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Inside the New Xbox Experience

Posted by Soulskill on from the more-and-better dept.

Eurogamer has an in-depth look at the new Xbox Experience, which is coming on November 19th. They discuss the new interface and features, and their reaction is generally positive, citing graphical improvements, smooth file management, and better chat functionality. "The Guide is also your access point to the new Party system, where you can gather eight of your friends together in a voice-chat channel and move the group between games. You don't even have to be doing the same thing: you can just chat along regardless. And because it's a service layer, it automatically works with all your existing games. Gears of War treats it like it's always been there. Instead of inviting a player, you invite the group; instead of ending a session and having to reassemble for another, you stay together. You can open it up to friends or set it to be invite-only, and while it's one of NXE's quieter additions, it's also its most authoritative statement: this is Microsoft saying, 'We figured we might need to do something like this, so we made sure we could.'"

7 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Install to hard drive? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The *one* feature I was interested in, install to hard disk, they only mentioned in passing, saying that "We haven't had long enough with NXE to gauge how much of an improvement installation is over playing off the disc, but we'll take a look in the coming weeks."

    Thanks, that was the whole reason I read the stupid article.

    1. Re:Install to hard drive? by Have+Blue · · Score: 5, Informative

      According to other reports load times are slightly improved, operating noise is significantly decreased, and a rip takes 6-10 minutes. You also need to put the original disk in the drive to play an installed game (so don't think you can just fill it with games from friends or Gamefly for free).

    2. Re:Install to hard drive? by lucas+teh+geek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      thank you for saving me and many others from wasting our time too. I think that's the only think most people are interested in. I guess the netflix streaming might interest some where it's available, but to the rest of the world this update is basically avatars and installing to disk; and no one really gives a shit about avatars

      --
      TIAEAE!
  2. Re:Hrm... by philspear · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You know, I'm not going to take off points because a company is stealing a good idea and using it themselves rather than a worse idea. First of all, there are courts that take care of that. Second, innovation is good, but if one is clearly better than the other one, the worse one should go extinct. The next generation of consoles are probably all going to have motion controls, and there will be people who complain about ripping off the wii, but if we consumers get better games, better controls, better start menus, better ANYTHING, then I say rip off more.

  3. Please... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...just tell me I don't *have* to create, use, or look at one of those retarded-looking avatars.

    Other than this, it really feels like the driving force behind this is that they want more space for advertising.

    Jerry Johnson insisted that a central tenet of the New Xbox Experience is "serendipitous discovery of content" - in other words, giving you stuff to do rather than expecting you to fire up the box with a plan already in mind - but after a few hours' use it's hard to shake the feeling that, among the more useful rows of panels showcasing the latest and most popular downloads, the new channels are simply a new wave of adverts that push beyond the old dashboard's capacity.

    I'm going to throw you a warning, Microsoft, and you can take this from someone who has enjoyed using your consoles so far. You start barraging your best customers with adverts, even more than you're already doing (which is bordering on obnoxious already), and you're going to risk killing the lead you currently enjoy with your online services.
       

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    1. Re:Please... by arkhan_jg · · Score: 3, Informative

      FTA, I think you're going to be disappointed on both counts I'm afraid. The first thing you have to do is create an avatar which is then used prominently on the 'my xbox' and 'friends' pages - the friends list is now replaced by a collection of avatars.

      From the sounds of it, the advertising is going to get even worse and more pushy and in-your-face. I wish there was a 'xbox live' proxy we could install that would filter out the ad images from the rest of the content. Hmm. I might try forcing it through a proxy anyway to see what it's doing, but I bet it's done over https.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
  4. Clarification of party chat by wazzzup · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The new party chat seems great but at 8 people it seems limited. How does it interact when you play games with more than 8 people. Does it work concurrently with whatever chat implementation the game provides or is it an either/or prospect - game chat or group chat but not both?

    HDD install will be welcome and Netflix streaming will be welcome if/when they improve the awful selection available for instant viewing.

    The avatar friends list thing does not seem practical. Hopefully there will be sorting by online status as an option to the alphabetic order thing.

    BTW, if you are 30+ or so and prefer not playing with timmies and griefers but with folks your age with lives, jobs and families check out GeezerGamers. For me, it totally changed XBL from painful to fun.