New Xbox Experience Goes Live 332
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.
defectivebydesign (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
New features rock. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it's pants (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:defectivebydesign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hate it (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
You're complaining about having to do too many clicks around the interface? With the old blades, you had to cycle to the blade you wanted, say Marketplace, and then scroll down to the category you wanted. Same with the new system, but instead of moving through the categories horizontally, you scroll through them vertically and then choose your category or item by scrolling horizontally. Except now the categories and items are laid out in only two axes rather than having items scattered all through out the blade they were on. The layout is cleaner and more logical because of the changes.
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.
The Avatars may be useless and silly, but really, an "eyesore"? Maybe you should make a better looking one?
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.
Sony should be charged with something (Score:4, Insightful)
It can't be right that Sony, a company that makes a competing game console, should also pull the entertainment content from one of the markets because that market allowed a competing game console in as well. This smacks of wrongness though I am sure sure it qualifies as anti-trust, they are certainly linking one completely different product/service offering to another as leverage against a competitor. There is something really broken about Sony's behavior.
Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so (Score:5, Insightful)
+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:defectivebydesign (Score:4, Insightful)
"Defective by design" is one of the phrases the FSF uses to describe DRM. The Xbox 360 has DRM, there's no question about that. You can't just copy a game using a DVD burner and play it even if you own a copy of the game. It makes backing up your games (and yes with a bunch of drunk frat boys, it makes sense to not have to sink $60 into another copy of the game because someone got drunk and played Frisbee with it) impossible without modifying your console. If you modify your console, however, Microsoft has said that they will ban you because they assume that you will be playing "pirated" games or are cheating on Xbox Live.
While the NXE helps a little in this regard (you can copy games to the hard drive), it also doesn't completely solve the problem (you need to have the original game in the drive to start the game).
Don't even get me started on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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?
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:defectivebydesign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love it but feel stupid for doing so (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:defectivebydesign (Score:3, Insightful)
Install to HDD (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
I love it but feel relaxed for doing so (Score:3, Insightful)
"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."
The word you're looking for is "appliance" as in "My DVD player is an appliance". It's not a bad thing unless you like challenges getting work done. Personally I'm tired of TELNETTing in to use my washing machine.
Re:defectivebydesign (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but no game console in history has allowed you to do that, so it would be hard to argue it as being "defective". I mean, a Model T didn't have seatbelts, does that make it "defective by design?"
Maybe when talking about the Xbox 360 they should make the tag "lacking-a-feature-I-would-like-to-have-by-design." Not as catchy though.