Xbox Live update detailed: Games on Demand, Netflix queue/Movie Party, and more

by Christopher Grant on Jul 16th 2009 9:23PM

click for gallery of new Xbox dashboard features

Microsoft just dropped some details on the upcoming Xbox Live Dashboard update which begins rolling out later this summer – first, and perhaps most notably, we'll hit what won't be in this update: Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm support, along with Zune video and 1080p Instant On video functionality. Those are coming in "future Xbox Live updates" Microsoft assures us. "Updates" plural, eh?

So, what is included? The Games on Demand feature will be available in August, giving you access to digital downloads of full retail games. Check out our video of the feature here. Netflix is being updated in a big way, bringing Movie Parties (kick back in a virtual theater – think "Party System" for your Netflix movies) and the ability to manage your Netflix queue right from the Xbox. They're also touting an "Enhanced Playback Experience" which we presume uses the latest Silverlight "Smooth Streaming" technology (see the demo here).

Also included: The Avatar Marketplace, so you can buy virtual crap for your Avatar; User ratings, so you can attach a star rating to "every game on the Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace" (this thankfully includes Community ... err, Indie Games which have been sorely in need of community moderation!); and more. You can check out the full list after the break, or peruse the gallery of screens Microsoft just dropped on us.

Xbox Live Dashboard Update (2009)

Netflix Updates
Now you can watch movies with your friends no matter where they are and manage your queue from the comfort of your couch.

Movie Parties – Xbox LIVE Gold members can sit together in a virtual theater with up to seven friends no matter where they are while your Avatars watch a movie, flirt or even throw popcorn at each other.
Manage Your Queue – Browse the Netflix Instant Watch video catalogue, choose from the most popular movies and genres and add to your queue all from the comfort of your couch – no computer required.
Enhanced Playback Experience – Enjoy a smooth viewing experience when your internet bandwidth fluctuates.
Friends Info – Richer information is now displayed in the Friends channel and in the Guide showing what you and your friends are doing.

Avatar Marketplace

Express yourself! Deck your Avatar out with the latest clothing and props from the top brands and game franchises. Please note that only limited content is currently available in the preview.
Clothing – Download premium items, including branded apparel from your favorite fashion labels and Xbox 360 games such as "Halo."
Props – You can now equip your avatar with animated items they can carry around and interact with.
Awardables – The ability to earn Avatar clothing and props as rewards within games has been added. Please stay tuned for an update on supporting titles.

Games on Demand
Please note that Games on Demand will be available in the preview beginning early August.

Enjoy 24 x 7 access to a growing online library of popular full game titles on Xbox LIVE whenever you want them, in the comfort of your living room.
Purchase Options – Browse and download a great selection of full Xbox 360 games using Microsoft Points, direct debit, or credit card.
Game Manuals – Game manuals for Games on Demand titles can be viewed, downloaded or printed on Xbox.com.
It's Yours Forever! – As with other Xbox LIVE content, Games on Demand titles are linked to your Xbox LIVE account, so you can delete and re-download anything you have already purchased to the same console or another console.

User Ratings
User ratings help you find games that other people think are awesome!

Rate it – You can now rate every game on the Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace using a 5-star system.
Sort and Find it – Now you can easily find the games that everyone's been raving about by visiting the Top Rated games in the Browse All category of Xbox LIVE Games Marketplace.

Xbox LIVE Parties
Everyone loves to Party! Check out the new and improved Xbox LIVE Party features.

Party Reconnections – If you are accidently disconnected from your party, Xbox LIVE will automatically reconnect you.
Streamlined Party Invites – Invites are now just one click away! No need to click through multiple screens to get all your friends together.

Video Display Options

We've made it easier for you to see your entertainment in the highest resolution possible on your TV using an HDMI connection.
Display Discovery – Make sure you can see and hear your entertainment in the highest resolution and sound quality possible with the option to override and select audio and video formats independent of the information your television sends to your Xbox 360 console.

Other Improvements
We're always listening to you for feedback, and this Xbox LIVE update will include numerous dashboard updates.

Gold Member Veterans – Xbox LIVE Gold members get to show it off with a stamp on your Gamer Card that tells people how long you've been a Gold member.
Indie Games – Xbox LIVE Community Games has been renamed Xbox LIVE Indie Games. We feel this new name better represents the independent spirit of these titles.
Achievement Browser – We've revamped the Achievements browser so it's now easier to read through all the achievements while playing a game. You can now also launch a game directly from the browser.
Achievements Tracking – A new view inside the profile panel which includes a summary of Achievements earned across all the games played, and shows of all your completed games.
Streamlined Navigation - Streamlined navigation, including new entry points in the dashboard for Active Downloads, redeeming codes, recovering Gamertags and more.
Voice Messages – No more blank voice messages! When recording a voice message, a warning will pop up if no audio is detected.
Friends List Sorting – It's now easier to find your friends! Find and sort your friends by activity, Gamertag or online status by pressing the Y button while viewing the friends list in the Guide.
Memory – Time stamps now appear in the memory area, which particular handy when managing saved games.

