Microsoft working to fix NXE "hiccups"

By Ellie Gibson Published 20 November, 2008

Issues being resolved, says the Major.

Microsoft's Major Nelson has admitted there are "a few issues" with the New Xbox Experience update release yesterday.

"With an update of this magnitude, reaching more than 14 million people around the globe, we are aware some of you may be experiencing a few hiccups along the way," the Major wrote on his blog.

"The Live team is closely monitoring the Live service and Xbox.com and are aware of a few issues including what's happening with Marketplace. The team is actively working on the issues, so thanks for bearing with us."

Have you experienced any issues, readers? How about hiccups?

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (57) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Zomoniac #1 3 years ago

    Good.

  • DrR0b3rts #2 3 years ago

    Mine locks up when browsing through friends avatars, which is kind of central to the whole concept.

  • j1m.ch053n #3 3 years ago

    I couldnt access anything on marketplace at all last night - just kept getting an error code

  • Beano #4 3 years ago

    Issues I experienced :

    1) Markedplace was extremely slow or simply failed.

    2) Gamer Pictures and avatars often did not show up or was very slow.

    I assume these issues are only bacause of their servers being hammered.

    One thing I was wondering about, is the new network test - why can't we see the NAT status anymore?

    But overall the new NXE is pretty nice - I love the HDD install (no more DVD drive noise) and the new guide menu with Quick Launch is great :)

  • dudefella #5 3 years ago

    marketplace is pretty borked, yes

  • cyacomini #6 3 years ago

    Browsing the marketplace was very (very!) slow last night - to be expected though with so many people all trying to browse at the same time.

    Slightly more annoying though was the frequent crashing when checking out the friends section of NXE - I had to restart my Elite more than a few times.

    Not too fussed about it though, as long as they can sort it out within the next week or two..

  • DB2k #7 3 years ago

    lol forgot this was out. Watched the footy last night instead of turning the 360 on. This update is the biggest hyped littlest content deliverable ever.

  • indafunkyhouse #8 3 years ago

    did lock up a little when looking at friends list, but I put that down to the amount of data flying about for the update. Marketplace would work now and then but kept telling me content was no longer available.

    One thing has anyone looked at their games library and noticed games missing??? If I look in mine my box refuses to accept I have played certain games like GOW and Rainbow 6, yet they are on my achievements list!

  • Charlie_Miso #9 3 years ago

    15 million eh?

  • Moonprince #10 3 years ago

    Yep, me too. Wasn't a big deal as there wasn't anything I wanted...

    Avatar's are still lame. More in your face than I was hoping too :/

    shame

  • muscleblade #11 3 years ago

    "I couldnt access anything on marketplace at all last night - just kept getting an error code "

    Same here. Tried to buy A kingdom for Keflings but got the error code.

  • menage #12 3 years ago

    Slow, but that's expected. Also I thought it locked up during a friends screen as well, but I waited and it came back to normal;l after a minute.

    Also, the Fable theme sucks.The friends screen is nice. but who the fuck wants a theme with FABLE2!! actually written huge all over it, I get it morons, I bought the fucking theme, I know it's Fable!!, I hate that shit, just give me some cool art. that was before I actually found out that we had 3 free premium themes installed and I didn't have to bother at all to see how they work.
    Edited by 1 at 20/11/08 @ 09:07

  • Arwin #13 3 years ago

    Very laggy and a lot of the graphics wouldn't load. I didn't even try purchasing anything. Even media center ext was terribly laggy, and that shouldn't even use Live - though I wouldn't be surprised if it's sending usage data to MS up the wazoo.

    Its definitely an improvement though. 16:10 1680x1050 support with correct aspect ratio (basically black bars) is a nice addition. And once I have a game again that I actually want to play on the 360 right now (just too much good stuff on the other machine) I'll definitely use the HDD install feature as I sit about a foot from my 360.

  • GamesConnoisseur #14 3 years ago

    As many as PS3 PSN accounts?

    Before all the horde come in to rebuts this, yes I have 3 accounts and thus would be counted toward their PSN accounts!

    To be expected really, I also had a very slow marketplace content plus error codes, what with NXE being new and despite all the beta testing will not iron out ALL the bugs. Plus everyone accessing XBL at same time!

    Good that there will be updates to fix those but hope wont be too long to wait!

  • andywilkie35 #15 3 years ago

    yeah marketplace was slow - I think everything about the NXE is great apart from the marketplace in general - don't think its that much better to be honest. But like I said, the rest of it is great, also nice to be able to see what the achievement details are without having to bring up the blade everytime

  • oupe #16 3 years ago

    I had to re-install the apple/mp4 codec, the box stopped playing xvids (although it said the codec was installed). After 3 retries I could actually download said codec.

