Xbox 360 Video and Social Networking Update Analysis

The wait is over for the social features update to the Xbox 360.

On Tuesday, Microsoft unleashed it's anticipated dashboard overhaul connecting users to Facebook, Twitter and more that provide acess to friends beyond your Xbox Live buddies, along with other new features including streaming videos and music. And that's just the top of the iceberg.

So how do these features stack up against other Xbox 360 features? Well, I can say that the social features are a nice addition to the overall feature set, but they're hardly a deal-breaker, and not as much a necessity as one might think.

Let's start first with Facebook. As the current poster-child of social networking, Facebook attracts a sizable crowd on your average personal computer. By extending this connectivity to your Xbox (download required), Microsoft is thereby extending that reach to your living room. Well, almost is more like it. There's no support for Facebook applications, and posting your status messages and commenting on your friend's posts is a pain compared to using your computer unless you have the 360 messenger kit (which is likely to be supported but cannot be verified on my end as I do not have one to test). What you can do is keep track of the status of your friend(s) while also keeping tabs on any of your buddies who also use Xbox Live to connect with others (in a specially designated space, of course). Twitter is also supported in a separate application and connects you to tweets from your own profile as well as from others via search or topic selection (including phrases and hashtags). But again, you should use a 360 messaging kit to enter text for your own tweets (as long as it is possible, if you see above I cannot test this).

As for features beyond social networking, music and video improvements are also part of this update. Gone are the old in-dashboard marketplace browsers; instead, you have to download a Zune-branded video/movie/music downloading application. (For those who don't know, Zune is Microsoft's long-troubled music and video competitor to Apple's iTunes; hence I see this primarilly as a last-ditch attempt to save the Zune brand more than anything else.) Fortunately, aside from having to download yet another application it works the same as the old video store did (and as an added bonus, your previous videos are automatically transitioned to the new service whith no further action necessary). As a security precaution the Zune application uses your HDCP-enabled output device where available, so I cannot use screen capture equipment to show you this (even if I had any which unfortunately I don't so just take my word for it). Downloading works just as good as it did before (tested by fetching an episode of the shortform gaming sitcom The Guild) and previews can be fetched if you so wish (tested with an episode of the detective show Monk). Finally, the new Last.fm application (also requiring download) allows you to listen to themed music feeds based on your favorite artists and genres, similar to Pandora.

It should be noted that these features require gold-card membership on your Xbox Live account (silver members are out of luck, unfortunately). But do any of these features really need mention on Xbox Live? Aside from Last.fm and the Zune Marketplace, these updates are hardly worth the upgrade (and for the record, if you downloaded the most recent Xbox system update a few weeks ago, you don't have to update again just to download and use these new features). Yet even though I have my doubts about the necessity of these upgrades, it will be interesting to hear your opinions so let me know what you think in the comments.