Dylan Greene dot com

While I'm very excited about the next generation XBOX, the XBOX 360, I hate the official web site at XBOX360.com. I'm boycotting the web site until they fix these problems:

1. It asks us what content, country, and language we want every time we go to the site. It should just default to our user's computer's language setting and not waste our time.
2. One you choose a language it opens another window. Use the same window, what was wrong with it?
3. The new window is full screen. Why full screen? So I can't check email, pause my mp3 player, or do anything else but look at the 360 site? That's fairly arrogant. Never make the browser full screen - in fact never change the size of the browser. I liked the size it was, thank you very much.
4. While the site loads there is no progress bar with % complete. Is it going to take 10 seconds or 20 minutes? Who knows? It's anyones guess - welcome to download roulette!
5. Before the site even finishes downloading the sound begins. Sound you can't turn off because it doesn't give you an obvious way to lower the volume. After the site loads you do get a fairly hidden graphic (look to the right) that will mute the sound. But I just want to make it softer. Why not?
6. Okay, now to the actual content. This is what we see:
   
   
   A few seconds later this is what it looks like:
   
   
   The reason everything is positioned different is because everything on the page is rotating (360, get it?). Nothing is labeled, even if you move your mouse over the various circles, dots, and rectangles. So while there might be lots of cool stuff on this site, finding it is too much work for me to bother with.
7. The final problem effects all sites that ridicule themselves to using Flash for their entire content: there's no way for me to give you a link to any particular bit of information on that site. So even if I did find something cool, the only way I could show you is via a screen shot. I couldn't even tell you how to get to the page, because there's no labels on the floating circle things.

I really hope more thought is going into the design of the XBOX 360. This site is a huge disappointment, especially for a marketing site trying build interest months before the product will be available.

What I would like to see:

1. A blog written by people on the XBOX hardware, software, marketing, and/or developer relations staff. One entry a day at most, once a week at least, like what Bungie.net did leading up to Halo 2. It must have an RSS feed, other sites must be able to link direct to the blog entries, and should include updates such as links to the newest 360 videos and announcements. This will get people to go to XBOX360.com on a regular basis and will get other sites to link to the 360 site more frequently.
2. Lots of pictures of the new hardware. I found rotating zoomable images on XBOX360.com but I have no idea how to find them again. More of that. (Downloadable backgrounds with these images must be the size of our desktops - so 1600x1200 is expected, not 800x600 like the site current has.)
3. Lots of techie info for the geeks. Lots. From memory bandwidth to RF frequency.
4. Explain, in non-geek terms, what people need to enjoy the XBOX 360 the fullest. Don't just say "HDTV" - say what inputs need to be available, because if people plug their XBOX 360 to their $3000 HDTV using S-Video, their XBOX 360 won't be doing HD. Give links to example products at Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba, etc with photos of which connectors to use. Kids need to know what to tell their parents to start saving for and justify getting a system with multiple component or HDMI inputs.
5. Link to trusted often-updated community web sites like TeamXBOX.com and XBOX employee web sites like MajorNelson.com.

I wrote this post directing to XBOX360.com, but a lot of this advice can be applied to almost any commercial web site.