I found the free "My Xbox LIVE" application from Microsoft on the iPad's App Store today and thought that I should give it a download. It's basically the simplified version of the 360's dashboard where you can access the console's featured videos, your friend's list and their real time status, as well as your game history. You can edit your avatar and you can even send messages from the app, providing of course that you are a LIVE Gold member. The cool thing here is that all the avatars presented in the app are drawn with real-time 3D models, which is actually cooler to look at than the faux 3D found on the xbox.com site. It's a really silky smooth app but then something hit me. Why is it that all the presentation of the 360 dashboard whether as an app, or on the website, or through Game for Windows LIVE better than the actual dashboard of the console itself? Sure you do get to do more on the actual 360 dashboard but it's also sometimes clunky and slow. I guess the only answer to this may have something to do with the free members of the 360 community. Since those who don't pay for LIVE Gold also get to access the dashboard, Microsoft just doesn't want to make that too much of a premium, silky-smooth experience because then, well, they may have to charge everyone who plays on the console.
This app is kind of worthless to non-Gold members since you can't communicate with your friends.
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