I’ve been playing around with the Dashboard Update and overall I’m really happy with the enhancements. It is nice to be able to chat with your friends from your computer while they are on Xbox Live, but it already seems like there are some areas they could have improved before releasing the instant messaging features.

First, they should let you use any Messenger email address you want and not just the one tied to your gamertag. For me this is not a big issue as they are one in the same, but for a lot of people on my friends list they are not the same address. This would not be that big of a deal if they would let you change the email address tied to your gamertag, but they will not let you do that either. So, hopefully, your IM email address is the same as the one tied to your gamertag otherwise your just out of luck. Major Nelson posted that they are looking at a way to address this, but for now you’re stuck.

Second, they need a way to add and remove instant messenger contacts on the Xbox 360. Someone really dropped the ball on this one. If you’re going to try and get me to do everything (watch TV, listen to music, chat, look at pictures) on my Xbox 360 that is fine, but don’t make it so I have to use my computer to setup stuff first. Whose idea was it to make it so I had to leave my couch and go to my computer to setup my IM contacts? Whoever that was please smack them on the back of the head for me.

Finally, they need to expand support to include voice and video chatting. Windows Live Messenger supports both and so does the 360 so I don’t see why they did not include that. Yes, the computer user needs to have a microphone and/or a web cam, but a lot of people already do. On the Xbox 360 side everyone pretty much has a headset and the Vision Camera is growing in popularity as more games are being released that support it. I’m guessing whoever decided not to support video and voice chatting over IM is the same person who thought it was a good idea to allow us to see our messages on Xbox.com, but not let us listen to our voice messages on there. I realize that support for voice and video chatting over the messenger interface would have taken more work and back end systems to support it, but if you’re going to add a feature don’t just add part of it. Add the whole thing and do it well, or just don’t bother doing it at all.