"Sounds ambitious, it also sounds like it’s going to be a disaster."
 
That was my first thought when Microsoft Officially Announced that they were going to try to bring the E3 experience to all Xbox 360 owners during the Verizon Free Week. I sort of predicted they were going to do something like that, and Andy had (wisely) pointed out that bandwidth was going to be non-existent during that week.
 
Andy’s right of course. Try to download a game demo for a title that’s hot, and even with an excellent Internet connection, you’ll be lucky if you get it in 6 hours. Keeping this and my previous Memo to Sony in mind, I decided to give Microsoft some advice to help with that week of Videos and Demos and GamerPics (Oh my!)
 
When E3 hits, you are not only going to be burdened with your normal traffic, you are going to increase it, by your own estimations, 50%. This is going to cause a terrible strain on your network, made worse the minute a highly anticipated E3 demo becomes available on the Marketplace (In my case: Lost Planet.) Now your companies track record of decision making is not always the best, but I have noticed that when it comes to planning, you are usually at the top of your game.
 
So I have wondered how you are going to handle this amount of bandwidth usage during a week when you are trying to get people to splurge some dollars to stick with the service, and the answer came to me while driving to work this morning.
 
Avalanche.

Now I don’t know for sure if you are actually planning on doing this for that free week, but I would really consider doing it in the future. The Xbox 360 Live service has the benefit of being updated, and I imagine that while it wouldn’t help the burden of online gaming, it would alleviate the tremendous load you would get from downloading from the marketplace.
 
I hope you listen..
 
..what’s that?
 
You! In the back there say that again?

”Hawkes, what the FUCK are you talking about?”
 
Ohhh sorry! Yeah I guess I should explain.Back June of 2005, PC World did an article where Microsoft announced that “..labs in Cambridge, England, are developing a file-sharing technology that they say could make it easier to distribute big files such as films, television programs, and software applications to end users over the Internet.”

It was code named Avalanche, and it’s similar to things like BitTorrent. Another example of Microsoft taking a working technology and putting their spin on it, but that’s another editorial.

Anyway, it dawned on me, that with Microsoft writing the code, how easy would it be to implement this on Xbox Live, and to have conditions set such as to throttle down when the user is online gaming, or throttle up when the system is idle for x period of time. Considering the amount of work that went into the Xbox 360 version of the Live service, I imagine it would be pretty easy indeed. This would easily clear up the bandwidth issue, as once the first seed goes out, it’ll spread like wildfire across Xbox Live. It’ll also, as the article says, allow faster downloads for films, television programs and software applications.
 
Now then, call me crazy, but remember that Dashboard update from March, where everyone complained about what it was for, and Microsoft just said for “Future enhancements”. I wouldn’t at ALL be surprised if this was part of that future enhancement. Think about the genius of it. It’s something they probably setup so it can easily be turned on and off for testing. (And for all we know, they may have already quietly tested it out.) But during E3, when probably EVERY Xbox 360 will be trying to download trailers or demos, why not use the free week to stress it out at capacity? Under the most stressful condition possible at this point in the Xbox 360 cycle, and if there’s a problem, no problem, just shut it off again.

It would be the only viable way anyone would watch the E3 coverage that I imagine Microsoft is spending a fortune on producing. If you can’t get the video file from the Microsoft Press conference for 4 hours, most people will just give up, even if the greatest thing ever was rumored to have been shown there.

For the record, I have no inside information, I’ve spoken about this to no one, I’ve asked for no comments, this is just the opinion of someone in both the technology and gaming business making an observation, it is very likely I am wrong.
 
But if I am right, things are about to get a bit zippier on the Marketplace.
 
Even if I am wrong, and if I’m just adding A + 2, and getting 4 billion, I think Microsoft SHOULD look at utilizing this for Xbox Live. If it is coded well, it would hardly be noticed by the lay-person, and I doubt the hardcore would complain about faster downloads.
 
Besides, with Microsoft forging relationships with Movie Studios, and Record companies in an attempt to help prop up the Xbox Live service, why would they work on a Peer-to-Peer program for Windows, that could (and most likely would) get exploited to download illegal movies, music and software. Whereas if they put it on the Xbox, they have the thing that Microsoft, the Movie studios and record companies love the most, control over their products.
 
I believe that Avalanche was meant for the Xbox 360 from day one, and now they are ready to bring it out. Or at least, I believe they SHOULD bring it out.
 
So that’s my advice..
 
..excuse me?
 
You again? What now!
 
“What about Downloads in the background? What about…”
 
Ok, just STOP there. Downloads in the background, and all the other nitpicks that have been brought up about the Dashboard have already been discussed to death, and believe me Microsoft is probably already working on them. I’m not here to list all the things that everyone has complained about, I just wanted to bring up this one little piece, that I think will turn a great service, into an exceptional one. Also I can’t recall it ever being brought up in discussion before so: here it is!
 
So THAT’S my advice…
 
..Oh WHAT NOW?
 
“Sounds more like your opinion than advice!”
 
Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither, maybe someone whispered it in my ear, maybe I took too much drugs in College. Who the hell knows these days.
 
If it’s something that’s not being implemented, my advice to Microsoft would be: Implement it!
 
If Microsoft is doing something like this, what can I say except:
 
You heard it here first!