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The New Xbox Experience


SchizoidFreud

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Ive got it people...Looks cool...nice intro video...very slick...avatar system in place...for some reason whenever i try to access marketplace it sends me back to the dashboard. Maybe something wrong there. The update took around 1 hour for me to download on a sify 512 kbps connection. Let me dig in a bit deeper and look her for impressions.

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Not to mention Home is gonna be ripping money from you. Just wait and watch. They need to extract money especially when PSN is free

 

Home will rip money from the sponsors to make up for PSN and not from end users. There will be lots of purchasable items which are again optional. Noone will be forced to buy them like PSN store.

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No! The only way you can get is by borrowing the HDD on which it has already been installed. You will have the NXE then but a severely crippled one until it officially launches. Loosing the Xbox LIVE functionality until then will be the biggest bummer in itself.

 

Besides, Major Nelson in his webmeeting with the MVP's a few days before the official announcement also on hinted on the fact that sharing your invites for the NXE with those who haven't will NOT be conducive to your relations with MS.

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OK....WOOOO....After many many hours of checking out the NEW XBOX EXPERIENCE, I'm finally here to give you all my impressions. Let us start off with basics...

 

As soon as I switched on my X360 it asked me if I wanted to update. Then it downloaded some crap...small stuff...probably a downloader program for the NXE. After the update was applied, the download for the NXE started....took almost an hour and it coolly kept varying the estimated time remaining, which really tested my patience and anger levels. Well let me show you...

 

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The incruciating(not sure if this is even a word) wait...

 

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Anger levels rise...Kratos looking pissed...doesnt he always :wallbash:

 

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Finally after an hour of waiting and waiting...

 

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Hanging on...(all this is just to piss you all who have to wait till November 18th...no hard feelings....SUCKERS ha ha)...

 

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And here it is...Voila!!!

 

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The really cool looking intro video plays immediately...pretty good first impression...of course you can view it again from the new WELCOME tab which will familiarize you with the NXE...

 

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I suggest everyone goes through this tab when its finally released. Not much information here but worth a look...

 

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Here is the Avatar creation screen. You get to choose from a lot of pre-built avatars that Rare has provided us. However there are so many pre-built avatars, that one of them will be close to the one you need. After selection of one stock avatar, there are gazillions of options to make sure the avatar is how you want it exactly. Hair style, color, nose, eyebrows, lips, eyes, build...you name it and microsoft has you covered. The only complaint I have from this feature is the lack of clothing options. Not many available right now so my choice was severely hindered and I had to end up with a a very generic skull t-shirt and jeans look. However, I saw this again, the facial customizations are extremely satisfying and aplenty. Atleast I was satisfied on that front. Once done with creating your avatar or abomination, you may take a pic of the avatar to use as your gamer pic. Quite a cool feature...thank you Rare. And then a jingle plays once everything is done and your character is ready to get chainsawed, grenade-stuck, knifed or whatever...One last observation. This is...CREEPILY CLOSE TO THE Mii's. While there are more options, the sound that plays on character creations is eerily like the Wii Sports sounds. It may be a rip-off...or maybe Nintendo did the rip-off, as Rare as stated many times...but the bottom line is that...NXE avatars >>>>> Mii's. Check out the pics...

 

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Next up is the actual interface. NXE is by far a much much better interface than anything out there. The first feeling that will cross your mind is freedom. You will feel like Steve McQueen making the great escape from a nazi jail into open open switzerland. Having used the blades, I never quite understood why people said it was cluttered, but looks like Microsoft has taken that comment to heart. Everything is so open, so clear, so free. Its a joy to just sit there on the dashboard. I bet many will be extremely happy that they own a X360 this November 18th. MY XBOX is the default channel and the first tab is OPEN TRAY...which is a good thing when you want to just switch the xbox on and throw in a disc. Lot of thought seems to have gone behind the design and placement of every single tab. Your avatar will stand before your mini profile. The right analog stick moves it's head around. A press of the right analog stick makes it wave. There are some stock animations that play at random. Knowing Rare, excessive shaking of your avatars head will even make it dizzy. Very cute Rare, Very cute indeed.

 

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There are various other tabs that streamline the experience. The new SPOTLIGHT tab is basically what US Xbox users call INSIDE XBOX(which was a newsletter)...only here it has been spread out neatly from left to right, like pretty much everything in the NXE. Left to Right is gaming karma people and Microsoft knows it...Contra, Mario, Sonic etc.

 

The Friends tab is again something new to the NXE. It is supposed to show the avatars of all your friends and a small game box in front of them shows what game they are currently playing. You can at any point of time party up with your friends and hence move from game to game together, without having to send a million invites to everyone you know. Also when in a party, you can voice chat, even if your friends are playing some other game. This is a real nifty feature and deserves applause. We may also be able to show videos to our friends, though with our connections, i'm really not sure how this will work out. Streaming is like a graveyard here in India.

