Microsoft will soon be adding the ability to use Facebook and Twitter on their Xbox 360 game console, bringing social media to the living room. We got access to a preview of this update and have taken a little test drive of these two new programs.
First up is Facebook:
The interface in Facebook is set up to mimic the look and feel of the rest of the Xbox, offering a very seamless experience. Most everything available on the website is available here, you can read your news feed, update your status, and browse your friend’s profiles. Browsing photo albums is excellent here. There is access to both you and your friend’s photo albums, creating slide-shows for display is easy and looks good on the big screen. You can even add comments to individual photos. Microsoft also added a way to check if your Facebook friends are on Xbox live and vice-versa. It looks to be a great way to add more people to either list.
The full Facebook experience isn’t available, of course. There is no way to add Facebook apps, so there is no way to play farming or mafia games on xbox just yet. There also doesn’t appear to be any way to upload photos, nor is the chat function available. And, while you can update your status and make comments, using the onscreen keyboard with a controller is a chore. The only remedies are to either buy a relatively expensive chatpad accessory for your controller, or plug in a USB keyboard, which may not be viable in a living room type setting.
Next up is Twitter:
The Xbox Twitter client is a very pretty but ultimately very basic. You can easily tweet your status and access the tweets of those you follow. There is also the ability to check out trending topics. Microsoft didn’t add the ability to automate posts about your gaming status through the Twitter client. I know some people would have enjoyed that, but I am quite grateful that they didn’t add it. I find automated tweets quite annoying.
It’s an interesting Twitter client, however it has one major flaw which pretty much ruins the twitter experience, at least for me. The Xbox doesn’t have a built in web browser, so any links to websites or pictures are worthless. That is a huge part of using Twitter for a lot of people, and without it, the Twitter client just feels lacking.
And the conclusion:
Despite their flaws, I really did enjoy using both clients. Their interfaces are designed to work well on a TV screen. Just hooking up a computer to one doesn’t work as well, since websites weren’t designed to be viewed from multiple feet away. The Facebook app is quite fun to use, and I enjoyed viewing photo albums on it better than I do on the main Facebook website. The Twitter app is simple, but looks good and it provides a way to update my status from the couch. That is great, because I feel that people need to know when I’m sitting on the couch, it’s very important. Overall, I’d say these are both very solid additions to the Xbox experience.