  • themerlin13 #17 3 years ago

    I had Hiccups in 1985 when I was told my history teacher was gay!

    Got one error with live last night when browsing but again put it down to traffic.

  • cyacomini #18 3 years ago

    /\/\

    xvid had better not stop working - I'm nearly finished Dexter series 3 ;)

  • Xerx3s #19 3 years ago

    TBF, I expected live to die entirely. It was all smooth sailing apart from some minor things though

  • XdarXideX #20 3 years ago

    I've had a couple instances where I thought it'd locked up but if you wait 20 seconds it catches up.

  • t8yman #21 3 years ago

    did anyone find the "appear offline" option? I tried for a bit, but couldnt find it.

  • Sicho_666 #22 3 years ago

    mine is running really slow, stuff isn't loading up and when i was playing fallout after the update (without intalling it to my hdd) the loading times between areas where really slow. i don't understand what the hells going on.

  • asphaltcowboy #23 3 years ago

    Really great to use the new dash, it's rather splendid. Not surprising it was getting hammered though - never had 40 of my friends list online at any one time before!

  • indafunkyhouse #24 3 years ago

    Those 14 million PSN accounts are going to have duplicates in there with people outside the USA making a US account to access stuff over there, so not really 14 million individual accounts

  • Buztafen #25 3 years ago

    ^^^Yeah its in system settings i think, nice to have the option.

    Only problem i saw is the Marketplace error which is no biggy. Whole seems very smooth, im impressed only took 2 mins to sort and navigating is a doddle.

    /likes!

  • Petulant_Radish #26 3 years ago

    Mine locked a few times whilst browsing the friends section, which is actually more of a pain to look at now, I preferred the quick glance of the old one, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it on the guide button blades.

    The party chat function is great, you can just keep dropping in and out of the chat channels. Works brilliantly.

    Has anyone managed to make an avatar that doesn’t look gay? I’m not homophonic, I would just rather have one that looks a little less camp than Julian Clary. I tried for a while, and then thought sod it and made an uber gay one instead.

  • curtlikesmeat #27 3 years ago

    Had a go last night and it was totally meh.... I don't get all the "it's like a new console" fuss...... they've just streamlined the menus a bit?

    The avatars kept me entertained for about 4 minutes, but now they're useless? Am I missing something?

  • Darren #28 3 years ago

    They should have staggered its release IMO... it would certainly have eased the load somewhat and made for a better experience overall. After all people who got into the NXE preview programme have been playing games with non-NXE users for several weeks now with no issues so mixing dashboard would not have been an issue.

    I was very impressed with the leaked NXE I installed but then I was offline. My online experience has been mixed so far - the Marketplace was virtually unusable, thanks to constant error messages (80072EE2 and 8007FFF) and it was still unbearably slow at 8:30am this morning. I also had several 10-15 second freezes while accessing my Friends list and selecting save games from the HDD where I thought my Xbox 360 had actually crashed! Same old Xbox LIVE there then!

    While I appreciate that these are teething issues due to everyone trying it out, it doesn't make for a great first impression. Why the Xbox 360 lags when LIVE is busy, I do not know, it has never happened on my PS3 when signed into PSN and it certainly doesn't happen when Firefox is struggling to load a webpage on my PC either. With this new dashboard being even more dependent on LIVE than before for those pretty icons it's absolutely critical that LIVE is stable and fast for everyone at all times. This service has 14 million plus users and as such, IMO, it should be designed to cope with all those users should they all decide to go online at once. Clearly it isn't and that is a little disappointing when you consider it costs £40 per year.

    I'm sure things *will* settle over the next few days though and aside from the LIVE issues, NXE itself is absolutely terrific. Not liking those 250 point "Premium" themes though... I know I don't have to pay for them but it doesn't change the fact that they're a rip off and 100 points more than the themes on the old dashboard. Why for goodness sake?!? :?

  • dr_faulk #29 3 years ago

    I have a major issue: the graphix r teh crap. The resolution on the thing that replaces the side blades is terrible.

    Other than that, my avatar looks like my Mass Effect character, so I'm happy.

  • Darren #30 3 years ago

    @dr_faulk - The Guide itself is exactly the same resolution as the old one, it's been done that way to save memory so you can access it during games. Personally despite it's decade old low-res looks, I think it's a vast improvement on the old sliding blades which tore like a bitch every time they slid in from the sides. Accessing them in games for saves and text entry was downright ugly and jarring too. The new one is a tenfold improvement IMO. I'd like to see a resolution increase to the same as the main dashboard though but I doubt that will ever happen.

  • Xerx3s #31 3 years ago

    "mine is running really slow, stuff isn't loading up and when i was playing fallout after the update (without intalling it to my hdd) the loading times between areas where really slow. i don't understand what the hells going on."

