The New Xbox Experience

[Matt]

So, how has everyone's NXE been so far? I'm thoroughly enjoying the new update. I saw it demo'd by Major Nelson at PAX, and have been looking forward to it ever since.

I'm quite pleased with how my avatar turned out. I feel I got him pretty accurate to my look. I'm also looking forward to playing games direct from the hard drive. I've been having frequent disc read errors with fallout 3, and I'm pretty certain my drive is failing, so playing off the HDD should be a nice band-aid on that particular issue.

it does, of course, mean that i'm going to have to upgrade my xbox's hard drive, though.

so, how about you? opinions? horror stories?

-m

[Graham]

It's shiny.
I like it.

[RobertMc123]

Its pretty good so far, I put GTA4 on the HDD and gave it a whirl and apart from a few pop up issues its perfectly fine. I assume some games will run better from the HDD than others. But I think I do need to get a bigger hard drive.

My avatar turned out not too bad. All in all, like Graham said, it's shiny.

[Evisr]

I was able to get into the NXE preview that Major Nelson had 2 weeks ago. And after playing with it there are some good and bad things.

Pros

-Looks 200% better on 1080P TVs (old interface had artifacts everywhere, think poor JPGs)
-Most menus are faster
-Install was quick
-Putting games on HDD make load times better
-Avatars are pretty neat

Cons
-Some games installed on the HDD is worse on load times(Eg, Halo 3)
-Auto download of XBLA demos is not there (for some thats bad)
-Old themes look butchered and crappy
-I feel Avatars should have had more customization
-Ads now can be located on any of menus (this confused me once where there was an ad for Gears 2 from one menu that was in the same place of the Play Disc icon)

Overall though this is huge improvement from the blades, though some people would just argue saying that it is just the PS3s XMB but on its side.
Oh lastly, Avatar integration in UNO is awesome. Love seeing my avatar laughing when he plays a "Skip Turn" card.

[Matt]

to be fair, bungie did explain why halo 3 was loading poorly.

-m

[BrainBot]

I really like it so far. Defiantly was more responsive then the old blades. Avatar creation was interesting and I was surprised by the amount of options in some categories (eyebrows) and the lack in others (shoes)

[Matt]

I really like it so far. Defiantly was more responsive then the old blades. Avatar creation was interesting and I was surprised by the amount of options in some categories (eyebrows) and the lack in others (shoes)

more clothing options will be provided in future updates and as DLC.

-m

[Sable]

I love it.

It's shiny! And fast! And easier to navigate!

Nom nom nom.

[Evisr]

to be fair, bungie did explain why halo 3 was loading poorly.

-m

I linked bungie's response in my post.. you must of missed it

[Matt]

alas, I did.

-m

[Master Gunner]

Interesting thing: I actually can't hook my xbox up to the internet, so I won't be able to play with this

[BrainBot]

They released the last update on cd for you offline folk and it seems that they intend to do the same for this release.

@Matt
I know they will be releasing more (and hopefully games will start including them on the disks (like gamerpics)) but I just found the current selection to be eclectic.

[iwashere33]

i have got and yes overall it does seem to be an improvement all though i have noticed some glitches whilst playing portal. it has frozen once and locked the console another time.

i haven't even installed it on the HDD so i can only assume it's the new update as the game played fine before.


one thing that annoys the shit out of me. the spotlight stream.

why oh why can i not change it to go to "my xbox" instead, because microsoft want to sell advertising on my games console. i have already decided that i am on my last year on xbox live gold service. i am not paying to be shown ads in my living room. unless they were LRR ads.

[Matt]

i have got and yes overall it does seem to be an improvement all though i have noticed some glitches whilst playing portal. it has frozen once and locked the console another time.

i haven't even installed it on the HDD so i can only assume it's the new update as the game played fine before.


one thing that annoys the shit out of me. the spotlight stream.

why oh why can i not change it to go to "my xbox" instead, because microsoft want to sell advertising on my games console. i have already decided that i am on my last year on xbox live gold service. i am not paying to be shown ads in my living room. unless they were LRR ads.

which you aren't actually paying for. ::cough::

-m

[Tim]

It hasn't meaningfully affected my experience so far. It is shiny, though.

[AeroCmdr]

I like it so far. I was in the last group of people to get it early and I've had no problems at all with it.

[Cureless_Poison]

Now I need to figure out how to make my Mii and my Avatar have a fight to the death over mascot rights to me.

[Nomadic]

I know this is a minimal thing...and it might just be me not having had enough time to check it out (used it for literally 5 minutes before I had more important things to do), but I don't like how the giant thing at the bottom covers up all of my themes I used to have...furthermore, I want it to be a dark grey (a'la the old Carbon theme for the blades) instead of the glaringly (annoyingly) bright white that they have now.

Any solutions, or is it just me not knowing which buttons to press?

Small Admission: It is shiny though.

[Evisr]

I know this is a minimal thing...and it might just be me not having had enough time to check it out (used it for literally 5 minutes before I had more important things to do), but I don't like how the giant thing at the bottom covers up all of my themes I used to have...furthermore, I want it to be a dark grey (a'la the old Carbon theme for the blades) instead of the glaringly (annoyingly) bright white that they have now.

Any solutions, or is it just me not knowing which buttons to press?

Small Admission: It is shiny though.

There is a theme called Night that makes the bottom half circle thingy into grey/black. That is as close as I can think of.

[Nomadic]

Right, but I want that grey-black thing with my own personal background.

[Graham]

Yeah, I liked the carbon theme too, and the night theme has that lame background.

It's got neats little things for people in your friends list though. I don't see the point of the little backgrounds, but they're neat.

[Cureless_Poison]

New set-up is nice and all BUT it ruins my theme's as I got most of them because I enjoy the view of the art not 50% of the view.

Hope there's a way to get rid of that damn plate thing on the bottom.

[Jermo]

I have yet to download this thing as i do not leave my xbox hooked up to the internet at this point in time.

[Cureless_Poison]

Kinda off topic but related:

My xbox red-ringed to I took it apart, cleaned it and put it back together. Still doesn't work, so I looked up Microsoft's support and looked at their sollutions which seemed to be useless, then I looked on you-tube to any fix's for this.

I figured most of them were useless and concluded my Xbox was garbage, usually when I come to this realization I go into a murderous rage and destroy what-ever the disfunctional piece of hardware is. But then I stop, I look at my Xbox and say "...Why do you hate me?" *BOOP*

Suddenly the console turns on and starts L4D for me. Tonight shall be a grand celebration of zombie killing and castle crashing!

[Dr Frankenjam]

**sings the castle crashers theme**