Today is the release of Xbox 360's new update which they have labeled the new Xbox experience. I spent some time with it today and would like to share what I think of it.

Basically, kiss everything you are use to goodbye... at least for the time being. After the update, you get a flashy introduction before being directed to create your own Xbox Mii... er, I mean avatar.

The cool thing is that it's optional... minus the one detail that it isn't. You have to create your Mi- uh... avatar to even get to the main menu after the update. Honestly, I have no idea what they are for. I think you can play some games that utilize your avatar, but that's it.

As far as when you get to the menu... it's completely different. Up and down scroll through the categories like the marketplace and such (what use to be left and right). And left and right scroll through the sub-categories. Essentially, everything is the same... just harder to find (though I'm sure that'll get better over time).

As for stuff that actually matters:

The most important thing I have noticed is the ability to copy your disc games to your hard drive. This gets rid of disc read errors and noise reduction (come on, it sounds like a plane taking off when that cd-rom spins up). And it preserves your discs. Dead Space was 6.6 gigs, so those of you with large collections might either have to get a bigger hard drive, or copy only your favorites. I've still got some 40 odd gigs left after getting Dead Space copied and everything else I already have on my Xbox... but I bet you I'm going to fill that up rather quickly.

The only other actual improvements are that now you can see DLC to games and other information without having to actually go to the market place. Just by looking at the game from your collection, you can go see everything there is for that game. Kind of cool... but not THAT great.

Overall, I'm not really impressed. I would have much better liked they kept everything the way it was but still gave you the option to copy discs.

What about you guys?

I messed around with it for a couple hours and I think its better than the old dashboard. But I have to stress it is the same as the old dashboard except better organized and easier to find related information.

The avatars are copying the mii's but not really because its just a trend I think most social networks will eventually accept as standard. And xbox wants to be your social central.

I like the party system. To be able to switch games and keep your friends with you is cool. If you all have netflix and gold membership, you can view movies together. Very cool. Of course the best thing about it is that before, you could only private chat with one person at a time and now you just start a party and every one is in on the chat. Even if you are all doing your own thing at the time.

I also noticed that connectivity between my music and videos on my PC is way faster. It used to take 5-8 seconds to load the list of artists from my PC to my xbox. Now its done in like 2. The content is buffered faster too be it streaming from the marketplace or my PC, the difference is very noticeable and very welcomed.

Everything Lantis said about installing disc games on the harddrive is true. Great feature and I noticed the difference in Fable 2, the slowest-to-load game there is, which, by the way is 6.8 gigs.

I was also unimpressed overall but only because all the hype made me expect a HUGE change. But I do welcome it as it is a step up from the old one both in functionality and visually.

I only had a chance to look at it briefly because I am the type of person that reads whatever Terms and Conditions I accept and they changed them and it will take forever yet again to read them before accepting so all I did was look around without signing in to XBOX LIVE.

Actually I didn't really even hear about the update until the message for Microsoft and my cousin expanding on it yesterday.

WHAT I HATED was that I had to decline the terms just to get out of the window. I assume I'll have the opportunity to accept them later but why can't I have a simple "cancel" option instead of having to accept or decline the second I open it? Legally Declining can be considered different from cancelling so I thought this was bull.

WHAT I HATED was the stupid avatars. How STUPID! Actually I agree with both of you. To me they are a rip of of the wii, but they are also simultaneously a respectable transition to the avatars of any social network so I guess for those so inclined, it is fine to get all the "wii wannabe" jokes out of the way and then let them be appropriate for what has become traditional social networking. BUT WHY THE HELL do I have to create one just to LEAVE a profile that I happened to sign in under (my non LIVE profile). Thanks again for not giving me any choice!!!!!

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE is that it seems that themes are pretty much no longer that important because everyone I loaded had looked great in the background for a millisecond until the particular menu window appeared and pretty much opaquely blocked just about all of it out. I don' t know if you can change the setting for the window to be more transparent or not. I haven't checked.

The idea of being able to install the game is a very good one especially if you can spare the memory but I don't have much memory AND I WILL BE DAMNED if they think this is going to fool me into buying a bigger hard drive. I'll probably install one game at a time if any at all. Some other features seem slightly better but not that much different.

I expect that I will be happy with the transition in the long run. I don't really care one way or the other. I just hate when they don't give me the option or control over my own system.

Oh Bo reminded me.

If you don't have a hard drive... you can't go on LIVE.

BIG mistake. There is a program to buy a 20 gig and 3 months of gold for 20 0r 30 dollars on xbox.com

But the fact remains that there are still arcade systems being sold. True they stopped making them, but barely 4 months ago!

Thats not a problem for us that posted so far but its a huge deal for anyone without a hard drive.


I have to throw in that I am basing this on 4 week old info so maybe they found a work around. I don't know for sure.

It's all going to be new to us for a while... but since this thread is here, we can flesh out things we've found or have gotten use to. For example: I wasn't aware of some of the things that you posted, Insult, so that's cool.

At least we all seem to share the same general oppinion of it. But I just thought of something when Bo was talking about hard drives. What if you DID want to get a bigger one? How do you copy data off your old one and onto the new?

@Lantis

I'm sure insultobot would know better but I assume you would have to store it on your computer and then copy it back. Have either of you ever saved anything on your computer. I haven't.

there is a transfer kit that hooks up via usb on your xbox but you must be signed in to xbox live to use it



Actually yes. I use a memory unit reader and I save some items as images on my pc. Then I just put the image of the mem unit back on an empty one and its back on my xbox. There is a much better way to do it that doesn't us images to save and connects to the system where the hard drive goes and then the hard drive connect to it. Like a sandwich really, and it lets you manipulate the files. I think its called the "xplorer360"

Gamesavers use it mostly to change the ownerships of gamesaves to get achievements without playing games and also to change the drm of arcade and xbox originals so they don't have to purchase them.

