Details on the New Xbox Experience: search, hard drive play, alerts, themes, pics

by Christopher Grant on Jul 17th 2008 10:28PM

click to view the entire gallery

Here are a couple interesting takeaways from our tour of the New Xbox Experience:

"There's nothing to announce" right now regarding a keyword search for the Marketplace. Let's hope they either a) add one in or b) drastically improve how we find things
Playing games from the hard drive will work fine for multi-disc games; in fact, you can pick which discs you want to rip (for example, we're superstitious and we'd only rip odd-numbered discs).
As an example, we were told that Devil May Cry 4 is approximately a 4 or 5GB installation and took about ten minutes.
You'll need to keep the disc in the drive the entire time. This is about speeding up load times (and hey, bonus tip: no more noisy DVD drive while you're playing!)
The alerts look the same – actually, like the entire interface, they look sharper, cleaner. Oh, and the sound is the same.
Yes, you can still use your gamertag pics and your themes (in fact, they look a lot better now!)

New Xbox Experience

Tags: New-Xbox-Experience, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (95)

can you show us a pic with the gamerpics in effect?

I think a nice way to include your current gamerpix with the new avatar system is by using your gamerpic as a logo on your avatars shirt.

I think that might be a happy compromise.

http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/7253/2674486108e1bb0a4947hk7.jpg

@obie

Or, better yet, allow us to place the gamerpic over the avatar's face.

@kagai

I'm not sure if you would want some of the gamerpics at a face, maybe a tattoo, but not a face....

Is that a new vid or the same old one?

Isn't obvious to any of you yet why XBL will now have this feature to dump games on the HDD. That's right, MGS4 for the 360 comes on two disc! You load the second disc on to the HDD and keep the first disc in the trey. So you can play the game without swapping disc. This solves the storage problem for developers and eliminates the need for blu ray on 360. Uncharted, Drake's Fortune could also soon find it's way on 360. Oh Yes, MS are clever. Oh yes indeed!

good point, i like where your heads at!

You may be right about MGS4...I honestly don't care about that title however.

But regarding the swapping discs thing I think you might be wrong. The article says that you need to keep the disc in there while you're playing...

In the case of MGS 4 you would certainly need the bigger HDD's available. I don't see the game going to the 360.

On a related note -

It's a little sad when we are all happy that we can now install data to the HDD because of how loud the drive is.

Well if Uncharted wasn't published by Sony then yeah it could, shame that cause I still want to play it. I've always thought MGS4 would eventually come to 360 though.

Or maybe it's because of FF13...?

Or possibly they are adding the 360 lineup to the xblm? Look at the screenshots, why would they try to sell games to you if you have to goto the store?

i am way excited for this, kinda surprised at all the negativity surrounding it!?

because it looks like ass. It is a shining example of microsoft's "creativity". There's nothing new or clever about it. They even use the words "channel" and "spotlight". But I guess this would look innovative if, while under your rock, you haven't seen itunes, wii, or home. Regardless, it is still a very poorly designed UI.

I think it's going to be a welcome makeover. In particular, if the system is more responsive and fluid.

yea it is kind of clunky, not unlike the comment system here at joystiq.

I want a much smoother transitions, Just seems like everything should be fast considering its power, I think that it might have to do with the hard drive though.

Sweet, now I can play GTA4 without getting a disc read error halfway through a 45 minute long mission!

Keeping the disc in the drive is for faster loading? Uhhh no. Just no. It's to keep you from renting and ripping. Who are they kidding with that?

Glad to hear about the dual-disc releases though. Hopefully that means no disc swapping.

I think he knows this... just poor choice of words. I think he meant something like this... "You'll need to keep the disc in the drive the entire time. This is about speeding up load times not no-disc convenience/pirating/stealing"

Yeah generally this is where reading with your brain would have won over reading with your eyes. Hence the, You need to keep the disk in the drive. (as in period stop thought) This is about speeding up load times.

This insinuating the option is meant for helping with load times, it isn't meant to replace the need for a disk.

I make a habit of reading with my beer goggles on STOP My sarcasm is foiled by the lack of an Italic option STOP I'm hungry and I'm out of cake FULL STOP

Still thinkin' that this looks better than the traditional "blades" once I've seen it in action! When I first saw the screens I was like, "Ohhh noooooo!!!" but now I'm starting to warm up to the idea of this different interface and even the avatars... we'll see how it works when I have the controller in my hands, I guess!

I think all the features in this update are really cool. Playing games from the hard drive is one of the best ones along with the community/chat/avatar and netflix announcements.

So exactly how long do we have to wait for this?
I know its a Fall update but with MS that could be any time. I hope we dont have to wait until November. Id like to see it early Fall or earlier than that.

Hell, let's have it now. Looks ready to me

installation, great. now come on MS u dumb idiots
make it compulsary in order to compensate that lackfest DVD. make every game 2 disc, 1 for install and 1 for play.

that way, we could see devs adding more to our games than just running through same coridors.

Not a good idea. Bad. Shame on you

Definitely *not* a good idea because, unlike Sony, Microsoft didn't force an expensive harddrive down every user's throat when they didn't need one. I got my Arcade model and was perfectly happy with it, and literally the only reason I got a harddrive (20GB) later was because it provided some functionality I didn't need and I got it for cheap off eBay. Long story short is that not every user has a 120GB harddrive on which to place all these installs, nor even a 20GB on which they can place a maximum of 3 (which should imply to you that the PS3's 40GB limits to about 6-7 installs which, after the console has been around for some time, will make it extraordinarily inconvenient for pick-up-and-play nostalgia).

"...now come on MS u dumb idiots..."

Ha! So says some guy commenting on a blog to the multi billion dollar company. Take your head out of your ass man.

Also, an idiot would be dumb by definition.

So when a friend signs on and you're playing a game, how are you supposed to connect to them? Considering the friends menu is taken out of the Xbox Guide, wouldn't that mean I'd have to exit my game and go back to the Dashboard to interact with them?

Correct me if I'm wrong... but that seems pretty inconvenient.

you are wrong

You forgot a step, correcting me.

It'll still be in the guide, it's not shown here cause the guy demonstrating it isn't connected to Live.

No, when they show him on Live you see that there is still in game access.

@LocalToast - "You forgot a step, correcting me."

lol. awesome.

my coworkers turned and gave me weird looks for my random laughter.

Thank you, sir. ;)

@Psychofemm
-@LocalToast - "You forgot a step, correcting me."
-
-lol. awesome.
-
-my coworkers turned and gave me weird looks for my -random laughter.
-
-Thank you, sir. ;)

Me too. Funny stuff

I'll clear it up for you, the current guide blades system will come up when you press the guide button instead of the side swoosh blade, giving you access to the current "Friends" section and everything else ingame

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Quiet gaming FTW!

**tears of joy**

Now I can play Gears of War without listening to "Whurrrrrrrrrr..."

But the Whurrrrrr is part of the immersion process!

I think you meant it's part of the immulsion process.

I was thinking for example. You buy a game on 3 discs. Dump disc two and three on the HDD. You then just need to have disc 1 in the trey. So 360 can identify the disc and know that you own the game and run the first disc without having to dump it. dump two and three work off the hard drive. As long as disc 1 is still in the trey. Most of us should have the 120HDD for 360. There won't be too many games on multiple disc. So it wouldn't take up that much room and after you beat the game you delete the dumps and if you ever wanna play it again. You have the option of dumping or swapping.

That makes more sense than your first post. Nice work and I agree that could be done with FFXIII when it releases. Also MGS4 sometime around next year :P

Uncharted will never be on 360. Its a really good game but not a system seller.

"Most of us should have the 120HDD for 360."

Most of us? I didn't realize that most of us would spend $180 or whatever it is on the 120 HDD.

Unless, of course, you already have an elite.

I wanted to make some joke about you being an elitist but couldn't think of one.

Alright come on, we KNOW we'll be able to use themes and gamerpics, you keep telling us about how great they are in NXE, now SHOW US.

1 more thing. Since NO 1 here likes Wiis, what do you actually think of the MS avatars.

I personally dont see anything or notice in anyway how Miis contributed to the success of Wii. Wiimote is what made the gamecu...Wii.

MS are obviously intrigued by Wii success, but obviously think avatars were apart of it. WRONG (imo)

Could have at least had its OWN style, (keep it fresh and genuine) perhaps a bit more cooler and styling......or lego like??? Something to set 360 apart from Wii and PSN. Im sure many of u's are put off by this "in your face" kinda happy childish approach. 360 is a f*cking hardcore machine. not a Wii wannabe!

grr

this 1 wasnt here a minute ago

I agree, the avatars should be more of a minigame, something like Spore where you can constantly groom and change the avatar into something that is unique.

Dude, live kicks the crap out of PSN and Wii online combined. MS can do whatever they want and still have a better service.

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Details on the New Xbox Experience: search, hard drive play, alerts, themes, pics

New Xbox Experience

Reader Comments (95)

Posted: Jul 17th 2008 10:36PM (Unverified) said

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