Editorial - New Xbox Experience: An Editorial
An editorial by
Sam Altersitz published on 1.18.2009
I'm sure a lot of you reading this had the same initial reaction to Microsoft's announcement at the 2008 Electornics Entertainment Expo about the "New Xbox Experience." Basically a collective sigh and an asking of ourselves "Why?" when it was all over. It's not like the original Xbox dashboard was broken, after all. Sure, it was a little slow at times, but it served its purpose quite well. One of the biggest things that Microsoft pushed was their new avatar system, which many people looked at as a copy of Nintendo's Miis; the avatars were also supposed to be able to be used in new games, including a proposed
1 vs. 100 game show video game. Perhaps, at the time, the only things that really piqued people's interest were the proposed ability to play movies in Netflix members' Instant queue and the new party system that was being touted.
The NXE officially launched on November 19, 2008, with a 125 MB download that changed the entire way the Xbox 360's dashboard looked and worked. Gone were the blades of old, replaced with a new way of navigating. Everything in the Xbox dashboard is now divided into separate "channels" navigated by moving up and down on the controller, and then left and right to the specific part of each channel players wish to check out. The channels are divided into easy to navigate sections. The Spotlight channel has new release info, new streaming Inside Xbox videos and other promotions. The My Xbox channel is where players choose their profile (for those with multiple profiles on a single system), browse through their games, achievements, video, audio and pictures, connect to a Windows Media Center-enabled PC and check their system settings. The Xbox Live Marketplace is now divided into two sub-marketplaces, one for videos and one for games. The Game Marketplace channel shows new downloadable content for games and lets players go into a sub-channel which separates the content into DLC, Xbox Live Arcade games, Community Games made by users using the XNA development platform, Xbox Originals available for download, demos, themes and gamerpics. The Video Marketplace channel allows players to rent or buy videos through Xbox Live, has featured videos, allows users to explore their own video library and has the Netflix Instant Queue service (more on that later). The Inside Xbox channel has new videos for Major's Minute, IGN Strategize Insider Moves, The OXM Report, Pick Up and Play, Community Close-Up and the Gamer Spotlight. The Events channel shows new download and win contests as well as the "Game With" events.
Now, the friends channel... well, that's a whole other thing, now. It shows players' friends' avatars, what games they are currently playing and also whether they are in a party or alone. When on a friend's avatar, players can hit A to see what they are doing in the game they are playing (represented next to their avatar as the cover to the game in the main part of the channel), send messages, invite to a party or join a friend's party (by hitting Y), compare games, audio chat or video chat. If players have premium themes, such as the currently free Xbox Holiday 2008 Theme, then their friends will show up against a background appropriate to the premium theme being used. Just a note, most premium themes do cost money to download; currently the premium theme cost is 250 Microsoft Points.
So, how does all this carry itself out in the actual use of the new dashboard? Surprisingly well, actually.
The avatars were designed by Rare, and Rare has stated they expect them to be a sort of reflection of the gamer using them. Avatar creation is fairly simple and is stylized in a more cartoony aspect than the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Home characters, but with a bit more customization options than Nintendo's Miis, especially in the clothing department. There aren't a ton of options for clothing at launch, but Microsoft and Rare have been adding new clothing options every few weeks since the launch. So far all of them have been free, but I'm not sure how much faith we can put into them remaining that way. Unfortunately, the customization options of the clothing are nonexistent; each article of clothing comes in one or two colors and that's it. See a shirt with a design you like, but not the color you want? Well, you're stuck with what is currently available. Which is, in all honesty, a bit rubbish. I do really hope they add a color customization feature for the clothes.
A lot of criticism was levied towards Microsoft and Rare, some by the gaming press and most of it by the mob of the Internet, claiming the avatars were rip-offs of the Miis for the Wii console. Rare has come out and stated in an interview, however, that they were working on the concept and design of avatars "before Miis were in the gaming scene" as they put it.
I thought that I wouldn't be a fan of the avatars, truly, when I first saw them. But, I've found the customization of them to be, while not necessarily addicting in any sense of the word, fairly fun every now and then. Adding hats, changing hair styles, clothes, etc. can be a fun diversion. Also players may change their gamerpics to be a pic of their avatar that they can try to pose and get as close or as far away as the camera allows. The biggest gripe about the whole customization of the avatars is the length of time it takes to get into and out of the avatar customization screen: it's a fairly long process, around thirty seconds each way, which makes it more of a hassle than a benefit.
