It's too hard to find stuff on XBLA, says Microsoft [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

You know that sweet Ikea bookshelf you've been fawning over. It would go great in the family room, proudly displaying all of your favorite books and even that Precious Moments statue you pretend to like when your girlfriend stops by. It's functional, and makes things easy to find. But put a few thousand items on that same bookshelf and what you'd be left with is a colossal mess, something not unlike Microsoft's great, but equally cluttered Xbox Live.

Speaking to MTV Multiplayer, Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Xbox Live product management director, owned up to the service's organization ills. "I think that we are not...happy with the ability to find and discover content," he said, adding that that Microsoft "built Xbox Live Marketplace for a few hundred items and now we have 17,000 items."

It's something the company is hoping to correct, at least in part with its controversial decision to shelve under-performing Xbox Live Arcade releases, but Greenberg admits that Microsoft is still looking for a solution to make content on Xbox Live easier to track down. We've contacted our Joystiq mentalists, who are at this very moment are trying to project two simple words into the minds of XBL devs. Search. Bar.

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[Slate]

I can see where they're going with this, (Delisting titles) But they could just redesign the marketplace. That costs money though, And time.

[JunkTheMagicDragon]

yeah, xbla needs a redesign badly.

the 'what's new' section helps, but if you're searching for a particular title, the genre selections don't help much, so you're left with just trudging through the entire list.

the descriptions could use some work too. some are good; others are just the name of the game and the publisher.

and is it just me, or do thumbnails take forever to load? i have satellite broadband, so that lag may be the reason; just wondering what everyone else's experience was.

[carlcarlson]

I'd like to be able to scroll the descriptions manually instead of having to wait for them to do it automatically. It is way too slow.

[Melf]

I don't like how this bodes for developers looking to try something different. I wrote a rant on it here.

[djbeatmongrel]

they could just rip off the wii's market style, i think its pretty damn good

[Cryomancer]

I'd like to be able to scroll the descriptions manually instead of having to wait for them to do it automatically. It is way too slow.

This. There's a right stick on the controller, make it do something.