It's too hard to find stuff on XBLA, says Microsoft

And?
Is that a reason to get rid of games?
It says more about your User Interface than anything...

How about 5 star ranking system from users?
Then they don't even have to do any work? Or do they think we're all a bunch of 12 year olds who'll just put ms pac man at the top?

I've got an idea... enable mouse and keyboard support! While you're at it, enable it for games too.

dear microsoft, what about a better browsing option and a decent
interface? do you think you will able to do so, in your freetime, when you are not trying to conquest the world with your operation system and your wide net of control features.
thanks, we do appreciate a lot the vision of the world you have built for us.

The marketplace isn't the only place where options aren't organized intuitively. Even though the 360 dashboard is popular, it's a big mess in itself, along with the xbox guide. I doubt they would change the whole blade system, but sometimes finding what you are looking for takes a bit too long.

So the marketplace needs to be updated for reorganization and they blame the content?

This is where the PlayStation Store actually has it right over Live. Sorted by year, selected alphabetical ranges, genre, top downloads, etc.

I really liked the Blade system, Dashboard, Guide, and Marketplace. It was easy to use, somewhat attractive (Glass FTW), and not overly cumbersome and time consuming. Of course, over time through various updates, explosions of available content, limited HDD and crap HDD file-system / management, and the 73 Arcade titles I've downloaded and kept the passable interface has become more and more a pain to use, and exposed as the truly convoluted mess of visual software architecture it truly is.

I never put much thought into Sony's XMB when I only had a PSP. All I did was play games on the thing, and I did so UMD only with a 2GB Memory Stick. It was a decent interface (especially for a handheld!), but it didn't serve a purpose when all I did was play UMD games.

In comes the PlayStation 3, with it's wealth of downloadable games akin to XBLA and a store model akin to Marketplace and all of a sudden I'm noticing the nice little features that make the XMB a brilliant, if not beautiful interface. I like organizing my items the way I want (one week I'll have all PSN games in one folder, the next I'll tag them with genres and organize them that way, separating PSP content and PSX ISOs), being able to navigate on a single plane with smooth control, and a "marketplace" (now much better than the original, thanks for that!) that is both organized and attractive to boot. It's all just easy to use, for anyone.

I really want a navigable interface, that isn't a pain to use to at least hit the 360. I'm sick and tired of chugging through it to accomplish simple tasks... and the loading! My god, the loading drives me nuts! I was so disappointed the spring update didn't happen and bring with it another improvement to the dashboard / marketplace / guide. Maybe this fall? I certainly hope so.

Meh, At least it has no affect on my Lost Planet Colonies playtime. And conversely, In Game XMB please. :P

End of Rant.

XBL is just a website with a gimped input system.

Microsoft, I really want to like you - you built a great console with fun games, but

-when I cant sort titles by release date
-when I have to know (or futilely guess) a games' Genre
-when there is absolutely no user-management
-when you blame content for not selling itself

from a website you built,

I start to hate you again for being a big stupid monopoly that cant get anything right except suck money out of people with threats and promises.

Maybe if this was 1994, those excuses would be appropriate, but there way too many examples of websites that sell stuff and an intern can tell you what a customer wants and likes.

I cant believe how reactive they are. The only reason I can see for the way things are is that MS corporate looks at lifetime losses of XBOX division and says "I am not giving you any more money for anything, until you make back the ocean of money you lost." So they have no resources to anticipate things, just react.

its just sad.

XBLA and the dashboard are really easy to use. Stop bitching for no *real reason SDF. The blades work just fine (unless you're mentally challenged of course) and I wouldn't have it any other way. Especially not PSN's, which looks like an intern designed over the weekend. I'm glad Sony re-did the PStore now redo the XMB.

