Week 12 - X-Box 360 Menu

A popular gift this holiday season will no doubt be the X-box 360, so, in the spirit of Christmas, let's breakdown the X-Box 360 main menu interface. There are two main menus in the 360's interface, the main interface itself as well as the mini-menu that shows up when you hit the "XBOX" button in the middle of the controller. The main menu is split up between the different main areas: Spotlight, My Xbox, Game Marketplace, Video Marketplace, Music Marketplace, My Friends, Inside Xbox, My Community, and Welcome. The marketplaces are split up into easy to understand categories and people understand where they should go for certain media resources. The Community page and My Friends tab are for interacting with other people, Spotlight highlights new games or features to download, and My Xbox is your current game, settings, achievements and other statistics. All these are easy to understand groupings.

The sub-menu is organized as well, but is much less graphical appealing and has a few less categories. It has most of the same information, but is accessed in a different manner. At times, it is more useful than the main menu because there aren't all those pretty graphics that can sometimes get in the way, but at the same time, some things are more easily understood when you can see a picture and that is what the main menu provides. All in all, it could be said to come down to a debate between functionality and "shininess", but in the end, I think having both menus is the best way to go.