Some Consumer Research
July 6th, 2008So as part of the work I’m doing right now, I’d like to pose a question to the readership: user experiences, whose is the best and why? I’m interested in hearing opinions comparing the PS3, 360, and Wii user experience, which might include comments around: user interface, intuitiveness, feature set, and/or general problems. I’m not specifically talking about content - just how well you feel that each of the consoles meets your needs as a consumer.
Thoughts around access to non-gaming media in particular (trailers, videos, etc.) are particularly valuable, but anything would be helpful. Thanks!
Posted in Geoff, Non-Gaming |
July 7th, 2008 at 6:36 am
I have to admit I’m annoyed that the Wii doesn’t have a DVD player.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
The fact that the Wii doesn’t have a DVD player doesn’t annoy me at all, although I suppose if for some reason I didn’t already have a DVD player (or several devices that play DVDs), it might annoy me.
The PS3’s lack of IR functionality is ridiculous, considering that at least part of the selling point for the console was the Blu-Ray player. Even before HD-DVD came out, Microsoft had enough foresight to include IR input for their console, allowing me to use a universal remote to not only turn on the console, but to control it as well (which is, obviously, most useful when watching movies, but still comes in handy when navigating menus if you don’t feel like getting out a controller).
July 7th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
As far as non-game interface goes, I absolutely adore the pointer interface on the Wii-mote. As much as I enjoy my 360, I really feel like I’m using an old fashioned input method for navigating menus and such. With the Wii pointer, I feel like I’m actually making contact with the interface, which makes it feel much more intuitive. With the 360, it still feels good, but it feels like a layer of abstraction exists that in some way detracts from the experience. Now, if more 3rd parties could just take advantage of that Wii interface feeling for in-game controls.
As far as the feature set goes. I’ll break it into 2 categories: Online and Local.
The 360 online functionality is obviously an order of magnitude better than the Wii. The integration of friends list, the games you’ve played and your gamerscore is fantastic and creates a metagame of interaction with that data.
I won’t bother to mention the advertisements within the blades simply because they are abhorrent in a paid service and should be destroyed.
On the other hand, the offline aspects of the interface of the 360 is somewhat weak. I think the blades are not particularly intuitive and navigating about requires some degree of memorization as to what goes where. However, I very much appreciate it’s uniformity of theme. I also appreciate the limited degree to which it can be personalized.
The Wii on the other hand is simpler and more intuitive although it lacks any real personalization (outside of you Mii), and I am disappointed in the lack of theme unity. For example, the “back” button might be in the top right on the Wii shop channel (just an example, not sure if it’s true or not) while the same function in a different channel might be at the bottom left and use a different icon. WTF?
Overall, I prefer the Wii user interface (mostly due to the IR functions and the simplicity), but appreciate the additional content available within the 360 interface.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The fact that the Wii Interface just uses a million channels that can’t be organized into “folders” or “directories” really hurts it, in my opinion. To begin with, it’s not entirely clear that there are multiple pages of channels. Secondly, if you have a lot of games, then you can run out of channels (not a problem for me, but others have been complaining about it). Also, it’s not even entirely clear that the main game channel is in the upper left corner, as it looks like every other channel. That seems sort of confusing for a first time user, but maybe not after you learn it once.
Sure, you can move everything around, but that only marginally helps with organizing. It’d be nice if I could have a different folder, say, for each platform.
July 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am
“It’d be nice if I could have a different folder, say, for each platform.”
I agree. I would really like to be able to do that.
However, I’m glad they don’t create the folders for you, because burying content in arbitrary folders/blades/channels makes things harder to find.
I would like it if you could dynamically assign a size to the channels so you could choose how many you display on screen.