I personally haven't been on the PSN store since they redesigned it (just shows you how often I use my PlayStation) but from the pictures, it looks a lot more usable than XBLM, which is kind of a mess. I think MS seriously needs to sit a large group of people down and do some sort of usability focus group to help them clean up the interface. I mean sure, I can find stuff when I need it, but let's say my parents (who also have a 360) want to download a movie or a game that isn't the ad-featured game of the week or whatever.

If MS really wants to start tapping the larger console market (the one that the Wii is doing so well in) they need to make it so that the average person can easily take advantage of one of the 360's strongest features, DLC. A redesign with a competant sorting system would go a long way to making the Xbox a lot more user-friendly.

After getting used to Steam and then getting a 360 I was surprised at how bad the organization is.

Can I search for games by price range because I only want to see 400 point games? No. Can I get a list of game content add ons to see if there's anything for a game I own without going through each game individually? No. Can I search for a specific title, the most basic of all search functions? No. Every fricken time I've got to go into the list of games and scroll down a short bit at a time so that it doesn't jump 3 letters ahead and I miss the game I was looking for.

Once you've got the item bought it's fine, but I've never seen such a poor system to buy content.

Microsoft should provide a discrete list of tags that users can apply to XBLA games.

We've been telling you this for years, say consumers.

How about letting people who actually buy DLC be able to rate it. That way you eliminate people who trash things without playing them. It's not fool proof, but I think over time the ratings would be worth something because a good game will stick out. And yeah, there needs to be a search function.

I'm with pretty much everybody here on this one. With a piece of software with this much content (thousands of items as they say) removing content is not an option, you just have to go with it and make a smarter interface. The social elements (rating, tagging) would help but even a proper indexed search would be easy as hell, i mean it's only decade old technology!

Hey M$! Your interface sucks:

1. I can never find anything I am looking for on XBLA.
2. And when I do it even shows region locked content.
3. Once purchased, I have to wade through ad clogged blades on my own dashboard to find them.

They just need a full reboot of their interface.

Its not just the interface design but its also the speed. I use my 360 the most by far but I jsut love how I can quickly go to anything I want in the ps3 xmb. They really have to get rid of that bloated, sluggish ui.

your interface sucks!

thats why im not renewing my subscription. too hard to find anything.

anyway im done with it.

Wow, this reeks of incompetence. I don't normally bash MS but they don't need to look far. Amazon.com probably sells at least 2 million unique items on their store. Just organize XBL Marketplace the way Amazon has arranged their website.

elindiano, you don't need to be subscribed to purchase anything on Xbox Live Marketplace nor does having a subscription give you any perks on Marketplace. Your pants are on fire!

Listen, they simply need more search options and more ways to vary search results. Much like a shopping web site ... you can see results from most > least, vice versa. I think that would help a lot.

ROFL!!!!

This is just the tip of the Iceberg. None of their crap scales well. Good thing you paid all that subscription money for a cluttered mess.

17,000 - 50 = 16,950. Oh yeah, I can see how stuff is going to be much easier to find. It is nice though that they acknowledge that something needs to change on the interface.

I agree with everyone here, and MS at the same time.

The problem isn't the content sucks (some of certainly does), but that you can't find the good stuff.

It's a UI problem. The UI of XBox Live tries to be simple by having few controls per blade actually is a bit of a mess. MS are no dopes though, they surely will figure out how to fix it.

sort by release date? anyone?

Microsoft, I will sort your lists out FOR FREE. I swear, why is a good sorting system so impossible for these guys to envision? Arcade should not mean every single game except Xbox Originals. Jeeze, hire some humans or something.

It would be so wonderful if MS put XBLA online. That way I can browse the title on a website, purchase and queue up downloads just like Bungie has for Halo 3. This was all mention in an article not long ago by someone who used to work for Lionhead. Talking about the pitfalls of the shelving system and Portal viewing vs. Content aggregators.

Search Bar might involve too much typing.

I'd rather have easily selectable filters instead...like year, top X item, rating (for movies/tv), etc.

Also, a tagging system would be cool.