One of the major problems with downloading gamer pictures and dashboard themes through the Xbox Live Marketplace–aside from their pricetag–is the fact that there is no way to preview these items before dishing out your money. A new website, DashboardThemes.com is looking to circumvent this issue by providing a way to preview themes without having to pay a thing. The site features any relevant information to the theme, such as price, availability, and release date in addition to screenshots of each of the Xbox 360’s blades, as they are displayed with your chosen theme. Additionally, users can cast their opinion as to whether or not they like each theme, as well as leave comments on them.
Hopefully, community-based efforts such as this will help to relay Xbox 360 owners’ woes to Microsoft more efficiently than other avenues, which usually entail nothing more than a single complaint in the form of an e-mail. While the 360 offers a variety of excellent services, several of them are handicapped by minor annoyances such as this, which seemingly could be easily fixed. Every Xbox Live Arcade game has a mandated trial version available for download, but other XBL features have been slow to adopt similar systems since the 360 was released over a year ago.
