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.

Comments

Great Update

[lucas teh geek]

I'd be really curious to know how they are able to release an update that adds some quite significant features without having to charge for the update. Every time Apple brings out new features on the iPhone, they charge iPod Touch owners for that same update claiming that the Sarbanes-Oxley act means they cant add the features for free (with some sort of contract loophole for the iphone ).

Perhaps Microsoft could let Apple know what their accountants are doing that Apple's cant figure out.

Re:I hated it.

[endemoniada]

Are you kidding? I would LOVE running around as bad-ass Marcus Fenix and blasting the crap out of all the whimpy new avatar-people. I would laugh all the way to hell :)

I've only played with the dashboard for half an hour, but I like it overall. It's fast, responsive and looks so much better than bland, 2D cardboard slides being pushed around on my screen.
The first thing I did was use the new "install game to harddrive" feature. Since I only have the 20GB harddrive, installing Gears of War 2 pretty much took up half the disk. Even so, I appreciated not having to listen to the DVD drive whine while playing.

I'm looking forward to trying out the party system as well, as soon as my lazy friends get their update and come online.

I hate it

[Spacelord]

I applied the update yesterday, even though I wasn't wild about the screenshots I had seen so far. The announcements by Microsoft did however promise I could still use the old blade interface if I wanted, so I thought: why not give it a try?

The install went fairly smoothly, taking only a few minutes. Then I had to create an avatar *ugh*, this was my first turn-off. I've never been a fan of avatar systems, but if they're going to make it mandatory they could at least have thrown in some models that don't look childish and cartoonish. So I just selected some random character, hoping I could switch it off later.

Then I played around with the interface. It is fairly easy to figure out, and I could quickly find most functions I was looking for, however I couldn't help but think that the blade interface felt simpler, more intuitive and more mature. In the blade system, if you were looking for something, you just had to select the right tab and everything was available from there. In the new system, you have to navigate in 2 "dimensions", first select the right channel, then look for the right tab, then go into the tab. The blade system also made better use of screen real estate. A lot of screen space is wasted now because they chose to work with some kind of 3D representation.

After using it for a while other things started to annoy me. I find the color scheme rather ugly for instance. It's all dull grey or migraine inducing green and selecting a different theme doesn't seem to change it. The sound effects got on my nerves too, instead of the cool muted *swish* sounds of the old blade system, the new sounds are much more *bling bling* and in your face (I don't know how else to describe it). Then, there's no way to get rid of your avatar. It's not like it does anything useful, it just stands there looking silly and generally being an eyesore.

Then I started looking for new features. Netflix doesn't work outside of the US, so I couldn't use that. The install to HDD option could be handy, but I don't find it essential. The loading times never really bothered me that much anyway, it's having to switch discs when you want to play a different game that bothers me. To my disappointment no new video or audio codecs have been added, so some divx and mp4 files still don't play, there's still no support for 5.1 surround sound in divx files and still no support for subtitles. As a media player, it has not become more useful to me.

So after a few hours of playing around with it, I decided that I didn't like it, and I started looking for the option to revert to the old style interface. Only, there wasn't one! Sure, when you push the big X button a menu pops up that looks remotely like the old blades, but it's not fullscreen and in no way a replacement interface. Now I feel cheated.

My conclusion is that Microsoft spent way too much time and effort trying to invent a completely new interface, which in many ways is worse than the old system, when they could have just offered an upgraded blade system and spent all the time and effort on real features that are actually useful.

Re:I hate it

[MMMDI]

Here's some food for thought. I've had my Xbox for a couple of years now, and in that time, both the woman of the house and my daughter have had no interest in it. Sure, they watch me play every now and then, but that was really the extent of it.

Yesterday, they saw me playing around with the avatar. My wife then wanted to make her own avatar, which led to her getting her own account on my box, which further led to her checking out the arcade and buying a couple of games ("I didn't know they had Pac-Man! Frogger! Whoa!"). My kid, not content with her own account on my box, now wants one for herself for Christmas.

Funny how that silly little system brings in the casual crowd, eh?

Re:I hate it

[Spacelord]

You weren't forced to make an Avatar. When I did my update, I wanted to get to test Netflix as quickly as possible, so I just pulled up the guide and exited out of the Avatar builder to the dashboard. Just like before with any other application.

That's not really very obvious is it? I didn't even know you could do that. There was just no obvious way to say "skip avatar creation".

The Avatars may be useless and silly, but really, an "eyesore"? Maybe you should make a better looking one?

You don't get it. I dislike the whole idea of having an avatar (why do I need one?), *and* I don't like the cartoonish cutesy style in which they are implemented, "fisher price" style as someone called it here. There is no way to change that, no matter which hairstyle or sunglasses you put on it. And even if I could make a better looking one it would be like having a better looking Clippy in Office, still pointless ;)

MSFT didn't promise that they were keeping the blades. They specifically said that the NXE was to replace the blade system and that the blades would only be preserved in the Guide system.

Well that's not how I interpreted it. I remember reading an interview by one of the MS guys who said that they were keeping the old interface around because there would always be people who would not dig the new interace.

I'm happy to finally have an OS that's responsive and allows me to scroll through and read descriptions for items quickly. I think you're a bit worked up over the idea of "change" so much that you can't see the improvements.

It's not that I'm worked up about the idea of "change", I just don't like this particular change. I do see the improvements, but they are minor things compared to the things that bug me about the new interface.

