Second Story Gamer

Plenty of buzz has been going around the past few days about Microsoft’s not so surprising announcement of a complete dashboard revamp this Fall.  And surprisingly, a lot of it has been negative.  Well I’m here to give you the facts about the New Xbox Experience, as Microsoft has been calling it.

Let’s start out with a great developer walkthrough of the New Xbox Experience:

The Dashboard

So the new dashboard is now filled with various channels, including My Xbox 360, Community, and Videos, which you switch by going up or down and navigate through by going left or right.  It seems as though it’s perfectly designed for those people who navigate the Xbox 360 using a remote control.  So that makes about four people happy.

As for the channels themselves, they look very…interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, the Game and Primetime channels are very clean, but the Community channel just looks like a mess to me.  Having all of your friends’ characters on one screen at the same time just doesn’t sound fun to me.

The Guide Button

To those of you who preferred the old blade system by far, it may seem like you’re in trouble because the new dashboard update is mandatory.  However, hitting the Guide button now brings up an interface very, very similar to the original Xbox 360 dashboard.

And it’s important to note that this blade system is accessible at anytime.  That means when you’re playing Call of Duty 4, you can just hit the guide button and jump into one of your XBLA games at any time.

Avatars

So there is a new Avatar system for the Xbox 360 and, yes, they look very much like Miis.  Like I said above, they seem to all appear on the Community channel representing each one of your friends and they are designed to become your Gamerpic.

So does that make all of the gamerpics, which you spent wasted money on, useless?  Not exactly, because these avatars are completely optional, unlike the update.  So your gamerpics will still be usable.  On the same note, so will your themes, which Marc Whitten said will look “beautiful” on the new interface.

Installing Games on HDD

With this new update, Microsoft has also allowed users to install full games onto their hard drives.  This feature should quicken load times, but also anger 20 GB SKU owners, who already get mad at having to delete demos and videos every other week.  The game also has to be inserted in the disc drive for the game to play, which gets rid of the possibility of trading a game around so you don’t have to buy it.  Unfortunate, but completely understandable on Microsoft’s part.

Netflix

In the Video channel of the New Xbox Experience, Microsoft has just added support of Netflix movies.  This means that if you have a Netflix account, you can stream movies to your Xbox 360 at any time.  This effectively doubles the starving Xbox Live Video Marketplace and makes it a contender in the digital video arena.  The quality for these movies is largely dependent on internet speed, but although they are below DVD quality, they still look good.

No Browser Support

Although the Xbox Live Marketplace is becoming accessible through any computer, the internet is not becoming accessible through the Xbox 360, at least on this update.  It is strange, especially considering that both the PS3 and the Wii have built in web browsers.

Well there you have it, folks.  That’s all the information you should need about the upcoming New Xbox Experience.  Hopefully knowing more about the New Xbox Experience will make you more excited for the update.  Or, it could just as easily make you dread the day it’s released.