The new party system is also a very nice feature. It allows players to have a bunch of friends in a multi-person audio chat, and allows them to all join the same game if they all have it. Of course, this can be abused to a certain extent in games like Gears of War 2, where players in the same party can still talk to each other even after they have been killed. Overall, though, I have found the party system to be very useful for talking to a bunch of friends no matter what we are doing at the time while on Xbox Live. It isn't quite the party system that some of us were hoping for, as in a universal party system across all Xbox Live games, but it is a nice way to communicate with multiple friends at once.
The new presentation of themes is also nicer than before. There is more screen real estate for the backgrounds and, as mentioned before, the new premium themes are very nice if you don't mind paying for them. The backgrounds also change when you go to certain areas, such as the Xbox Live Arcade. The main background is there for the main parts of each channel, so if you had a theme that had different backgrounds in different blades, well, the other backgrounds won't show up unless you go into the sub channels. So I hope you like the main background picture a lot.
Now, the old blades still exist, to a degree. If players hit the guide button, then a mini blade system appears. It's slightly faster than the old blade that popped up when hitting the guide button in the old dashboard, but not by much. This mini blade system lets you play music, check achievements, join or make parties, check system settings, etc. While not necessarily needed when on the new dashboard, it does make checking messages a bit easier than navigating to the My Xbox channel.
The overall effect of these changes seem to be mostly cosmetic, but they really have enhanced the dashboard for the better. Beyond just the nicer cosmetics of the dashboard, it is much more functional, overall.
Now we move on to the feature I will either love Microsoft for forever... or hate them for until the end of time: the ability to play movies in the Netflix Instant Queue service on our Xbox 360 consoles. I say this because, well, since signing up for Netflix and trying it out... I have barely used my 360 for playing games. The instant queue is a great thing, with a lot of movies and television shows to watch whenever I want. Currently i have nearly 100 titles in my instant queue, more than enough to keep me glued to my 360 watching things for weeks. I love the fact that I can go and watch a bunch of TV shows that are available, or movies that I like or want to see just by booting up my 360 and going to the Video Marketplace and hitting the Netflix icon. But, at the same time, I also am simply not playing as many games as I used to. I haven't even really put a game in the tray in a few weeks. And this bothers me.
I'm sure, though, that the time spent on videos vs. games will even out as time goes on.
Just a note, in order to use the instant queue from Netflix, you do need to have Xbox Live Gold and at least an $8.95 per month Netflix account. Also, not every movie/TV show available for instant queue is necessarily available for playing on the 360 at this time. However, when you add something to your queue from the Netflix Website, it will tell you if the title is not available for playing on the 360. Currently there is no way to add items to your instant queue directly from your 360; you must go to the actual Netflix site to add items to your queue. This is kind of an inconvenience, but not one that is deal breaking. Hopefully Microsoft and Netflix will add a way to add titles to the instant queue through the Xbox 360 in the future.
The video/audio quality, on the whole, has been extremely good. On a decent high speed connection, you should find that the video is excellent; and even though they haven't begun streaming high definition content to the PC side of the instant queue service, some of the titles are in high definition on the 360 through the instant queue service.
The last big thing to mention about the change is the ability to install games to the Xbox 360 hard drive. For most games, this is supposed to help improve loading times and performance (
Halo 3 is a notable exception, and Bungie recommends that players NOT install Halo 3 to the hard drive). Most games are going to require 7GB or more space on the hard drive, so if you have only a 20 GB hard drive, the max you will be able to install to the hard drive is maybe two games at a time. It's not as big of a deal as some of the other features, but it can help for games that have long loading times that you play a lot. This is not, however, an install it and forget it method; whenever the game is going to be played, the original game disk must be in the DVD drive. Still, the added benefit for the two games I currently have installed on my 360 Elite,
Rock Band 2 and
Gears of War 2, make the few minutes install time well worth it for me... and I still have around 84GB free.
So, the changes to the Xbox 360 dashboard... needed? No, they weren't needed. Are they appreciated? Yes. The overall usability and ease of use of the dashboard has been greatly improved upon, the Netflix Instant Queue service is either the best thing ever or the death of your gaming time depending on how you use it, avatars can be fun to fool around with, the party ability makes communication a lot easier and the ability to install games played a lot to the hard drive to help with load times are all great additions to the Xbox 360 dashboard. Will I ever be comfortable calling it an "experience"? No... It's a new dashboard, not something that I experience when I boot up my 360. But, it was definitely worth the time it took to implement and distribute.
