New Xbox Experience Comments by Tom Bramwell

*Begin Rant*

I bet it doesn't have the ability to downgrade a gold monthly subscription to silver...

*End Rant*

The move from re-invention with hardware, to re-invention to software is different. But it most certainly plays into MS' hands, as they'll be doing battle in their territory.

I was fortunate enough to get on the NXE preview, and I have to say I really like it. The install to HDD feature works great and is, for me, the best bit of the whole NXE. Tried it on a few games - notably Mass Effect and Fable II. Obviously, those with 20GB HDD are not going to be able to install more than one game, but on my 120GB Elite, it's great. And very quiet when playing those installed disc-based games.

"There are none of the old dashboard interstitials, either - those flashes of green between hitting "Play" on a finished download and getting into the game."

Eh? Dunno what you are talking about. A faulty machine perhaps?

Penguinzoot - assuming you had already played Mass Effect on 360 prior to install - did it improve the texture popping (hard te belive it wouldn;t) and if so to what degree? Not expecting it to vanish as it even seems to happen on my PC for some UE3 powered games.

Great article. Hm, little over 2 weeks until launch. Would have been nice to get the upgrade before Gears of War 2.

@BadBoyBonner

I finished ME when it was released, so all I did after installing the game was start a new game and play the first mission, and I didn't notice TBH - I was too busy being distracted by the sound of silence coming from the DVD drive!

I've read elsewhere though that texture pop-in for ME has not been greatly improved, and cannot be since that is a "feature" of the Unreal engine, unfortunately.

Why wasnt the install to disk feature in from launch ?

My opinion of the xbox360 up to now is that streaming the games from a DVD has been the bottleneck of the system.

A huge Bottleneck too i mean.

Some games run like absolute garbage on my system due to the slow speeds of the dvd drive.


This update is not a minute to soon IMO, and it is certainly not 'forward thinking'

"Some games run like absolute garbage on my system due to the slow speeds of the dvd drive. "

Slow?????? You been drinking????

Shame the hardware is still crap. Going to buy number 3 tomorrow - the previous two have had disk-read errors at amost bang-on a year after I first got them.
Extended warranty for the new one, methinks.

Woo! it's like getting a new console for free!
It won't produce as much heat or noise, and DVD drive's life could be prolonged for ages. Yay HD installs!

This is what the 360 was made for.

/cries

Although, the avatars can fuck right off.

HDD installs are very nice but what could transform existing games is the party feature.

Setting up a room with 7 friends and joining a BF:BC server with full voice comms and a sturdy squad system would be great. Not going to happen though, is it?

hey i have a new xbox experience- it broke and is away being repaired for the first time :)

I really dislike it - sorry. Since they announced it all I've seen just looks bad (to me) and I think when it does arrive my 360 will be used less

The installs would be nice but so far far I can't bring myself to be ripped off with a 120GB HDD at that price....

Jerry Johnson insisted that a central tenet of the New Xbox Experience is "serendipitous discovery of content"

Goody. Does that mean that Asian gamers get to download another movie next to "Pirates of the Carribean"?
No wonder the 360 is a flop in Japan (excepting these past couple of weeks due to the drop in price).

Edit: PS: What's making all that noise in my 360 is not the DVD Drive but that bloody fan. It's like having a jet engine underneath the telly!

I'd rather not have to use an avatar. More ads is not a welcome addition, either. Hmm.

@ badboybonner

The pop-in in Mass Effect doesn't completely vanish but it is reduced greatly. It also depends on the state of your dvd drive though; mine is in a pretty bad state and sometimes some textures would barely even load in some cutscenes. I watched a friend play it on his 360 and for him it wasn't nearly as bad, so obviously for him, the difference will be smaller. But if you feel it disturbs your experience of the game now, I have no doubt you'll feel an improvement after the install.

/insert moaning whinge here

I see your moaning whinge vacancy, and I insert bad09's comments in there.