Re:I hate it

[TheBracket]

I've been in contact with MS support this morning over the dull greens. I'm partially red/green color blind, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to read some of the text on the green squares. Changing theme makes the background work, but I can't seem to figure out how to not have green boxes with white/yellow text. Since that's basically invisible to me (I had my wife read the text for me last night!), the update has rendered the interface unusable for me. :-(

(Thus far, MS support has been apologetic and promised to get back to me -we'll see how it turns out!)

Re:I hate it

[Blakey Rat]

Accessibility is FAR too neglected in the gaming field. I'm not color-blind myself, but I've sometimes felt like a heel playing against a couple of my best friends who are. In Starcraft, for example, the dots on the mini-map are virtually useless for color-blind gamers. And virtually every game uses Red/Green on the HUD to indicate friend or foe.

The really sad thing is that other groups at Microsoft have excellent accessibility features. Xbox 360 developers must not work very closely with them.

I hope they get you squared away.

Re:I hate it

[Anonymous Coward]

The way it works is thus:

When you purchase something from the Marketplace, the rights management tags it with two keys - one associated with that account, the other with the hardware key of the Xbox it was purchased on. You can then play/use that content with your account on any machine you actively log into XBL (say, carrying your gamertag account over to a friend's house and logging in there), or any other account on that particular machine can use the content (online or offline).

Re:I hated it.

[neokushan]

Right, next time a new version of Linux/Windows/MacOS comes out that you upgrade do, DON'T spend time looking around the interface or playing with the new features - take up a new profession, instead!

Re:Can't get it

[neokushan]

the update doesn't write over the existing front end

As a matter of fact, it does. The update comes in two parts - an 8Mb dash update and a 128Mb "content" update. The "content" update contains little more than the Avatars as far as I can tell, the dash update (which requires no extra space) contains everything else, including the interface. You can get by just fine with just this, but you wont be able to connect to live. Considering you only had 256Mb of storage, live was clearly never a priority to you, anyway.

Re:I just got done making my new Mii

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

No, Nintendo wasn't the first to use avatars. However, the ones they did make were fairly unique looking. Now Microsoft's look almost identical to them. If that's not ripping off the Mii, then I don't know what is.

Re:it's pants

[bigman2003]

After using NXE for a few hours, it was obvious that the entire system is just better. The navigation, the organization, the amount of information displayed....everything is better.

Despite what the first poster said, Arcade games are easier to get to. AND, you can remove demos/zero gamerscore games from your history. Just that alone is worth the download.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[ergo98]

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.

Halo was self-aware that it was running from the HDD? I had thought they'd sandboxed these things sufficiently to block that sort of storage awareness.

Though Microsoft has been very forthright with statements about the limited benefits of installing to the hard drive, honestly stating that load times will see little or no change (whether because the hard drive and it's bus is particularly slow, or the optical drive is very fast), however I ran out and stuck a hard disk drive on my so-cheap-I-had-to-buy-it (and have been amazingly impressed since. Despite generally being a Microsoft detractor, I am sold on this little box, and marvel what 3 year old technology can achieve graphically) Xbox Arcade-

• Your unit is a lot quieter, which is obvious immediately. Purportedly it runs cooler as well (which I haven't measured
• Your disc won't be gouged to hell if the unit is moved in any way, which is a known problem with the xbox 360. I accidentally moved mine (after it had sat for probably an hour doing "nothing", and I presumed was idle), to discover that it was still inexplicably spinning the GTA IV disc. Instantly the disc had its little polycarbonate guts eviscerated by the unforgiving head mechanism.
• Possible way to "save" broken discs? (see below)

My GTA IV is currently unusable, and I'm too lazy and irritated to send it cross-border to Ohio (with all packaging), and all of the customs shizzle, paying $7.50 to get the disc replaced. With this new HDD install functionality I'm going to try renting GTA IV, installing it to the HD, and see if my b0rked copy is sufficient for the minimal copy protection check it does at the outset. [Crossing Fingers]

Re:Go to the top of the class !

[Anonymous Coward]

The 360 Elite upscales dvd's right out of the box, which is fine for the vast majority of consumers. So you could say the 360 is close to the complete entertainment system. I don't think Blu-ray is going to be around very long, before something better comes out anyway, so I don't see the point in buying a Blu-ray player when I can upscale regular dvds and it still looks awesome.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[ergo98]

My guess is that performance and noise are only "fringe benefits" of this feature. The big deal (for microsoft) is probably that this will allow them to make multi-disk games.

Meant to comment on this.

Discs are going out very, very quickly. Microsoft and gamemakers have no interest in sharing profits with distributors and warehouses and fork lift drivers and then retailers, which is why there has been a massive (and logical) push for downloaded games. The fringe benefit in this case is enough for many to think "Gee, maybe I should get a hard drive", and the next step is for them to start buying games online.

Re:Duplicity: theres already a "utility parition"

[superstick58]

The noise issue is a definite draw. In fact, the update information from Microsoft explicitly states the reduced noise as being a direct benefit for copying to the hard drive. Probably the biggest impact. Plus... would running on HD lower heat usage due to not using the disc drive? Maybe it will improve product life.

Re:defectivebydesign

[orclevegam]

Well, yes and no. Although a human could potentially live for hundreds of years, doing so would lead either to much slower breeding cycles (and thus slower evolution), or massive overpopulation (even with out limited lifespans this is an issue). Although it's true that a longer lived human could contribute back more over their lifetime, it would also tend to cause the species as a whole to stagnate on a genetic level. From an evolutionary standpoint it makes sense to have shorter lifespans, although given our relative genetic stability at this point combined with our massive numbers a longer lifespan with a much slower and shorter breeding period would probably be preferable, sadly evolution doesn't work on the sort of time scales that would make that change naturally, before such a change would likely be obsolete.