    Hmmm. Shouldn't be happening. Mine is a lot faster than it was. Have you tried clearing cache? Removing your profile and then reloading it works like a charm as well.

  • StealthAcolyte #32 3 years ago

    @Curtlikesmeat

    +1

    Waste of time really, the hiccup I had was downloading the thing in the first place.

    Hardly 'amazing' and definately not an 'experience'

  • zombies #33 3 years ago

    Took me the best part of 2 hours to download & install the thing!

    Had to re-download a media update to stream movies. Took about 5 attempts.

    Did a HD install of Dead Space which worked fine when I finally found the option to do it.

  • Gavio #34 3 years ago

    I updated about 8pm and the only problem I had was the Marketplace. I think it is better just takes a bit of time getting used to where everything is.

    Hopefully the Marketplace issue will be sorted soon and that we will everntually get a Netflix alternative in the UK, not sure why we pay the same if not more for the subscription and don't get all the services.

  • Petulant_Radish #35 3 years ago

    @ Vorlon,

    You can still access the blades at any time, just press the guide button and then you can pretend the update never happened, kind of.

  • SlackMaster #36 3 years ago

    Yeah I found marketplace unusable last night and it would hang every now and then when browing my friends list. I figured the problem was mostlikey due to all the NXE downloading going on.

  • agparrot #37 3 years ago

    Had an absolute blast with this last night - Partying up with people on my friends list, all playing different stuff, and inviting them en masse to games of Burnout, Worms, UNO and it was all slick and easy. At one point, we had people playing Burnout, Fallout, Gears 2, COD:WAW and watching Father Ted, all in conversation, and able to organise crossing into different games and whatnot.

    It meant that four of us were playing Burnout Paradise... in two teams of two to clear our 2UP challenges - we were able to offer advice on completion of the challenges over the two games, with helpful hints from people who were actually playing other stuff. Later on, I was eavesdropping on a game of Gears 2 in Horde mode, whilst playing Fallout 3 myself.

    Did have a few Friends list freezes, but a little patience did mean that it unfroze, and I am sure this is just because the service was absolutely being hammered yesterday.

    The other new feature, which I don't think is announced or working, was that when I fired up Fallout 3, I got the 'notification' flashing up saying "Friends Playing Fallout 3", but when I hit the Guide button to be taken to this presumably game-specific list, I just got the regular Friends list in the Dash.... Perhaps the message was misleading or I am misinterpreting it. Similarly, in UNO, the list of Friends playing UNO was blank, even when 3 people on my list clearly were playing it.

    I also have about seven PSN accounts, but no PS3, for all you stat-watchers out there.

  • chrisjm #38 3 years ago

    crashed my box just browsing about (was also within friends avatars) :(

  • warlockuk #39 3 years ago

    Couldn't delete installed apps from the System / Memory area, got an error message - I had to remove them from one of the other menus (might've put the disc in to do it, can't remember).

    Other than that and a 30-second freeze at one point it worked fine for me. ZOMG NO RROD! :D

  • Jimbob89 #40 3 years ago

    Lolol a few issues? it bloody gave my perfectly working 7month old console 1 red ring and a system error 15mins after the update. Some may call that just bad timing, but i call BS, seeing as it's had no problems with it at all until the lovely NXE was released.

  • Darren #41 3 years ago

    At one point last night I went to my Games Library to load up Banjo-Kazooie and noticed a 10 second delay while it tried to load something before giving me the same error code 80072EE2 that I'd got trying to access the Marketplace. Dunno why that happened as the Games Library consists of stuff only on the HDD, right? I guess this just shows how dependent NXE is now on a reliable, stable LIVE service and that is something we don't have right now.

  • Petulant_Radish #42 3 years ago

    @ Vorlon

    Have you looked at them properly? As it has almost all the functionality of the old blades, you can access the marketplace through it, set up parties, view achievements, etc. etc. what makes you think it is less functional?

  • Darren #43 3 years ago

    @vorlon_man - "The menus are a little messy, and quite why I have to scroll through all my friends rather than seeing them all at the same time i dont know."

    This is something Microsoft obviously haven't made very clear but if you press the Guide button you get a miniature version of the old dashboard and from that you can access your Friends list in exactly the same way as before if you prefer. Microsoft really need to make this feature more prominent because people are complaining about missing features than are actually still there!

  • kinky_mong #44 3 years ago

    Had the marketplace problem, but also couldn't get the Party chat to work at all. At one point it said my family settings didn't allow for party chat. Considering I've never set any family settings on the 360 I was pretty miffed.

    And after all that hype of the avatars coming with loads of clothes designed by London Fashion Students the actual selection of clothes was meagre and very underwhelming.