I for one welcome our new NXE overlords

"What, you don`t want MONEY for this upgrade ? Have you heard of a little company called Apple ?"

why no internet browser? Why, oh why??

looking forward to it, and I really dont see what everyone's problem is with the avatars?
the feature I think I will like most is the install to hdd.

I like the new guide, but avatars and the extra adverts seem like a massive pain in the arse.

Why no internet browser?

?

/points at crappy console browsers

/points at your mac/pc screen

@smurphs

agree 100%, I know gamepad browsing isnt the easiest thing to do well, but an attempt would be nice.

Emporers new clothes. It look nice-ish, but I play games on my 360 - I don't spend my evenings in the dashboard.

It's so good that its best feature is the ability to use the old dash:)

/facepalms EG

Looking forward to this update. Got 6GB left on my 20GB HDD with around 25 XBLA games. When I call up the XBLA blade it takes almost a minute for the icons and titles of all the games to be fully displayed. Very annoying and if I've read this preview correctly, this delay should become a thing of the past.

It really is excellent.

The Avatar is a bit...well, pointless but I appreciate the effort they've put in with trying to 'mimic' wii's. I installed Fable to the HDD and it makes a massive difference to my experience simply because the drive doesn't have to spin at a million miles an hour now. There seems to be a small improvement in loading times and things like the menu screen pop up quicker now but the main benefit to installing is the huge reduction in noise.

The new dashboard is so much better than the blades, the ads are there, but they seem less pervasive to me, less in your face than they were with the blades. The new guide system is actually a lot better than the old too so it's not a contradiction for EG to see it's the best thing about the update. It pops up much quicker, looks nicer and includes more functionality.

Does this mean that EG will stop beating the PS3 install options up now?

Well no, thats "optional" innit.
Still, roll on next gen when HDDs are mandatory. Console installations a gogo!

Making the hard drive an optional extra with the 360 was a colossal mistake. Bad though console browsers are, I am posting this from my N95...

Looks good. Right now I use my ps3 for cross-platform games for three reasons. Noise. Free multiplayer (Gold will never be worth it to me..just don't play online enough.) The interface on the ps3 is cleaner.

This may fix the interface issue, and may help with the noise--but only installing one game at a time onmy lowly 20gb drive is an irritation.

Wish I'd picked up the super cheap 60gb premium with fable and pes in ASDA now--but keep holding back as I hear contradictory reports on the fan noise from new machines.

I read somewhere that they use three different fan types, and one in particular (delta?) is still noisy.

I would be gutted to get home and find that the box still whined.

The blowing noise of the dvd drive is ridiculously loud, but without it I hear the buzzing whine of the fan all the more.

So, anyone got any news on when a new new chipset will be out (Jasper?) as I think I'll wait for a truly solid pice of hardware before splashing out on a replacement.

Oh--is jasper the 65nm version? I heard of a 45nm in the pipeline--so less heat and therefore less power and hopefully need for whining cooling fans (though tbh I think it could already be cooled quietly, they just use shoddy parts.)

Much as I respect the power of xbox on the screen, the hardware itself feel like it's been bolted together as a prototype!

What this gen has thought us is that Sony is primarily a hardware company and Microsoft is a software one. If they learn from their mistakes, then the PS4 and the Xbox whatever should be brilliant toys. If anything I feel that Sony has a bit of a longer road.

"its just the hardware is shit."

unreliable maybe but shit no.. it's very powerful and produced great results.. far from shit. It is unreliable though yes.

Great preview.

Sounds absolutely brilliant. The 19th can't come soon enough.

@rob76

Definitely but Sony are learning. Love the XMB but this is going to kick it into oblivion by the looks of it.

See the problem with the install thing is the word optional. Probably everyone with a large HDD will install games now but thats okay, cos its optional...init?

OMG!


/is emotional.../

edit: would even kiss (if they are girls as I suspect), bitter ppl like coufonder, and minions. It's ok..., it doesn't matter anymore...

