| Preview | The New Xbox Experience Impressions |
As a Microsoft Beta participant I was selected recently to try out the NXE or New Xbox Experience (or something like that) early.
And after playing around with it for a while I have come to several conclusions. This being Negative Gamer, it seems only appropriate to start with the bad sides of the new Dash that we will all have to endure in the weeks to come.
The bad (yay!)
- New guide button UI is ever so slightly blurry (not soft) on my 32” HD telly. And try as I might I cannot find a way to sharpen it up.
- The default page you start on (think of it as the default blade) is ‘highlights’ which is literally just adverts. This for me is particularly annoying as I had a glitched version of the old dashboard which had zero adverts.
- All old background themes are cut in half by the new graphical interface. Doubtless the new themes will not suffer this. But it has essentially rendered all my old themes pointless.
- The new graphical friends list is COMPLETELY ruined. They have decided to trade functionality for aesthetics in this particular department, no doubt for the ‘casual’ crowd. While it looks nice it is frustrating to have to click between a bunch of friends to see what an individual player is up to. All the information provided on-screen without clicking on them is the name of the game they are on and a picture of that games box art. If NXE does not yet have the box art or it doesn’t know what game they are playing, it leaves this blank. Providing NO information at all (this seems to happen mostly on demos and when people are on the dash).
- Now, the guide button has an integrated friends list, much like the one we are used to. But the problem is that it has been diluted somewhat. All the information is spread about way too much. I mentioned earlier that I had a problem with not enough information being on screen at one time and this suffers the exact same problem, just maybe not quite as badly.
- The new market place uses the new album view user interface that the rest of NXE uses and that seems to be all the rage at the moment (I’m looking at you, apple) and it is frustrating to have so little information on screen. I find myself having to click through a lot of content to see what is new and what might interest me.
- I still can’t find the menu to change themes. Seriously I looked for like an hour. Why didn’t they leave it where it was?
- Avatars are a waste of space. Since having made it I think I have seen it two times. Whilst accidentally scrolling through that page.
- Installing games to the HD. I only have a 20GB HD as most people will, and when I tried to install Mirror’s Edge to the HD (see below) It told me that I had 1.7GB of space left and that it would not be enough. I had to delete a bunch of old (though admittedly rubbish) demos off the device to allow it to fit.
And now for the good. The bane of every cynical, hate filled negative gamer’s life.
The good (boo!)
- Shiny. I want to touch the shiny.
- The new guide button menu is actually quite good. I found that it loads faster and the menus are very easy to navigate and utilise.
- Installing games to the HD. I tried this with my new copy of Mirror’s Edge as I said, and wow. Playing with a silent disk drive is like nothing you have ever seen (or heard) before. As for load times; they never bothered me in the first place and half a second off seems pointless.
- The new party system and group private chat sounds excellent. I rarely use the mic if I am not playing with people from my friends list anyway. And this will be much easier than muting every other player in a game as I normally am wont to do. Unfortunately, I have yet to try this feature.
I think that the new guide button UI will be seeing a lot more use as a tool of managing the dash than the actual dash itself. It condenses all the features into a handy menu system without the shiny pictures.
I should also mention the HD installing problem. I reckon that as a 20GB HD owner I will only ever be able to have one game on it at a time. Still, as long as the size of the install does not exceed 6GB I should be fine.
In conclusion, I think the NXE is a shiny object being held up by Microsoft to lure new customers to the service as it provides lots of useless fluff which we know the ‘casual’ market loves. It only provides a few good new features, and they come at the cost of having lost some old, arguably more useful, stuff.
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Damn, I was looking forward to the NXE, I thinking you’ve put me off now. Shit.
I found where you change the theme.
It’s in the profile options.
But ALL images still get intersected by the big grey curve. Annoying.
The NXE beta is a beta. The themes and such will not work until the 19th of November.
Actually most of the content won’t work until the 19th of November.
It’s not the unavailable content that bothers me. The content that works fine is rubbish for the most part.
While I do agree with many of your points.. I have to agree with the HD Installing one.
You having a 20gb Hard Drive is not Microsoft’s problem.. If you want more space, you buy a bigger Hard Drive.
Also, Installing your X360 games also improves performance.. so you should see Mirrors Edge loading alot faster and performing very smoothly and guess what!?
… It’s all optional, Microsoft isn’t telling you to do this, they’ve just integrated it in.
The silent disk tray is very good. But not good enough to justify the cost of another hard drive.
So I’ll have to bypass that option.
your conclusions is sucks MAN….
check again on 19 November
What a waste!
How is the new guide button blurry!? Seriously you gamers really need to tune your TV settings:/ Just like some other author saying Gears of War 2’s graphics looked washed out to him:/
I agree with you on the background design theme. What the heck is that grey thing doing at the bottom!? It just completely kills the background image!
Trying to find the menu where to change your theme is annoying! I struggled too to find It>:@!
Avatars are a waste and not a waste at the same time. I like them because I don’t want to waste my money in buying rubbish 120×120 pixel images just to express my virtual look or current emotion/feelings. That is the reason why I have been using the Sergeant Johnson Halo 3 gamerpic, so I do want an avatar to express what I do look like virtually! The reason why it’s a waste is because of its outlook. Mii’s avatar completely looks retarded (yet users managed to create Mii’s that look like a game character or celebrity or an actor/actress). Xbox Live’s Avatar looks teenage and PSN Home’s looks more adult (Second Life).
Installing games isn’t a problem:/ Remember you still need the disc in the tray. You installed Halo 3 and Fable 2, you finished playing Halo 3 and then decided to play Fable 2? You will still be exchanging disc as usual. Just install what ever game you will be playing for a while then uninstall it and install a new game. I had installed Gears of War 2 at the moment because it’s the game I’m playing right now. When I done and need to play a new game, I’ll uninstall it and install a new game.
Plus remember, what ever content you download from the Marketplace, you can re-download them again. So if you need space for a game, just remove some contents such as movies & demos, and when you need to play them again just re-download. (That’s if Microsoft leaves those contents alone, unlike how they took down NInja Gaiden Black in UK marketplace:/)
That’s a lot of negative you have there:/
I take pride in the awesome config of my telly settings. Everything else is as sharp as you like. But the guide seems blurry.
Avatars are good with the customisation they allow. But now MS will be able to charge for individual items of clothing instead of an entire image. And they will.
Also I found the theme options. They’re in the profile setting found in the ‘My Xbox’ area. It is a sensible place to put it I suppose. Just confusing.
forgot something else about the new xbox experience. for those who have the beta you can not go into private chats with people who dont have it.
ROFL someone has their knickers in a bunch. 90% of what you have said is utter bull shit.
The avatar friends page is slightly annoying but who would use it? The new Xbox button is awesome its basically the entire dash and blades in one, You can change themes two ways one via the xbox button and the other in settings its not very hard to find.
im running my console on a normal tv. no hi def. yeah im missing out on alot of stuff (10% clearer picture maybe) but honestly im enjoying gaming with it. nothing on my screen is blurry hard to read. so its not the new xbox stuff that is wrong. maybe its the tv. also if a glitched system gets upgraded. that glitch gets increased on damage to your system. could be something needed that you got glitched out.
I already love the NXE and I haven’t even got it yet !