    The guide is great though, and the achievement whore in me loves the set up of the game library.

  • THATinkjar #45 3 years ago

    I, too, experienced a couple of problems last night (friends list on the dashboard froze, and the marketplace was completely inaccessible). However, I like almost every change they've made, so I'm a happy man.

  • asphaltcowboy #46 3 years ago

    That's a poor version of the blades, - and has half the functionality.

    What functionality is it missing?

    EDIT: and where's bad09 - I want his thoughts!
    Edited by 1 at 20/11/08 @ 10:55

  • Negotiator #47 3 years ago

    Off topic I was wondering if anyone knows, since games can now be installed on the hardrive. Is there a way to have the same membership on 2 hardrives, as my current hardrive is only 20gig.

  • peterfll #48 3 years ago

    Mostly Marketplace error messages, sometimes multiple message appearing in a row. Also some screen freezing for a period of seconds. Not that surprising TBH. Microsoft have yet to handle a large LIVE volume seamlessly.

  • lockload #49 3 years ago

    No problems for me

  • barchetta #50 3 years ago

    The freezing when leaving a particular friends detail screen was the only problem I experienced but it didn't actually lock the console - just by waiting 40-60secs the dashboard returned the top-level friends frame (unacceptably slow in normal operation but those servers must have been pretty stressed yesterday).
    Edited by 1 at 20/11/08 @ 12:17

  • Darren #51 3 years ago

    Well I've not experienced any system lockups, only 10-15 seconds freezes where I couldn't do anything and it *looked* as if my 360 had crashed. Like peterfll though, I did get a lot of error messages while accessing the Marketplace and not just one either, at one point I got like seven or eight and had to keep tediously pressing A to clear each one.

    It was all a bit of a mess to be honest and made me regret even bothering coming back online in the first place as the leaked NXE had been working flawlessly offline for two weeks. I mean the whole point of me coming online in the first place was to catch up on the Marketplace releases and I couldn't even do that! I couldn't even find the Left 4 Dead demo because apparently that was removed because the game is out... except it isn't, not until tomorrow.

  • barchetta #52 3 years ago

    Pretty sure I'd read somewhere (teamxbox?) that the demo was going to be a short-lived thing. Not sure of the logic in that though.

  • Dan_LXIX #53 3 years ago

    Only problem I had was the re-install of the DivX codec didn't work first time so I had to download it again, but other than that it works perfectly.

    It downloaded quickly, it's fast to use and looks way better than the old blades, and we had a fair bit of fun with the avatars last night.

    I also got B&K as well, so I had zero live problems.

    top marks MS.
    Edited by 1 at 20/11/08 @ 12:37

  • NymChimpsky #54 3 years ago

    I share the problems of the majority here with errors on accessing the Marketplace, but no big deal really.

    What *did* bother me was that - instead of downloading the demo of 'Kingdom for Keflings' - I somehow managed to purchase it!! I obviously wasn't paying attention, but I'm going to blame the new interface for that!! ;-)

    Overall though, love the slickness of it, and the timing's great as an old friend's visiting this weekend and trying to make up his mind whether to buy a PS3 or 360. Hopefully the new pretty pictures will push him in the right direction...........

  • citizenHUNTER #55 3 years ago

    Mine froze up a couple of times and Marketplace was being slow or either not loading as many others have reported (which I'm glad of tbh cos I thought it was maybe my net connection mucking up).

    Love the 1680x1050 support.

    Oh and yeah, the selection of clothes is wank and you can't really make the avatar look like you. And would I be right in thinking that you can't actually create any avatar you want, but you need to 'start over' and wait til you find a randomly generated one that looks like what you want?? The options to change it's appearance are too limited, they should have allowed you to change where eyes etc are placed and their size, the current options just are lacking very much, especially considering you can make more recogniseable ones on the Wii than you ever would be able to with the Xbox Avatars. Sorry to complain but I just think if they're going to have avatars and make them quite prominent there really should be a lot more choice to make exactly the one you want. My current one looks more like Tom Cruise than me.. :S

    edit:
    And finally. I don't like how it always defaults to The Spotlight channel full of adverts etc rather than the My Xbox channel whch really is what it should always open up with. Grr.
    Edited by 1 at 20/11/08 @ 14:23

  • Kyledanutmeg #56 3 years ago

    how do you change the resolution

  • White_Westie #57 3 years ago

    I think you need to realize the network load that would have hit ms servers as the millions of users downloaded nxe and tested all the bits! You have to give ms credit that there are minor issues but overall succesful. And to those who say ms should have upped their server farms, they did but you have to also workout the average load balance (eurogamer could do with some of their servers when they are giving beta keys away :-)) well done ms