[BLOG] NXE Review
The New Xbox Experience came out yesterday, and it has added a new astethic and new features to Microsoft's console. But the qig question is: Is is better than the Dashboard and Blade system we have been accustomed to for so long?
For some reason, if you don't have it yet, when you boot up your Xbox, you will be treated to an interesting video showing various generic game elements and the XBox 360 logo. Then after a short install, it takes you to the Avatar (They're really Miis in desguise, shhhh!) creation screen. The choices you have for your avatar are pretty shallow, but Microsoft promises to double the clothes catalog in the coming months. You can replace your Gamerpicture with a picture of your Avatar, if you want.
From there, you are taken to the new dashboard. It works a lot like the PS3 Cross Media Bar, but is vertical instead of horizontal. You have the choices on the bar you would assume, like Friends, My XBox, and My Games, but it adds new tabs for game-related downloads and video downloads. You can still use all of the themes that you have downloaded, but their resolutions are stretched to fit in the new dashboard. It also adds the ability to download your games to your hard drive, but since they don't make very big hard drives, I would assume that doing this would eat up your hard drive pretty fast. Bungee also warna that installing certain games onto your HDD can drastically reduce game perofrmance.
The friends list is completely redesigned, too. It shows your friends' avatars horizontally across the screen. Online friends are just chilling, while offline friends are shown sleeping standing up. Everyone has some kind of XBox-themed object behind them. After studing them for about twenty minutes, I discovered that these things don't mean anything, and that there are nine of them that rotate from all your friends, but I don't see any reasons for this. I noticed that when you check one of your friend's gamercards, and when you go back to the friends screen, the system freezes, sometimes for 5 seconds, sometimes for over a minute.
The in-game blades have been completely scraped and replaced with a system that works a lot like the Games for Windows LIVE screen. It works pretty much the same as the blades system, but it's significantly smaller and is faster to navigate.
The new update brings Netflix to the XBox. While I have yet to try it (I don't subsribe to Netflix), I have heard that many of the movies on it are 'currently unavaiable'. This may be massive to someone who uses Netflix extensively, but for me, it really dosen't mean all that much and I doubt it's going to get me to subscribe.
There is a massive in-console lack of information regarding the NXE, so you are reduced to experimenting with the system to figure out what all it does. I would think that the new update could overwhelm someone who only uses their XBox casually and did not know it was coming, so more ready information would be a big plus for casual players.
Overall, I kind of like it. While it does almost exactly rip from Nintendo's and Sony's gimmicks, it puts it together is a 'fun' way. My only major complaints are the fact that it is difficult to navigate though, specially if you just want to brown games on the marketplace and that you need to play around with it to learn what it does. Personally, I think its better than the old Blades system, so it's welcome on my XBox.
For some reason, if you don't have it yet, when you boot up your Xbox, you will be treated to an interesting video showing various generic game elements and the XBox 360 logo. Then after a short install, it takes you to the Avatar (They're really Miis in desguise, shhhh!) creation screen. The choices you have for your avatar are pretty shallow, but Microsoft promises to double the clothes catalog in the coming months. You can replace your Gamerpicture with a picture of your Avatar, if you want.
From there, you are taken to the new dashboard. It works a lot like the PS3 Cross Media Bar, but is vertical instead of horizontal. You have the choices on the bar you would assume, like Friends, My XBox, and My Games, but it adds new tabs for game-related downloads and video downloads. You can still use all of the themes that you have downloaded, but their resolutions are stretched to fit in the new dashboard. It also adds the ability to download your games to your hard drive, but since they don't make very big hard drives, I would assume that doing this would eat up your hard drive pretty fast. Bungee also warna that installing certain games onto your HDD can drastically reduce game perofrmance.
The friends list is completely redesigned, too. It shows your friends' avatars horizontally across the screen. Online friends are just chilling, while offline friends are shown sleeping standing up. Everyone has some kind of XBox-themed object behind them. After studing them for about twenty minutes, I discovered that these things don't mean anything, and that there are nine of them that rotate from all your friends, but I don't see any reasons for this. I noticed that when you check one of your friend's gamercards, and when you go back to the friends screen, the system freezes, sometimes for 5 seconds, sometimes for over a minute.
The in-game blades have been completely scraped and replaced with a system that works a lot like the Games for Windows LIVE screen. It works pretty much the same as the blades system, but it's significantly smaller and is faster to navigate.
The new update brings Netflix to the XBox. While I have yet to try it (I don't subsribe to Netflix), I have heard that many of the movies on it are 'currently unavaiable'. This may be massive to someone who uses Netflix extensively, but for me, it really dosen't mean all that much and I doubt it's going to get me to subscribe.
There is a massive in-console lack of information regarding the NXE, so you are reduced to experimenting with the system to figure out what all it does. I would think that the new update could overwhelm someone who only uses their XBox casually and did not know it was coming, so more ready information would be a big plus for casual players.
Overall, I kind of like it. While it does almost exactly rip from Nintendo's and Sony's gimmicks, it puts it together is a 'fun' way. My only major complaints are the fact that it is difficult to navigate though, specially if you just want to brown games on the marketplace and that you need to play around with it to learn what it does. Personally, I think its better than the old Blades system, so it's welcome on my XBox.
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