Slashdot Mirror
New Xbox Experience Goes Live
Today, Microsoft launched the New Xbox Experience for Xbox Live. The list of new features includes the streaming of TV shows and movies through Netflix, the ability to install games to the HDD, an avatar system, and the Community Games platform. The launch itself was shaky at first, but most issues have been smoothed out. Sony-owned Columbia Pictures immediately pulled their movie selection, though it may return when a licensing deal gets worked out. Halo 3 developer Bungie pointed out that not all games will run faster when installed to a HDD because of the way the games already interact with the drive.
The Blade system worked fine, having played with the new one for a little while I have to say it appear to blow goats, it's not particularly intuitive and it doesn't make brilliant use of screen real estate. The mii creation rip is reasonably well implemented though, I managed to make someone who looks remarkably like myself, which I've never managed on a wii.
It seems games already use the HD, if exist:
"In a post on the Bungie forums, engineer Mat Noguchi explains that the slower loading after a full HDD install is a direct result of how the game was designed to use the HDD in the first place. "When Halo 3 runs, if a HDD is present, we copy maps from the DVD to the utility partition on the HDD," says Noguchi. "And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition."
The problem is games that still try to use the harddisk ....again. For a PC game, this looks like really easy fix, but I have no idea for a console, as a console is locked down hardware ..for the user and the game dev.. I don't know.
-Woof woof woof!
I'm slightly embarassed to say it, but I really like the update.
I love the streaming videos more than I probably should. In fact, I'm going to say I love it for the exact reasons I play games on the console rather than the PC in the first place: I don't like messing around with the PC settings at all when I'm trying to entertain myself. The netflix streaming videos didn't work instantly on my PC and I never bothered with it again, on the console it worked immediately. Call that laziness if you want, I'll just turn around and call you something else.
I was entertained for about 10 minutes with making an avatar even though it was a blatant ripoff of the wii and somehow cheesier.
The running games on the hard drive on the other hand was a letdown, as Halo immediately told me I should not be running the game off the HDD. For offline games it still sounds like a good thing, as the disc drive on those things crap out frequently.
The new menu is really a tossup and not that important either way.
My god, someone at MS found the wonder of the alphabet!!!
Honestly, browsing to find DLC is now easy as you don't have to scroll through every game to find the game that you want, you just click on the letter then find the game. That, to me, is by far the NXE's best feature.
But I have to admit after 30mins or so of playing around, getting used to where everything had moved to and customising it it's growing on me.
The party system is a nice touch, being able to join a group voice chat with a bunch of friends then taking that group into whatever game you all decide to play is pretty cool. You can make parties private or public with the latter allowing you to jump into an existing party on your friends list, see what they're doing and join a game they may be playing.
Community games wasn't working right for me last night, but what I saw looked decent.
There's a few minor changes people have wanted for a while such as being able to remove zero achievement games such as trials you never went on to buy or games that turned out to be crap that would previously just clutter your achievements/played games list.
The avatar thing isn't bad, although it doesn't really seem to be overly useful yet, apparently the true extent of it's usefulness is still to come. Unfortunately my first attempt at creating an avatar ended up looking like Stalin, and the second like Hitler so I think we need more customization of them, I think this came down to there being a severe lack of shorter hairstyles, apparently Microsoft think 99% of the population have pony tails or just generally long hair whether male or female. Still I did come out with an avatar that looked fairly normal at the end of it but unfortunately as my friend pointed out you can't in fact have green skin.
It's certainly more responsive, some people complaining that now only one of the theme pics you bought gets used rather than one per blade and you can't choose which. I can see why this would be annoying for anyone that paid for a theme but also I can't help but snigger to myself that they were foolish enough to spend money on a theme in the first place.
Old gamerpics can still be used contrary to popular belief, you just have to change back to them after creating your avatar.