Account Management
We've made some changes to make your life easier.

Subscription Notification – If your Xbox LIVE subscription is about to run out, you will now be notified when you sign into Xbox LIVE.
Updates for Invalid Windows Live IDs – If the Windows Live ID you provided has expired, you will now be prompted to update it the next time you sign into Xbox LIVE.
Account recovery – We've enhanced the account recovery process to make it faster and more reliable.

What does this Xbox LIVE Update not include?
The following features will be coming in future Xbox LIVE updates, which we'll be sure to let you know about.

Facebook
Twitter
Zune video and 1080p Instant On
Last.fm

Source

Tags: Dashboard, Games-on-Demand, Microsoft, Netflix, NXE, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (92)

I'm interested in the netflix party option and games on demand. Wish they'd give out more details on that, such as what are the 30 launch titles and how much do each of them cost. Oh...and a specific date would be nice since August is coming fast

Oh and I like that they're increasing the account recovery speed. When I recovered my tag last time to fix the Broken Steel achievement glitch it took a damn hour to recover it :(

Now to fix the overall dash and marketplace speed...

yeah, netflix movie party is a GREAT feature. if home had something like that, i'm sure a lot more people would actually use it.

The ability to invite people over to your Home apartment and watch movies/shows you have on your HD was announced a long time ago, but as usual Sony took too long to implement it and someone else took the idea.

Hey but at least we finally got picture frames! /bitter sarcasm.

oh, i know. that's why i said what i said. and yeah, i'm bitter too. sony needs to get their shit straight.

We have picture frames!!

/tries not die a little inside

No Sony announced it when they first unveiled Home. I remember hearing Phil Harrison say when he was demoing the TV that we'll be able to invite people over and watch things on our HD. He mentioned the same thing with picture frames and stereos for pics and music.

They also promised a trophy room which we still don't have, and there's no indication that it's coming anytime soon.

@tmac

that's odd, recovering a gamertag typically only takes like 10 min for me. maybe that was an anomaly, i dunno.

oh yeah, thanks for reminding me about trophy rooms. i want those too...

...and Home is still in BETA. At this rate, I think this Home beta will be exclusive to the PS3 console until the "real" Home makes its debut on the PS4. I just want to know why and what's taking so long?! They flaunted this shit two years ago and to date it's still the fucking same as it was during the E3 conference years ago, except with more dumb costumes to outfit your character but still without the TV

Why would the xbox use silverlight? It doesn't use flash to stream them.

silverlight = a microsoft product. so, why not use it?

Pretty cool, looking forward more to updates that follow this, wish there was some way to get msft points back if you "traded in" one of the games on demand

Well...That wouldn't really make sense. It's a digital copy, it's not like you can trade in a digital copy...There isn't a limited supply.

ya and at the end of the transaction ms would benifit at all, since Its not getting any material goods back. Unlike when you do it with gamestop or something, they can actually resell that and stand to make more money.

I think the games on demand thing will be nice, they might release titles a day or two earlier as marketing stunts and maybe they might release a title or two a few weeks early by accident :S

I can only imagine it would work like the stores in RPG games, where you trade them back at a slight loss.

So if you buy Halo: Reach through this service then decide you want to sell it back, you only get between 1/2 to 2/3 of your points back, instead of the full amount.

Two things:

1. Doesn't look like we'll be able to pick some "Favorites" for our friends lists. Disappointing, but hopefully we'll get to that point in a future update.

2. Do all members of the viewing party need an active Netflix subscription?

Also, the party reconnection thing is a GODSEND.

So can people without netflix watch a movie with people who do have netflixs?

Interesting... NXE is even...newer

techtweet @ http://www.twitter.com/bttrends

The movie party makes me lose faith in humanity. Cool they can do it, but why?

Friends across the country can watch a movie together. Seems pretty obvious to me.

yeah, most of my friends no longer live in the same state. and we used to watch crappy zombie movies together all the time. so i find this an awesome addition. movies are always better with your friends.

@ nukee

It's like a home version of Mystery Science Theater 3000!

I think it is good they are splitting it up into smaller updates rather than firing it at us all at once. Looking forward to the Games On Demand, Friends list sorting and the unlockable avatar clothes, hopefully some devs will patch their games to retroactively award clothes for certain achievements. I would love my avatar to wear the scarf/bandana from Prince Of Persia.

damn, I thought movie parties would work for all movies or videos that we have on our consoles. I didn't know it was just for netflix

YAY more shit we will use for 3 days

naw man I think your confusing this post with Playstation Home.

All i see here are good upgrades to things that a lot of people already use; parties, netflix, marketplace, and achievement stuff

Yeah I know for a fact I never use my friends list or browse my achievements. Ever.

