Microsoft working to fix NXE "hiccups" News

Good.

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

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

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 :)

marketplace is pretty borked, yes

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..

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.

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!

15 million eh?

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

"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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

/\/\

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

^^^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!

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.

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?

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?!? :?

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.

@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.

"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.

@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'

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.

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.

"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) "

That's hard to comprehend after a month involving Gears 2, Fable and Fallout 3 but each to their own. LBP is getting plenty of love but it wouldn't be enough to make me miss those.

On topic: it was ok yesterday afternoon but very borked last night. Loads of erros on the marketplace. Looksmore settled this morning and all working well, downloading well etc.

@ 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

@ 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?

@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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Lockups in the NXE when pushing the guide button. Happened about 3 times and couldn't be resolved without a reboot.

Peoples gamertag pictures not displaying all the time, sometimes they're there - sometimes they're not

prefer the look of it tho to be honest..