NXE supports all the same video and audio codecs as its predecessor.

Cool. But will we finally, FINALLY be abble to ff/rw music? Honestly, I can't understand how after multiple dashboard updates this highly requested feature remains absent. At this point it appears to be a deliberate decision to NOt do it, for some bizarre reason.

Maybe with NXE they'll finally sort it.

Also:

I see there's no bleating about the hard-disk install (which Microsoft are finally including) from Eurogamer, something they do in every article about PS3 installs. So much for honest and independent reporting.

How hard is it to understand? Optional is not the same as Mandatory.

Can't believe people are excited for a fucking dashboard update. Yay, we can install games. Great for single player but absolutely useless for multiplayer because all users in your lobby would have to have the same game installed. "Here, install a game and it's quieter because the hardware is a piece of shit and breaks, like , A LOT!"

And I see Eurogamer couldn't resist a dig at Sony for 'endless patches'...

MS = Innovative? Fuck that.

but absolutely useless for multiplayer because all users in your lobby would have to have the same game installed.

... erm, wouldn't all participants in a multiplayer game have to have a copy of the game anyway?

/is puzzled

D@spydy: dude..., maybe you should try another hobby, it is ok to be excited with this.

And we - xbots - are now cool,and chilled out ppl - can't you see the Mii's shit ? - so take your agressive whines elsewhere.
And maybe a Valium.

Got bored reading through the article :)

Can anyone just list bullet points of what has been changed/improved/is new.

What are the odds that this will RRoD vast swathes of consoles?

/end cynicism

Looks really good, the old dashboard is really creaking at the seams...

I love the way EG get shit for praising MS and ripping Sony on occasion.

NEWS FLASH: SONY ARE NOT THE BEST ANYMORE. Microsoft have done a shitload for console gaming, whatever their motives, and they have trounced Sony software wise this gen and pretty much kept an even footing hardware wise on a console thats a year older and less than half the price.

Just because EG tell it like it is and aren't part of the Sony fanboy bandwagon that millions of people STILL haven't jumped from.

It's literally amazing to me that a brand name (that is, Playstation) has managed to support a clearly inferior console for 2 years. But I suppose, sheep follow what they know.

forget all the cosmetic stuff. I'd rather Microsoft incorparate an optional regional filter as standard. P2P gaming benefits the americans alone.. and we all know come 3-5pm they host dominate all games. A optional regional filter would fix all that.. and theres no reason why it could not be easily implimented considering they have no trouble placing on regional pricing for dlc.
Plus, a filter would allow the live community to grow alot more..as we all want to play and talk to people from our own communitys..strike up friendships there through playing on purely UK hosted games, rather than put up with endless race bashing between americans and english.

Ofcourse this is all dream land stuff.. Microsoft will never do it, they dont care enough. So whilst the americans host our every game, and enjoy p2p gaming with their bigger better connections, those of us who arent in the states will always have the slight disadvantage. An easy example of this is cod4. UK hosted games will easily leave you with 5 green ping bars. As soon as the americans host dominate you'll be easily looking a 3.

Best thing is? Microsoft charges us 2 as much for live rrp than they do the americans.

@monkeywithnoeyes, "Best thing is? Microsoft charges us 2 as much for live rrp than they do the americans."

Not quite twice as much. MS actually charges £3 more (for a 12 month subscription) RRP when taking into account the exchange rate and VAT. Sorry, but that's not exactly a rip off.

Also, MS charges UK gamers less for consoles than US ones. So (again taking into account exchange rates and deducting VAT)

360 Arcade is £3 cheaper in the UK than the US
360 Pro is £24 cheaper in the UK than the US
360 Elite is £31 cheaper in the UK than the US

So at the very least, that £3 more we pay for Live here is covered by the first years saving on the Arcade. If we are looking at the Elite, then it would take 10 years of Live purchases to match what they would pay overall in the US.