New Xbox Experience Impressions
Saturday, November 15th, 2008
Yours truly signed up for a special chance to get an invite to the upcoming New Xbox Experience (From here out to be referred to as the “NXE”) a few weeks back. There were 3 random drawings chosen from the people that signed up in the ~12 hours that signups were available. I finally got in on wave 3 this week. If you read my E3 impressions or follow the 360, chances are you already know what the NXE is. But for those of you that don’t, it’s basically a complete design overhaul for the Xbox 360 dashboard.
Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten anyone at Microsoft to care that we have nearly a thousand listeners, and over ten-thousand unique visitors a month at Geekshow.us. So, I didn’t get an early invite as a member of the press. As such, this was my chance to get in and take a peak around. This comes 5 days before the actual rollout occurs. So when you wake up on the 19th of November, chances are you will have a dashboard update waiting for you. Go ahead and install that, and then walk through the process of creating an avatar to represent yourself. No really, do it. I’m tired of looking at a friends list void of Avatars.
Anyway, besides the addition of Avatars (Mine can be seen there on the left), the NXE offers several other changes to your dashboard usage experience. I’ve tried to run through as many of them as I could today. I’ve probably missed a few. But I wanted to give you guys my impressions, and give you a chance to ask any questions. Keep reading to see what I think about the NXE. If you have questions, be sure to post them in the comments section.
Avatars: The Avatar system is very versatile. As I continue to say, this system is much better in most ways to the Mii system. Being able to cycle through the different body sizes alone is worth the price of admission. However. And this is a big “however”…the selection really sucks currently. Is this a preview limitation or will the full version belike that as well? No idea. But be prepared for this guys. Look forward to picking from 1 of 4 glasses and 1 of 4 sunglasses. 3 pairs of jeans, and weird alternatives. And you can not change the color of anything that is not hair/eyes/eyebrows/lips/makeup. So if you want a pair of black sneakers, you are out of luck. Want a Blue T-shirt? Out of luck. You get green or black.
I understand that they want to make money off the Avatar store, but there has got to be a better selection of default items than there currently is. Things they sale should be like outfits. Master Chief suit, Police Uniform, Army Camo, etc. Not things like single color T-shirts and shoes.
Netflix: Now granted, I haven’t watched anything all the way through yet. And the first thing I picked was Heroes, which is presented in “HD”. However, I thought that the quality was damn good. Definitely better than the quality I get on my PC, which was also damn good, IMO. It’s still streaming, so anyone expecting Blu-Ray quality is going to be disappointed. But when you consider that you don’t have to buy it or wait for it to download, I don’t think there is room for complaint. Unless you are just a total videophile. Also, Installation and synching with your Netflix account couldn’t be easier. Download a small file, and when it gets done, you use like a 5 digit code at netflix.com/activate. Plug that in while at your PC, and it took like 1 min for the 360 to realize it was synched. My list popped up immediately. Very nice.
Game Installs: I didn’t play any, yet. However, I installed Gears of War 2. It took probably 10 mins to install. But I was able to use the guide button menu while doing that. Sent out some messages, checked my game history, etc. The only improvement I would make would be the ability to go use the dashboard while it installs. No games, or anything. But at least use the full dashboard.
Friends List: For anyone wondering why you are forced to pick an Avatar, look no further than the new friends list. If you have people on your list that don’t have Avatars, they are just the shadow of a unisex avatar. It’s retarded. And since this is nearly everyone on my friends list except the one person I gave a heads up about the NXE signup that got in, this is pretty annoying. You probably have already seen it before, but if a player with an Avatar is offline, then their head is bent over, and they are snoozing.
The only complaints I have here is that it’s sometimes hard to see what it is they are doing from the list. The one friend I had with the NXE installed was playing the L4D demo. But there was no indication of that. The friend I had without it was on the dashboard, and it showed a blank game case with the green circles. Also, adding new friends is a bit difficult from this screen, but not too bad. Left/Right button moves you a full screen rather than scrolling through each individual menu item. So you can fly through the friends list by tap-tap-taping the right button. No lag at all here.
Community Games: I had heard that there was only 2 community games available when the first wave went out. I was surprised to see that number had already grown to about 8 or so. There is a Head-banging rhythm game, a Culture from the preview of the community games, the god awful Word Soup “game” that I still haven’t seen anyone figure out, etc. Nothing that looked all that appealing yet. But that will continue to grow.
Delete Achievements: As most of you know, you can now delete 0 point achievements. You go through your game history, and when you highlight a 0 point achievement game, you hit “X” to delete it. This means you have to go through your whole list and delete them one at a time. But this should be a one time annoyance. Usually you won’t need to delete 20 at one time. Finally, I am rid of Yaris.