So right now to sum up, it's certainly not groundbreaking and it definitely doesn't do anything to make the experience worse. All the useful new features are nice, but nothing that couldn't have come in with the old dashboard whilst all the not-so useful new features such as avatar makes interesting fluff at least if nothing else. Effectively I think it's an attempt to reach out to female and casual gamers with this sort of stuff and the games that will use avatars which is fair enough and it doesn't really infringe on their hardcore gamer userbase either- they will at least appreciate the party system and just jump into game without ever really using the dashboard much. So yeah, good but not in any way groundbreaking, at least yet anyhow, maybe some of the up and coming avatar related stuff will be as cool as Microsoft are telling us or maybe it simply wont. As long as they don't try and make me run round with my avatar in Gears of War 2 or whatever I'll be happy!
Unfortunately I bought the Arcade version of the xbox a few weeks ago, so have a pitiful 256mb of memory to play with. With all my saved games and a bare minimum of downloaded content, I have nowhere near 128mb free to get the new front end.
I know, I know, I can just buy a bigger card or HDD... but it just bugs me that a) the update doesn't write over the existing front end, and b) Microsoft has known the release date for this for a long time, but still sold the Arcade with inadequate storage.
Everyone says they "stole" the whole Mii concept from Nintendo, but Nintendo hardly invented the idea of a customizable avatar for interacting with the world. I was disappointed at the absence of a Vault-tec jumpsuit (or any set of overalls I could pretend was a Vault-tec jumpsuit) in the outfit section. I guess I'll have to buy one if I want it that badly. Also, clothes lack customizable colour as far as I can see. If you choose a shirt, and it happens to be red, you can't just change it to blue, you have to choose a blue shirt.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Dude, Microsoft has been offering free memory cards and cheap hard drives to folks just like you: http://www.xboxstorageupgrade.com/ ... If your system's serial #/console id check out as "arcade," then MS will offer you a 20GB hard drive and 3 months of XBL Gold for $30. Not free, but not shabby, either.
There have been some reports of people having issues with missing sound when using HDMI. I have the same problem and would like to give a heads up to anyone who is going to upgrade or had the same bug appear. To my knowledge there's no sure fire way of solving the issue. A workaround is possible by using a different sound output.
xb0x
I was fully gung-ho as soon as I read I'd be able to run my 360 at my monitor's native resolution (1680x1050). Yes, it's letterboxed (very slightly), but I can finally play stuff at the proper aspect ratio, and without any excessive smoothing performed by the monitor itself.
Microsoft does give a lot more away.
A more direct comparison would be Zune updates.
Someone who bought the first Zune has all of the functionality of the current Zunes...because the updates are free.
How much does each OS X update cost - vs. a Windows update/service pack?
No reason to lie.
You do need to pay for the gold membership for that account if you want that extra set of features (can't speak for your household, but my ol' lady doesn't need it). You do get a free month when you make the account, though.
For arcade games, I didn't notice a problem... I just tested again with Doom (which I bought on my account), and I could play the full version from her account with no problems. I've heard of that getting screwy if you buy the game on one hard drive, replace said drive, and redownload the game, but I've never had to replace the drive so I don't know how it works.
The 360's DRM is very well-designed and not at all intrusive. It is set up in the best way possible to prevent piracy without bothering the end user. Content purchased on Marketplace can be used on your console, on an unlimited basis, by any user of that console. But if you sign into Xbox Live from ANY Xbox 360 console--no matter who owns it--you can still access all of the content you purchased on your account. (Other users of that console, however, can not.) Furthermore, if you buy a new console, send yours in for repair and get back a different one, etc. you can transfer all of your licenses to a different console. This can only be done once a year but it's a nice ability to have. This is way more lenient than the Wii's DRM, which locks all content to your console no matter what. You can't transfer licenses under any circumstances, and you can't back up your purchased content and play it on a different console. The PS3 uses two different DRM schemes dependent on the content you're buying. One is too lax (allows five installs on any consoles, with no protection against piracy of the other four installs), the other is too strict (only allows the purchaser to play; other users of the same console are locked out). Individual games like SingStar also have their own DRM schemes on top of that. So yes, I'll gladly take the 360's DRM any day.