change the skin. I checked through every setting in the system folder, and simply could not find it. Finally, a couple days later, I stumbled across the menu sitting under my Xbox Live settings, a strange place to hide the skin options. Once discovered, the skins do a good job of changing the feel of the GUI without damaging the readability too much. Default skins are included, and extra skins are also available for purchase via marketplace.

Another problem I had with the GUI is the way it organizes videos. Some of the content is stored under videos, and some are stored under trailers. This depends on where you downloaded the content from and not its length. Because of this I stumbled a bit when trying to show my wife the new Red vs. Blue trailer. Not a big deal, but an annoying trait for sure.

Audio

I had quite an adventure getting the streaming audio to work on my network. I still have a lot of Windows 2000 machines laying around for work purposes, and I was quick to discover that the Windows Media Connect 2.0 software does not work with Windows 2000. However, after transferring some MP3s to an XP machine, the setup was relatively painless. You can get the Media Connect software from Windows Update, but all you pirates are out of luck, as the software requires you to pass a Genuine Advantage check before you can download it.

After setting up Media Connect, don’t forget to grant access to your Xbox 360 via the control panel on your PC. After getting everything working, I headed on over to the 360 music player with much excitement for the Jeff Minter designed playable visualizations. I can report with much glee that the visualizations are worth all of the hype they’ve gotten, especially with the high definition turned on.

Although the Xbox 360 media player does offer a wide array of features, including the ability to browse by artist, album, or genre, it is missing a couple things that keep it from being a perfect experience. There is no way to select more than one song at once when creating a playlist. Also, a search feature is sadly lacking. Those of us with large music collections are better off creating the playlists on a PC then simply streaming only the songs we want to the 360.

Even with a few stumbling blocks, I was still quickly able to have Cowboy Bebop, Tom Waits, and the Katamari Damancy OST playing behind my 360 gaming sessions. The Xbox media player can be popped up at any time during a 360 game by pressing the giant glowing green x on your controller. Your own music seamlessly replaces the current game soundtrack, even streaming from a local PC. Unfortunately, the Xbox media player is not available while playing original Xbox games.

It’s also important to note that the surround sound support on the 360 is flawless. Project Gotham Racing sounds superb in 5.1. Also your streaming MP3s play in surround sound as well. Classy.

Video

The 360 purports to be fully able to play HD video up to 1080i. Unfortunately no such videos are available for download at this point. The downloaded videos available from marketplace vary in quality considerably. The videos included on the 360 hard disk look fantastic, especially the “making of” video. The worst looking video is the Red vs. Blue trailer, which looks very blurry at 480p resolution.

My biggest beef with the 360 at this point is the crippled ability to stream video from a PC. The functionality to stream video is available in the Media Connect 2.0 software, but its not supported by the 360. There is even already a program to convert you current PC videos to the 360 format called Videora. Unfortunately, the only way you’ll be streaming video to your 360 is if you own the Windows Media Center Edition or the upcoming Windows Vista. Crappy. Our only hope is that some third party developer will step up with a replacement tool to activate the functionality that should have been there in the first place.

Another small problem with the 360 is its DVD playback. Although it works well enough, the hardware de-interlacing has some small glitches in it. These are especially noticeable as wiggly lines appearing around bright objects when panning across scenes. It would also have been nice to have some color balancing options for optimal configuration. Hence, the 360 won’t be replacing anybody’s enhanced definition DVD player anytime soon.

Backwards Compatibility

I am unhappy to report that the backwards compatibility on the 360 is a hit or miss affair especially at 720p. Although the 360 is capable of rendering original Xbox games at 720p, I found that many of the games I own that are on the compatibility list are letterboxed down to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Some other games, like Amped, are not letterboxed, but suffer from extraordinarily bad framerates at 720p. This means that if you want to play your original games on a high def TV, you’ll be switching back and forth between resolutions often.

On the other hand, some games benefit greatly from the higher resolutions and full screen anti-aliasing (removing jagged lines). Halo 2, for instance, looks incredible on the 360. It’s almost a new game, with details popping out that I have never seen on the original Xbox. Crimson skies also looks really nice with anti-aliasing. Overall however, this is a big let down for me. I was really looking forward to playing games like Prince of Persia at 720p. Imagine my disappointment at the squished down letterboxed version that appeared before my eyes.

So, How Do the Games Look?

After playing Project Gotham Racing on the 360 for a few days, I can vouch with absolute certainty for the power of the 360 graphics. My favorite feature is the standard 4x anti-aliasing, which means you’ll have much more difficulty picking out any jagged lines between polygons on the 360. Absolutely stunning visuals, framerates smooth as glass, and some features that simply aren’t possible on any other platform, including high-end PCs. Try turning on 4x anti-aliasing on a PC game approaching 720p resolutions, and you’ll see what I mean.

One thing that really sticks out for me is the High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting in Project Gotham Racing. This is an effect which simulates the reaction of your pupil to light-levels by rapidly altering the light content of an entire scene. HDR is an effect which frequently brings $300 PC video cards stuttering to a halt in demos like Half-Life 2 Lost Coast, or games like Far Cry PC. However, I’m happy to report that the 360 handles HDR without a hitch, and subtly enough that you might not even notice it.

I do have one complaint in the visual depart, and this is varying framerates on 360 games between 480p and 720p resolution. I’ve noticed this on only one game so far, and that’s Need for Speed on the 360. The framerate drops considerably in 720p mode. Lets hope it is an isolated incident, and not the norm for future 360 games.

Xbox Live Arcade

The included Bejeweled clone on the 360 hard disk is a slick looking game, probably better than its many flash-based Internet counterparts. If they can sell additional games for a low enough price, it may be the beginnings of an uncaptured market. The casual gamer probably lives in the same house as the hardcore guy that ran out and purchased the 360. One glaringly obvious omission is that the Xbox Live Arcade games don’t seem to be playable with the remote, which includes most of the same buttons as the controllers. However, playing Flash style arcade games in the living room may be just the thing to tap into the casual market.

Overall

Overall, I think the 360 launch has gone like gangbusters (aside from massive initial shortages). The 360 is a slick package, with almost everything working pretty well from the get-go. The transition of Xbox Live to the 360 has also gone seamlessly so far, no small feat. The lack of streaming video from ordinary PCs is a big letdown, but not a deal breaker. As we progress from the launching console into the launch games, tune back in to The Game Chair for progressive reviews of some 360 titles.

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