Sydney, 17:00 local - Following Alan Bowman’s presentation it was Major Nelson’s turn to speech about Xbox 360 and Xbox Live in particular.

Larry Hryb, as he is officially known when speaking as Xbox Live Director of Programming, started by sharing some statistics of the Australian launch. Since launch the most popular games being played were:

1. Oblivion
2. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
3. Perfect Dark Zero

The average time being spent on Oblivion was 19.6 hours per gamer, a huge amount of time considering the console hasn’t even been out here for a month yet. Honorable mentions go to Hexic HD on 7th position and very surprisingly Media Center on 9th. The Dashboard was also exceedingly popular, although no distinction is made between idle and active time on there and the fact that background downloading is not yet in the dashboard may also pollute its popularity.

Speaking of background downloading, Larry confirmed that it’s working (yay!) and will be shipping soon. Main decisions left to be made are whether downloads will only work during dashboard navigation or also during games, since this may affect the online experience for gamers without 8Mbit wide open lines. Also in the vein of GUI functionality the Xbox team is working hard to make the Marketplace easier to navigate, but no specifics were given on how they are going to achieve this or when that update is to be expected (between the lines: expect both updates in the upcoming Spring dashboard update in May or June or so).

Some people in the audience complained about Marketplace content often being region locked. Larry is adamant that this is not Microsoft’s fault but most of the time related to regional legislation and the like. As a practical example, in Germany it is not allowed to use red blood in video games, and as such a demo of a violent game has to be specifically prepared for that country, and in France and Germany it is not allowed to publicly show swastika’s, as such possibly requiring an adapted version of the Call of Duty 2 demo. Often content is released to the majority of the countries, and then if possible and viable adapted to the minority with strict regulations. On retail games Larry repeats that region locking is entirely optional and up to the publisher: the Xbox 360 provides the functionality, but it is up to the publisher and developer to decide whether to use it, often for the same reasons as for content.

From left to right: our friendly host Cesar Menendez from Gamerscore Blog,
Curry with Major Nelson and our lovely host Marilyn Ishak

On the subject of Xbox Live Arcade, Larry reconfirms that it is a huge success and that they are looking hard to extend the directory. A major problem here is that it’s often hard to trace the owners of the IP, such as for example Loderunner which they would’ve loved to have, but the guy who owns the rights to the game is nowhere to be found. What they are looking at are bringing more complex games to XBLA so that for example simple RPG’s could also be distributed via this medium. Problem here could be the 50Mb size limit that is imposed on XBLA game certification. Larry winced in agony at my suggestion that the 50Mb limit was just like Bethesda’s fabled horse armor a matter of finding the sweet-spot limit which would work, but the wincing was more about the words ‘horse armor’ about which he is still being stalked than the suggestion itself which he flatout denied by stating the 50Mb limit was chosen so you can take XBLA games with you on a 64Mb memory unit.

Finally Larry was also queried on the subject of a web browser appearing for Xbox 360. He immediately responded by asking what it would be used for. The main use would in practice be content related to the game currently playing, such as FAQ’s or walkthroughs. These they’d much rather integrate into the interface itself next to the rest of the game information than allow you to browse for them via a wide-open webbrowser that is practically unusable via a controller and a huge security risk to the system. Larry also points out that they’ve left space on the dashboard interface for an extra blade on purpose, hinting towards future applications such as these. My question about whether this isn’t reserved for the TV blade was answered by “don’t know”, a welcome alternative to Microsoft’s usual “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation”

I’m now heading out for dinner with the guys, and will be back later perhaps to write about our hands-on experience with Street Fighter II and Cloning Clyde, and the plans for tomorrow’s water ballooning. Perhaps I’ll also have sorted some of my photos at the time, but until then you can find some of Cesar’s photos at his Gamerscore Blog entry. A little teaser to close the post: