Almost everything you want to know about the New Xbox Experience

by Xav de Matos on Jul 18th 2008 4:00PM

Looking for simple answers to your Xbox 360 dashboard redesign questions? Here are a few points to take away from the new Xbox experience:

"There's nothing to announce" right now regarding a keyword search for the Marketplace. We hope for some kind of searching option or a better layout for content
Playing games from the hard drive will work fine for multi-disc games; in fact, you can pick which discs you want to rip (but a disc swap for the correct disc in the drive is required)
As an example, Joystiq was told that Devil May Cry 4 is approximately a 4 or 5GB installation and takes about 10 minutes to copy onto a harddive: PS3 installation is roughly 18-25 mins
You'll need to keep the disc in the drive the entire time. This is about speeding up load times and to check if you own the title -- the disc will not spin so no more jet noises
Xbox 360 notifications look the same but are actually very cleaned up and look sharper -- the sounds are all the same
Yes, you can still use your gamertag pics and your themes (they look cleaner and more crisp now, an example of what it could look like is above) -- example of a gamerpic in action is in the top right corner of the image above

Gallery: New Xbox Experience

Source

Tags: avatars, dashboard, dashboard-redesign, E3, e3-08, e3-2008, e308, the-new-xbox-experience

Reader Comments (91)

Is there anyway to eliminate that grey background(bottom half)?

Yo Xav

So the pic in the top right corner can be changed to our own gamerpic and still have our avatar in the main gamercard? I would rather have everything on the gamercard.

Gamertag
Avatar
Gamerscore
Gamerpic
Last 4 achievements
Online Status

That would be perfect.

The way it looks right now we would be the only ones able to see our own gamerpics. That would blow. I actually like the avatars now since you can goof around with them it seems but I still want my Seriously Achievement gamerpic ;) on my new gamercard.

Any info on this?

I have a 20 GB model my only concern is that installs will be necessary on future games....ala the hard drive req for some game and the issue with the Xbox Arcade version of the console. I hope MS doesn't get greedy to cash in on overpriced HDD. Other than that I like the 360 system and the upgrades.

I still would really like to know how this addresses sorting int he marketplace. They've shown some items in it, but I'm wondering more about when I'm in the XBLA section and there's 140 games to sift through...

I'm kind of sad that XBLA still doesn't seem to have its own really obvious section. It's weird that they give that privilege to video, but not XBLA. I don't think the Games section is enough there.

Do you guys think the new UI and Avatar are enough to seduce the Wii owners?
It sure looks friendlier and more fluid than the blades.
Changing blades always felt abrupt.

When is this supposed to happen?

Fall update

I really don't see the point of installing onto the hard drive if you still have to keep the disc in the drive. I know it's about reducing noise, but is that really worth sacrificing valuable disc space on your 20GB hard drive?

And I know that you can buy a bigger drive, but the majority of people (including me) will not be doing that any time soon.

Did you do a poll or are you just talkin' crap?

The hard drive reads faster than the dvd and its bus is faster to the rest of the xbox360 components. So, basically this makes the load screens shorter.

Even though the 360 has a pretty high attachment rate on peripherals, I would bet you that the number of people that have upgraded to the 120GB HDD is a small one.

i wont be using the install feature for 90% of titles, but games such as Mass Effect which are quite slow at loading textures [due to the Unreal Engine 3].

the DVD drive doesnt bug me at all - cant even hear it when playing a game; just too into it :) but i've heard some of the louder drives & wanting to cut that out is understandable.

Gemini, you might be right. But that's because people didn't have a reason. Let's break it down now:-

1) Video Marketplace
2) More and more DLC
3) Installing games
4) New 60GB drive to be released

I think these factors will mean that people will be upgrading their hard drives. It's been a while since people last spent a bundle for their 360, bar the Rock Banders amongst us - so I think people will be more than willing.

Gemini,

As the owner of a 120GB hdd, I'm looking forward to this. And don't forget, the new sku has a 60GB hdd, and the Elite's been coming with 120GB stock since day 1. So yes, there are plenty of 20GB hdds out there... but keep in mind there are ALSO plenty of us that have more than 20GBs to play with as well. Installs are optional anyway, so if you don't want to buy an overpriced drive (although I'll be honest, after the initial pain at the register, it's been nothing but good times) maybe... don't use the feature? There's no reason to get pissy about added functionality dude.

I see your point. My worry is that we may only be a couple years from a new Xbox. There's too many games that I gotta buy without upgrading my hardware.

You do know that you can use any external drive also, right?

I know that I can plug in a usb drive and see what's on it (music, pics), but you can't use an external drive to install the game onto. Microsoft would never allow that.

well they had to have you keep your drive in the disc tray, otherwise people could rent, and get games for as little as 5$, (sry if thats really cheap, i dont rent games), but you get the point, no profit to ms. otherwise, i like the feature, im most like going 2 use it for gta iv, and any other games that have a lot to load like that

I'm not buying any Hard Drives. My 20GB will do fine until the 120 or the new 60 fall to less than £40.

Are the avatars optional? Because I would rather just have a normal picture.

I hate everything about this

I'm hoping the run-off-hard drive feature saves my scratched copy of COD4!!

Themes look nicer (read: more visible) but there are still a lot of things that are worrying me.

That is not a gamerpic in the upper right is it bc it looks like the avatar?

are you saying that you can choose not to have the avatar in the upper right?

All of this sucks!

only the best is HD-backup. and 8 persons in the same chat.

I hate that fucking MIIEES WIIIESS PLAIEESS

i'm sure you can choose either a gamerpic styled on your Avatar or just a regular gamerpic.

They would have to refund everyone back their points if you cant use the gamerpics anymore.

I look foward to having my 360 bricked this fall.

I, personally, feel like the "avatar" idea is completely useless. I, nor any of those on my friends list, could possible give a crap about this feature. If you are 10-15 years old and use the 360 you MIGHT get into this, but i REALLY don't see the point.

Don't underestimate the Primetime 1 vs. 100 gameshow concept. I think with real cash prizes huge buzz for this game could build very quickly. I think you'll see Avatars used more for these types of games than anything else.

10-15 years old? You mean the same age group best known for playing games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo 3?

Seriously, if there's anything Nintendo has shown us, it's that it's the *older* age groups who aren't afraid to play around with the kiddy stuff. They aren't the ones desperately trying to hide their own inadequacies by surrounding themselves with untold amounts of Teen or Mature game titles.

I hate how the Avatars look though I'd rather have them copy Home by making realistic Avatars but are simple to create.

Seriously MS Rare creating the Avatars is a bad thing get the Second Life guys to do come on shell out that money.

PS: I love MS for not making Motion Controls.

Some of the stuff thay are doing is good. Installing on the hard drive is good and the lay out is good smooth and stylish. But it kinda reminds me of a ps3 menu is some ways... do you know what i mean?
Not so keen on the mii things though, but could grow on me... They 1-100 game looks good in a way but the stupid mii things is such a rip off!!
What is this netflix??? never heard of it and by the looks of it i have to install it to the pc? What has happen to the IPTV? Have they just forgot about it?

so its ok for sony to rip off nintendo ... home personas vs mii's but because microsoft picks a middle ground between realistic and cartoon fully their the bad guys... i mean seriously get over it...

as for the install even on my 20gb drive its useful especially at 6-7gb... why? i only really focus on 1 game at a time anyway, so ill install it play it for weeks/month... and then delete it when im tired of that game.

It was kinda strange to hear nothing IPTV related at E3... but I think that's not supposed to come before the end of 08 anyway...

As for Netflix, it's a US only (as far as I know) web-based DVD rental company that also fairly recently started a streaming movie service... this update will allow Netflix/XBL Gold subscribers to use their 360 as a way to stream movies from netflix.

Chris I was only stating something and said that it was a rip off of miis. Where else would have MS got this idea from? These faces look very similar to the miis. Normally you would find MS doing something new that hasn't been done. Chris I dont need to get over anything cuz it dosn't bother me that much and just was a opinion I had and sharing it with others.

Okay, I just thought about something. MS's HDDs are specially made and installed with some type of firmware/software to combat piracy and what not, right?

How come they can not start allowing us to use regular hard drives, BUT forcing the installation of the firmware/software that is on the current HDDs. Therefore, the reasoning behing having to use their expensive drives would go away. If they make it where the system recognizes a regular hard drive, and the crap they pre-install on their hard drives is automatically installed on regular drives, then problem solved.

Everyone could be happy. WE can purcahse our own hard drives with much bigger capacities at a fraction of the cost. MS could be happy because we now have tons a room to purchase movies, games, etc

Thoughts?

MS and any of their retail partners who carry the peripherals make a huge amount of money on them. Although it would be in consumer's best interest to install whatever drive we'd like... it is most certainly not in MS or Best Buy/Gamestop/your favorite place to buy hardware best interests, it'll never happen...

unless you don't mind doing a bit of modding, in which case you have that ability right now ;)

I understand that, but I cant imagine MS is making that much money off the 120 GB HDDs. Maybe they are, Id really like to see the numbers.

Id love to have a bigger hard drive but there's no way im spending over $100 for one.

I think if they

a) made the hard drives they offer MUCH cheaper, they would fly off the shelves,

or

b) allowed us to use store regular hard drives that are much cheaper, but still forcing a download of the software to limit piracy

...then people would probably purchase and download more movies, games, etc.

Unless these drives they make are flying off the shelves, I think they would make more money in the long run by using one or both of these options I listed.

Well, I doubt they're exactly flying off the shelves, but they're obviously selling at a good enough clip that MS hasn't felt the need to change the price in the year or so it's been available...

Considering the actual cost of the hardware in the drive, I'd suspect that MS is actually making pretty good money on these, and the retailers are doing even better. Remember the consoles themselves don't make much money for MS or the retailers; but that's a planned part of the industry (well in MS and Sony's case at least, Nintendo has proudly bragged that they've never taken a loss on a console); the loss on the consoles however is made up through peripheral sales (this is once place retailers really clean up afaik) and of course game licensing/sales.

I think the Dashboard looks good enough, reminds me of the Zune interface a bit. Yet, I think they should capitalize on the HDD install option by allowing Multi-disc games to run with 1 disk validation. For example, if I installed all discs for Lost Odyssey or Final Fantasy and already have disk 1 on the tray, I shouldn't change it for disk 2 when the time comes since I already validated my install...Don't know, that option could still lead to piracy but its a good option for multi-disk games.

yeah, that's still piracy. if you bought or rented FF13 from gamefly, installed 4 discs, you could keep the first disc and just throw in a dvd with 'Disc 1 label fake'.

i don't think it's that bad to still switch between discs.

i look forward to this update.

not so much on the avatars...hope i can still keep my Ninja Gaiden 2 gamerpic (worked so hard to get that! lol)

*
i meant you could exchange the game back to retail or gamefly with the fake disc.

this new setup requires that you prove that own all discs. it isn't like Oblivion GOTY edition where you can basically give all your friends the Shivering Isles expansion, lol.

even PS3 doesn't allow you to play the game without inserting the disc, unlike some PC games.

I have 2 requests. Its a shame that the disc still has to be in the drive all the time but ok. no biggie.

1- Let me put a game disc in an hd-dvd drive so that I can show that I own 2 different games, and let me play off the HDD for each game.
2- On my gamerpic, I created a personal one once. Now I'm doomed to walk the earth with 2 different ones and the system will always force me to update my gamerpic twice whenever I want to update it.

LMAO at doomed to walk the Earth. That is annoying though.

ok, so you'd want to rent a game then load it and never want to use the disc again?

piracy much? microsoft isn't that stupid yo.

@ryan- no.

MS is reading the disc in the DVD drive to prove you own it. So why not let me put the disc in an HD-DVD drive to serve that same purpose? So I could play Halo 3 and then without having to replace the optical disc (because it's in the other drive) I could play, say, COD4

because maybe the HD-DVD drive doesn't play games and won't register ownership?

ryan- that's why i'm asking MS to let the HD-DVD recognize that there's a game in the drive. It's not being played off the drive but merely being checked. It would be great if MS would allow this.

The only thing I've ever wanted is to be able to select which notifications I receive. Like I want to only get a pop-up for messages and achievements, and maybe invites. They should just have 4 or 5 checkboxes that you can select from depending on what kinds of notifications you want.

Amen to that. I can't really live without achievement notifications, but I couldn't care less if one of my friends just signed on. And in games like DMC4 and DoA4, it goes from being annoying to distracting enough to cause me to screw up.

Still a big problem for me is that the Avatars look ugly. I want them to look more realistic and yeah right now having the Rare guys do it was the wrong idea. They still have a couple of months get some new people on board or look at the reception no ones buying into it. MS get new developers to make the Avatars, they can get the Second Life guys I mean come on they are the best at making these things.

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Almost everything you want to know about the New Xbox Experience

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