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

Duplicity: theres already a "utility parition"

[Tei]

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.

Re:Duplicity: theres already a "utility parition"

[CambodiaSam]

I gave this a try with Call of Duty 4. After installing it to the HD the most noticeable difference was not with performance, but that the jet engine noise of the DVD reader was gone.

That improvement alone is worth it for me. Has anyone tried installing GTA4 to the HD? That's a game that might have a significant improvement in performance.

defectivebydesign

[robvangelder]

I'm so sick of this tag showing up under each microsoft article.
we're at 3 comments posted, and already the tag exists.

either installed by an alliance of hardcore slashdotters, or by the admins themselves.
the preferences bug prevents hiding tags. it feeds the conspiracy theorist in me.

either way, it smacks of the behaviour politicians employ just before losing an election.

Re:defectivebydesign

[MBraynard]

Tags on slashdot are non-functional. They are like the new joke, the new 'from the xxx dept' line.

Re:defectivebydesign

[elrous0]

If we're going to start slapping that label on everything that has any DRM in it, we had might as well just make it appear by default on every story on /. There is very little software, media, or hardware released today that DOESN'T have some form of DRM attached.

Re:defectivebydesign

[yyr]

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.

New features rock.

[Frac O Mac]

Quite a few of them should have been implemented long ago but if nothing else, this makes the xbox just that much better. Its not mentioned in the summary but the new party system is awesome; I can chat with all my friends at the same time even if someone has to leave and come back, and we don't even have to go through all the menus. While this update may not be too newsworthy for many out there, for people like me who play their 360 far too much (left 4 dead ftw atm!) this is a huge increase in overall functionality.

Re:it's pants

[Frac O Mac]

The old blade system has been turned into the new guide menu, just with all the useless extras stripped out. While I myself don't like having to relearn where everything is, I think its an improvement overall.

I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[philspear]

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.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[fahrvergnugen]

Pros:
+Netflix streaming video works like a charm.
+Avatars have potential and are reasonably customizable, very similar to the Mii.
+It's great to see the party system extended beyond COD4 / Halo 3.
+Playing from HDD instead of from CD will certainly cut down on wear & tear.
+In-game dashboard is much nicer.

Cons:
-We've gone from 5 tabs to 50+ screens. It's crap.
-The menu defaults to the "showcase" channel, which advertises Microsoft's newest games. This means that Microsoft, not content with getting us to pay $300+ for a console and $50 / year for Live, feels the need to advertise to us every time we go to the dashboard.
-Old themes port very poorly, stretched across the background in awkward ways.
-Many links to premium content have been pushed to the front page.
-"Autodownload" feature for the Arcade releases is gone.
-Haven't fixed the glaring file management bugs - it's not possible to do something like, say, delete 150 old Oblivion saves to reclaim disk space while keeping 5 of them without pressing 4 buttons for each individual savegame. Not a problem until you realize they're over a megabyte apiece, and on a 20gb hard disk this adds up fast.

On the whole I hate it. The ui is completely cluttered now, but the defaulting to advertisements behavior and the up-front sells for premium content are a dealbreaker. I'm changing my 360's default behavior to "boot what's in the drive" from "default to dashboard" and I'm never looking back.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[Anonymous Coward]

Cons:
-The menu defaults to the "showcase" channel, which advertises Microsoft's newest games. This means that Microsoft, not content with getting us to pay $300+ for a console and $50 / year for Live, feels the need to advertise to us every time we go to the dashboard.

Exactly what I thought, until I realised that to start a game, the button presses have gone from something like "down-down-down-down-down A" to "up A". Ok, not a huge difference, but it all feels so much smoother - *and* it either logs you into Live earlier, or it doesn't reset the menus when it logs you in, which changes it from "down-down-down-down dammit down-down-down-down-down A" to "up A".

Or have I lost you all? ;-)

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[EvilIdler]

The showcase channel can be switched off. I did that soon after not making an avatard.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[neokushan]

No, that's the "welcome" channel, two completely different things.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[dhavleak]

+It's great to see the party system extended beyond COD4 / Halo 3.

The party system always did extend beyond these games (to most games in fact). The party system in NXE is different. You can be in a party with some friends, but doing different things (playing a game, watching a movie, etc). You can switch to the party channel if you wish to only communicate with people in your party, or the game channel if you want to chat with the people you're playing with. So if you want to play COD4 but you're tired of dealing with obnoxious gamers, you can first start a party with your friends, and then play COD4, and stay on the party channel -- no need to deal with obnoxious ppl. Same for any game, in NXE now.

-We've gone from 5 tabs to 50+ screens. It's crap.

Why compare tabs to screens? We've gone from 5 tabs to 6 channels. Panning left/right in a channel is like scrolling up/down in a tab.

-The menu defaults to the "showcase" channel, which advertises Microsoft's newest games. This means that Microsoft, not content with getting us to pay $300+ for a console and $50 / year for Live, feels the need to advertise to us every time we go to the dashboard.

Turn off the Showcase channel :). It's in the settings somewhere.

-Old themes port very poorly, stretched across the background in awkward ways.

Hrm.. I didn't have that experience. I did see the wallpapers being obscured below the horizon (no idea what the correct term is) though. Considering the magnitude of the upgrade, I'm hardly concerned about this though. I do agree it's irritating if you've actually purchased a theme, for it to not be as pervasive as it was earlier.