But there are legit purposes too like if you play offline and can't reconnect to live to redownload items that you had to remove for space reasons.

Oh yeah, insultobot, what you said about if you don't have the hard drive gets me even madder! I'm glad to know this. That is really ridiculous for those who don't have the hard drive.

Don't have it yet.

I could just copy Left 4 Dead to my Hard Drive when I rent it and own it?

You have to have the disc run the game... It just reads from the hard drive from then on.

Theoretically though, you could copy it to your hard drive and return the game and continue playing... but when exit the game, you wouldn't be able to play it.

Oh, well, that reeks.

EDIT: I, however, do like the menu interface. It looks nicer.

Ok, now that I really had a chance to look around I can tell you what I think.

I think they did a very good job on most things. They did an exceptional job on making sure that when they are referring to a game or movie, you can see the box art as well as occasional pics. Obviously this is both to advertise as well as to properly associate the game for the user. I honestly appreciate this even though I am being bombarded with box art. The reason is that it really helps you when you are only vaguely familiar keep track of things you heard here and there and tie them to a single picture or title. It is really good for keeping track.

Also, there is a lot more access via the main controller button and that is very good for the most part.

What I do not like is how stupid cutesy the avatars look AND act. It is a complete rip of off Nintendo in this respect. I would rather the avatars look more serious or at least not act like Animal Crossing for babies. That having been said, they did an excellent job on the control you have over your mii. I still wish I had the choice to not create one though because I either have to actually create one that I like by force or sit and look at whatever stupid one that I chose just to proceed with playing my system.

It still seems that themed wallpapers are going to be blocked by most of the active inner window. Any idea on this?

Where they got greedy with their abundance of advertisements (and I feel this strongly detracts from all the excellent work they did) is by connecting some stupid "top downloaded" greedy advertisement window (like what you see at Amazon.com) right next to the window of the downloaded games that I paid for which is totally unnecessary. That info is or should be made available in the myriad of other marketplace screens.

The other thing that I don't like is that clearly it is geared first toward selling you something. It opens on the "Spotlight" section not the "My XBOX 360" section and then the "Friends" section is separated from the "My XBOX 360" section by marketplaces for movies and games. Its stuff like that which just pisses me off.

In other words, they did an excellent job of providing a useful interface in which most of their advertising actually benefits the gamer...and then they got greedy and made me feel like all I was to them was a dollar sign hoping I would consume their downloadable memory like a vampire.

I only saw slight differences in Fable II when I installed it. Load times leaving certain rooms did seem quicker but not travelling from town to town. I may be wrong though.

By the way, it seems that if you want to deinstall the game you can do so in the memory section of they system menu because it is divided into "Fable II: XBOX 360 game at 6.8 GB" and "Fable II: Hero 1 Save" at 8MB (I think). It seems that we can delete these individually (at least it looks that way, I haven't tried it) but the option from the game menu that says "play from hard drive" also has "delete from hardrive". Note it did not say "de-install" and I worry that akin to the demos that we have been saving on our hard drives and then quickly deleting, that this easy option "delete" might be carelessly implemented such that it is possible they mean delete the whole main file which includes both the game and the save data file. Does anyone know? Don't risk it though.

Lastly, does anyone know if the system automatically launches the game from the hard drive (either by clicking the game from the dashboard or independent of the dashboard if you've opted auto sign-in) so long as it has been installed and so long as the disc is in the drive or do you have to actually click the game in the dashboard and find the section that says "play from hard drive"?

I haven't noticed if it does or doesn't boot from hd without being told but I would assume so.

Hands down best feature is the addition of community games from xna studio. We could theoretically create and SELL games on XBLA/XBLC

I generally agree with everything Bo has mentioned.

One thing I think was kind of stupid is that you could hide the "welcome" section but nothing else. I'd love to hide that "spotlight" section because I'm probably never going to use it. And I wish it would boot to "my xbox" instead.

Anyway, "delete" is the same thing as "uninstall." You can keep your game saves (those 8mg files) too, so there shouldn't be too much of an issue there. It wouldn't matter if the text read delete, uninstall, de-install, or rock the casbah... it still does the exact same thing.

As for your other question, it should be fairly easy to find out simply durring loading times. Do you hear the CD-rom spin up? If not, then it's definately running from your hard drive.

Have you tested the "delete" feature to confirm that it is "uninstall" or are you assuming/expecting it to be the case?

Yeah, that makes sense about hearing the CD-rom spin.

@insultobot
Yes, that is a good point about the XNA community. Are any of the games free? How much is the average game? Have you or are you going to try any?

I deleted Dead Space from my hard drive and my game saves were still in tact. I didn't run the game again from the CD-rom though... but I see no reason why it would work like it use to. Afterwards I just copied it right back over.

@Lantis
Thanks.

I took a deeper look at the Community games and I am very impressed with the set up. You get screen shots, you can download a preview or buy the full game for $5. It seems that if anyone is good with programming, they can subscribe to XNA and get their games really out there.

Now that I'm familiar with everything and have been using the new "experience" for quite some time I have to say it is much better than before and really well done overall. I've never seen what the PS3 (or Wii or PC) have as far as navigation and interface but I think the amount of control and access you have to demos, videos, events and communication is exceptional.

The only things that still bother me are starting on "Spotlight" which I never want to do and having the suggested (and really unrelated) titles offered as advertisement when I am looking at videos that I have already downloaded long ago.

Anybody not impressed with this set up after using it now for awhile?