Marketplace Navigation: Still not perfect, but much better. Initially, it looks somewhat limited. You can sort by letter, genre, etc. But then you figure out that when you sort by Genre, you can also still go in and sort by letter. So you can find Games that start with “H” to find Halo. Or you can find Shooters that start with “H” to find it from a shorter list. Pretty slick. Takes a while to get used to the new navigation. I’m still not sure it is as user friendly as they were aiming for. BUT, it definitely is easier once you get used to it.
Party System: Haven’t touched this one yet, but I did note how easy it is to invite people. I can finally turn my voice options back to “Everyone”. I had it set to “Friends Only” so that when I play with friends, I don’t have to talk to them along with everyone else.
Themes: You can FINALLY preview a theme when you are setting it from the dashboard. As you move through the list, it changes the background to match the theme. No more trying to remember the name of the one you want. I’m still not sure if you can preview before buying, though. Old themes work fine, but I would’ve preferred the option to seat pan them, zoom them, etc to fit within the new limited space. As it is, they often get cut off in weird ways.
I’ll post anything else I can think of as it comes to me.
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Thanks for the preview!
I really want to try out the Party system. Even if everyone isn’t playing the same game, it could be fun to have it up just to chat or something.
I got in, in this wave as well. I’m liking it so far but can’t find my download history. Have you had any luck in this department?
And here’s to getting rid of Yaris :)
Oh! I promise to make an avatar as soon as I am able to. It will be one of the first things I do.
Congratulations, SaberJ! You now have at least one person on your friends list with an avatar. I downloaded the NXE and made an avatar before I had to go to work. I’ll have more time to check things out tonight.
Oh, I know. It’s terrific to see Avatars popping up now. I hope it continues, because my list is still a little bare.
Well, as of this morning, you were the only person that had an avatar on my paltry list. I’ve probably only got about ten people or so on my list, and maybe half of those actually play regularly.
I think that Microsoft’s servers are a bit busy because I couldn’t get the app for Netflix this morning, and it wouldn’t download data from Marketplace either. Error messages kept popping up. I hope it is fixed by tonight because I really wanted to try watching a couple things through Netflix…probably an episode of Heroes or two.
I got Netflix to work last night, so I watched a couple first season episodes of Dr. Who.
Okay, the avatars are cool and all, but they aren’t as flexible as I’d like. Why can’t I make more than one per gamertag? Why can’t I adjust the position, scale, and rotation facial features like eyes, ears, and noses?
There are some insanely creative Miis out there, most of which are possible because you can slide facial features around. Why can’t we do the same with the 360 avatars? What if you have giant ears and you want your avatar to reflect that? What if you want to give yourself some giant anime eyeballs? What if you want to put your mouth on your forehead?
I think the avatars work pretty well, but they still have some room for improvement. I would also like to be able to choose wacky hair colors and be able to have a choice of different base colors for outfits. It shouldn’t be that hard to have a T-shirt available in half a dozen colors.
I love the look of them over Miis, easily. But I could stand some face customization and color swapping on clothes.
Anyone else loving the new keyboard? It’s sounds weird but I had a hard time seeing that old one (where I was on the keyboard). I like the darker color background. Maybe that’s just my poor eyesight.
I’m really liking the new XBL, especially Netflix. I watched an episode of Heroes last night. :)
I’m Mr Coz on XBL btw, if anyone wants to add me as a friend. There should be a request for TheDoctor. :)
I love the new keyboard. The look and the responsiveness with the chatpad addon. The old keyboard would often miss key presses on the chatpad with the lag. So you had to listen for each bloop sound. But I haven’t seen that yet with the new one.
I already have you on my list, I’m pretty sure. But good luck with TheDoctor. I had him on my pending friends list for over a year and never got approved. I don’t think he ever gets on live :P
Brad from Podculture and Polygon are my friends now. :)
BTW, I really am only playing Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour (just got it today) online. I suck at FPS’s.
I play at Hard level. :)
Crap, yes Randy, you are my frined on XBL too.
I suck at FPS games too. But they are still a lot of fun, so long as you can get the occasional win in. :)
Guess I should get Halo 3, although I’ve never played Halo 2 and have only played Halo a little.
Any other FPS (multiplayer) suggestions, at a discount?
Just learned that you can delete the 0 achievement games, that’s great news.
TheDoctor is still “pending” on my friends list. Perhaps he is too busy podcasting a billion different shows to have time to play games….
@Poly – LOL! I don’t even have my 360 connected to the internet. I plan on trying out a gold membership for a couple months during the GBN hiatus tho… So I’ll approve you eventually!!
Hey, i would like some FRs, username: willwwturner
I’ll point out, Scott, there is a decent amount of things you can do online without a Gold membership. You can chat, send messages, update to the new dashboard, download trials of games (Though with silver memberships, you generally have to wait a week after the trial has been out before you get access to it), etc. I wold say buy XBLA games. But you don’t seem like the XBLA game kind of guy :P
I haven’t checked it out for myself yet, but movies from Columbia Pictures (that were previously missing) are supposed to be available on the NXE now.