Lady Geek

I bought an Xbox a few months ago and I was quite excited at the prospect of having it in my living room. My husband enthused that it was ‘something for the living room to watch films on’ which would replace our DVD player’ – this seemed like an an interesting prospect. Being a film aficionado, having lots of new films/TV shows and video on demand is very appealing.

The first thing I noticed about the Xbox Marketplace was the selection of films are very limited and not that appealing to women. Its mainly the hardcore men titles with the occasional “chick-flick” (Miss Congeniality) thrown in for good measure. The selection is designed to appeal to adolescent boys – there’s a surplus of action films and high-octane thrillers. The movie store was a dissapointment, but what about all the other content that Microsoft sold us on?

There’s a TV and short-films section which mainly consists of pop videos and the kid’s show “Viva Piniata”. These are the same pop videos you can watch for free on any of the Freeview music channels, except in the Xbox marketplace you pay a few pounds for the same content you can get for free on TV or via YouTube.

The value of these official downloads is further diluted by XBox marketplace’s vague licensing: Downloaded movies must be watched within a week of the original download or else the movie becomes unplayable. Likewise a move which has been started must be finished within 24 hours before it expires and becomes unplayable. Does the same restriction that applies to a Will Smith movie also apply to a Britney pop video? Who knows – I wasnt going to waste money trying to find out!

On the subject of payment once again the Xbox marketplace is confusing: Microsoft have decided to invent their own currency which is neither Pounds, Dollars nor any other familiar currency but “Microsoft Points” whose rate is arbitrarily set by Microsoft. This means we never really know how much an Xbox marketplace costs until we check the latest points to pounds exchange rate. How much money is two-hundred Microsoft points? I’ve absolutely no idea and I doubt that most Xbox 360 owners do either.

So far, I haven’t downloaded a single paid-for film – that’s only partly because Microsoft’s commercial media proposition is a failure. The other reason is that the XBox 360 can play XviD and DivX files – these files can be downloaded from a huge selection without payment and then kept forever (or until I decide to delete it). The XBox 360 is such a superb movie player that nobody who knows this would ever be tempted to waste money on the sub-standard good in the Xbox Marketplace.

This is a massive missed financial opportunity for Microsoft. The Lady Geeks I spoke to were similarly impressed by the XBox 360′s media player abilities but felt let down by the range and restrictions of the marketplace. Ultimately YouTube and illegal downloads offered a better value proposition than Microsoft’s half-hearted offering. Microsoft should offer a wider selection of movies which appeal to more than just the traditional adolescent male gamer, plus they should price their downloads in real money rather than confusing points. These are all modest changes (compared to the technical difficulty of building the system in the first place) that would dramatically extend the Xbox 360′s appeal to women.