A lot of people do.

the thing about netflix movies it says all who ahve a gold subscription so i think only 1 person needs netflixs and we all mooch off them if it was all video we have purchased that would of been cooler but maybe in 2010 update

Man, it'd sure be nice to be able to stick a larger drive in the ol' box. Not for well over $100, either. That's just BS.

We really need the ability to save the game updates to the hard drive as opposed to just the cache (which can only store a handful of updates at any one time)

For those of us with a large collection of games what happens in say 10 years time - will Microsoft still be running the servers for the updates ? If the updates are not available, all the bug fixes & DLC we have paid for will be worthless as games will not be able to get the updates to enable them to run the DLC

Am I the only person worried about this ?

i thought they do store updates on the hard drive, thats why it downloads them only once doesnt it, plus when a patch comes along for both consoles the ps3 people can see it on their hardrive, we onlly have it hidden in that system 6gb.

yes, i think you are a little too worried about this. it is microsoft's job to provide patches and DLC for life. we pay for live for a reason, this is one of the reasons. plus, the patches aren't that big, and storage is only getting cheaper.

myth busted! ;p

Unfortunately you don't download the update just once, it depends whether it has been overwritten in the cache:

When you start up a game it checks Live for any updates - it then downloads that update to the cache if is not already here - if there are already, say, 10 updates it will overwrite the oldest update with update for the game you have just started to play

I know from experience when moving house and not having broadband access for a few weeks, I could not get the game updates to allow me access to DLC I had bought. Even though the DLC was on the hard drive the update was no longer in the cache and as a result the game did not know the DLC was even there !!

Surely it would make sense to save this to the hard drive and swap into the cache when necessary - I have a 120gig hard drive that has 40 gigs spare, and as pointed out the updates are usually pretty small and would not eat too much into that space

A couple of these updates sound great, the netflixs stuff, the added party support, games on demand (especially if it leads to an instant renting service), and since i often use my memory card and hard drive together, the time stamp feature sounds awesome.

Instant renting would be awesome.

You could rent and download the game for like $5 for 7 days. Most of the money could go straight to the developer, instead of having it go to Blockbuster when you normally rent games.

Then if you decide to buy the game, you could get a $5 discount since you already rented it. I really hope Microsoft implements that.

Manage Your Queue – Browse the Netflix Instant Watch video catalogue, choose from the most popular movies and genres and add to your queue all from the comfort of your couch – no computer required.

I guess this means you won't get to browse the full selection on your 360 :x just the most popular choices :/

Worthless :(

Hmmm, I don't know how to read that. I don't think it necessarily means 'popular only'. I don't see any reason why they'd limit it like that.

PS - They say it's an upcoming update, but when is the actual date?

clearly you dont use netflix, browsing and adding to my queue without using a computer is a clutch addition. when everything is available from the dashboard it makes watching movies much easier.

ive only ordered one dvd from netflix and i still havent returned it 3 months later. i havent even watched it, i just ordered it to find out what the envelope looked like.

the entire netflix library isnt available for instant on but they add new content all the time. i wish they had more HD content but theres always a new tv series or b rate movie every week..

Oh man, if the achievement tracking is anything like the Gears of War 2 stuff that will be very very nice. Also, will xbox originals still be available even though they arent adding more?

Those will still stay up, but MS did confirm that they are only going to release one last Xbox original game on the marketplace.

I'm putting $5 on it being Halo 2.

I think you mean $15...

Games On Demand can really make a splash, and eat away at the used game service by doing one thing...allowing gamers to buy GOD at $10 less, or even $20 less (in my dreams) and let the hard copies be $60. Personally I'd rather buy the hard copy...but for a discount I might get some on demand.

Streaming or downloading huge games is the worst idea ever in the gaming industry when ISPs put bandwidth data cap limit. You don't want to end up paying extra for the extra GBs you downloaded and waiting for hours for a download because you're not the only one in the house downloading/using the internet.

I will never buy any of the Games on Demand unless they are AT LEAST $20 less than the physical copy.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the price of the digital version of a game when the price of the the retail copy drops.

Seems nice

"Party Reconnections – If you are accidently disconnected from your party, Xbox LIVE will automatically reconnect you.

Streamlined Party Invites – Invites are now just one click away! No need to click through multiple screens to get all your friends together."

This is one of the things I like about XBox Live. They actually think about what would make things less of a PITA for us and work on streamlining things. That's the one thing that annoys me most about the PSN is their approach of "well you can kind of do this 23-step workaround to get this done, so we're just going to leave it at that".

To be honest, I have no idea what you're referring to. I can't think of a game I've played recently that's more complicated than Triangle to invite and X to accept. I mean, I know you're exaggerating with 23, but I can join a game of Gears as easily as I can join a game of KZ2 or R2. What game is giving you so much trouble?

troll

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Xbox Live update detailed: Games on Demand, Netflix queue/Movie Party, and more

Xbox Live Dashboard Update (2009)

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