-Haven't fixed the glaring file management bugs - it's not possible to do something like, say, delete 150 old Oblivion saves to reclaim disk space while keeping 5 of them without pressing 4 buttons for each individual savegame. Not a problem until you realize they're over a megabyte apiece, and on a 20gb hard disk this adds up fast.

Sounds like an issue with Oblivion rather than NXE. If Oblivion allows you to create so many game saves, Oblivion should offer a good UI for cleaning up it's junk.

On the whole I hate it.

I'm so surprised that anyone can actually hate it! The old blades are just one button away at all times, and they've not lost any functionality, and they've only gotten zippier. And it doesn't have ads. So you have everything you want, a single button away, and wonderful eye candy on the other hand (you gotta admit it -- NXE is gorgeous). Best of both worlds! Not to mention, the sight of a bunch of avatars standing in a group (because they're in a party) is pretty cool. Very cool that you can just click on that group to see party options. And that for people who you game with regularly online you'll actually be able to recognize the avatars at a glance and get an idea of who's in the party -- rather than having to read a dry spreadsheet-looking list of friends. And from the cover-art, you know what the party is doing too. Super-cool.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[Have Blue]

The auto-download feature is going to be replaced with "remote download"- you will be able to go onto Xbox.com and select things for download later, and they will automatically start the next time you turn the console on.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[AlexMax2742]

-We've gone from 5 tabs to 50+ screens. It's crap.

No, you've gone from 5 tabs to 5 main menu items, it's only that instead of going left to right it goes up and down.

-The menu defaults to the "showcase" channel, which advertises Microsoft's newest games. This means that Microsoft, not content with getting us to pay $300+ for a console and $50 / year for Live, feels the need to advertise to us every time we go to the dashboard.

Are you new to 360's in general? The OXE was cluttered with advertisements in more traditional form, banner ads. And I'm pretty sure the default menu item was the game I had in my DVD drive when I turned it on from a fresh start last night.

-Old themes port very poorly, stretched across the background in awkward ways.

Paid themes were for suckers anyway, they usually looked awful even in the old system. Is the NXE not a new enough theme for you?

-Haven't fixed the glaring file management bugs - it's not possible to do something like, say, delete 150 old Oblivion saves to reclaim disk space while keeping 5 of them without pressing 4 buttons for each individual savegame. Not a problem until you realize they're over a megabyte apiece, and on a 20gb hard disk this adds up fast.

I might be mad except for the fact that one of my biggest issues with the old system, the way it loaded the list of arcade games you had installed, has in fact been 100% fixed. Personally, I play my games far more often than I delete saves, so I can understand if their engineers put priority on different things (and avoid playing awful games like Oblivion period).

Overall, I'm a huge fan of the NXE because it makes the interface a good deal more responsive. The old blade system seemed to always be one or two steps behind you and I was never a big fan of its stylings, and now it feels quite polished and slick.

Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so

[nschubach]

Sounds like an issue with Oblivion rather than NXE. If Oblivion allows you to create so many game saves, Oblivion should offer a good UI for cleaning up it's junk.

That's like saying it's the responsibility of any application on your PC to do file management. You'd have to learn Adobe's menus for cleaning up Adobe files, Microsoft Office's methods for managing your word docs and Visual Studio's methods for managing project files...

It's up to the OS to allow you to clean up files if you need to, not each individual application.

Thae marketplace is now ACTUALLY usable

[Hasney]

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.

I hated it.

[Xest]

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!

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:Great Update

[bigman2003]

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?

...yes you can

[muel]

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.

Re:Can't get it

[antonlacon]

HDD Upgrade Program

sound missing over hdmi

[masterQba]

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.

Re:it's pants

[wild_quinine]

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 blade system always looked like a bunch of building blocks for the under fives. From day one it has been cursingly ugly. So, whilst it 'worked fine' I don't think that was quite enough. Not when the competitors' alternative looks and drives like an Aston Martin.

The new system is much more sleek, and appealed to me instantly. I do share your concern about screen real estate, though. Whilst it doesn't cause me any problems, I'm not sure I would be saying that if I was playing on a standard def screen.

I managed to make someone who looks remarkably like myself, which I've never managed on a wii.

So did I, but my wife started to cry, so I changed it to look like someone else. There's a t-shirt for your avatars with the Xbox 'green circle of light' on it. I know this is kind of an obvious comment, but I genuinely looked for the red one to go with it, before realised why it would not be there.

So iconic is that red circle, that I consider its presence to be missing in xbox related merch.

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: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?

The best new feature: 16:10

[davidbrit2]

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.

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:Progress

[aussie_a]

Have you seen my name?

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!)

Install to HDD

[baker_tony]

That's the best feature in my book, only because it makes the XBox 360 a lot quieter!
Might be a bit faster too, didn't really notice.

Re:it's pants

[orclevegam]

The layout and navigation is better, but the actual aesthetic and use of screen real-estate blows. I'd be much happier if they went back to the look and feel of the old blade system (large flat panels to use the most of the screen instead of those silly psuedo-3D panels with all that dead space around them), but kept the overall layout of NXE. There was absolutely no reason to switch to the stupid 3D panels to display what is ultimately 2D information, it's an absolute waste of space and doesn't even look particularly good. I'm also pissed that the themes which used to offer a little variety from blade to blade have now been reduced to what is essentially a static wallpaper.