 

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The Achievements have been laid out neatly now. And your avatar stands next to which game selects and gives a little physical response to the game you have selected. Selecting COD4 which I have 980/1000 made him look happy and give me a Thumbs Up. While showing him Viva Pinata of which I have only 60/1000 made him skulk. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was not. Because he gave me a positive response when I selected FIFA09...see for yourself.

 

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For those complaining that they miss the Blades of old, Microsoft has kind of given all of you a mini blades version. Everytime you press the guide button these mini-blades pop-up with extremely welcome options. My favourite is the QUICK LAUNCH option which can directly take you from one game to the other. Or from a game to a Video, then back to game, then to some music. It's all nice and happens extremely fast...NXE is fast..let me tell you that. No more getting stuck and waiting for the old Blades to figure out what's going on. Its neat, its slick, its bloody fast. Also engraved into the mini-blades are options to directly move to Marketplace, check your download, preferences, notification alerts(that beep that pops up when someone comes online), Music player, Video player, Friends, Chat etc. Most of the options here will open up in an interface which is reminiscent of the old Blades. Check it out...

 

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And next is the much talked about...INSTALL YOUR GAME feature...let me break it to you. Regardless of what you have read before, in previews of other magazines or whatever...THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST AMAZING FEATURE OF THE NEW XBOX EXPERIENCE....PERIOD. Once you put in the disc, you can press Y and select to install the game to the Hard Drive. I chose FIFA09 for my test as as many of you know, some of the load times in FIFA 09 can be a bitch. Also my disc threw up Unreadable errors quite a few times, so NXE came and saved the day in the nick of time. The Installation itself took around 5-7 minutes which was pretty fast for a game which tells it is 6 GB. You can check the size from the MEMORY tab through the mini blades. Next was loading up the game. If you have ever felt that your X360 is loud...Say hello to the quietest console on the planet. This is quieter than the PS3...hell lot quieter. I used to think that the X360's processing used to make all that noise apart from the drive...but looks like the culprit was the drive unchallenged all this time. Almost brought tears to my eyes when the game booted up and my speaker static was louder than the X360. You may think that i'm exaggerating but come November 18th you will find out. And keep a PS3 next to the Xbox just to check my point out. Load times were reduced by quite a bit. I wont put numbers here because thats what nerds do. And number dont count for sh*t. What counts is that it got me into the game and I was up and playing faster than before. The biggest difference was in the initial load which was reduced by a lot. The loading in between the matches were also reduced but i cant attest to that...wait for me to get back my copy of Mass Effect and i'll let you know if those elevator rides have been shortened. By far the most amazing feature of the NXE...a HUGE THANK YOU and please a round of applause for Microsoft. Pics follow...

 

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This is not yet the final version as there are some tabs that are still not working. The Marketplace was initially not even available to me. I made a complaint about this on the Microsoft Connect forum and somehow, magically it was fixed in around an hour. Fast service indeed. Many of the tabs are what we all know from the old marketplace. Everything has been touched with the left to right approach and there is much much more information available now. Information about the game, a description, downloadable content for the game and at the very end is a small game art box with all the details that are usually given behind the game box(co-op, Xbox live, DLC, 2-3 player etc)....pretty neat. Everything looks much more appealing now...Looking at little game boxes in front of you is much better than just a box cluttered with information. Some tabs like the NEW ARRIVALS and the TOP VOTED still dont function and give an error message, but thats because there are so few people using the NXE. It will surely be fixed in time for release. More pics for ye....

 

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So thats basically a brief description of what I feel about the NXE. Hope it helps...my personal opinion...Sony, you guys have a LOT...and i mean A F'IN LOT to prove with HOME. So dont let us down, we need fireworks...as for Microsoft, sit back and enjoy the cheers and laurels that you truly deserve...congrats to Rare as well....now just get to making some proper games. And Nintendo...let me not even go there.

 

And oh yeah, this little thing caught my eye while surfing marketplace...anyone interested? :ranting:

 

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^^ F..K!! great write up.. i am really excited.

 

between the NXE update has been leaked... its out on the net

 

i can post the link if someone requires it

 

Warning!!!--if you update you won't be able to login to live until nov 19th,to install place the folder with the update onto a usb stick and stick it into your 360.

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Apparently there are some problems going on with the marketplace and its currently unavailable for all NXE users. I brought up that problem on the Feedback forum and another chap replied having the very same problem. And we get a very diplomatic answer from Major Nelson himself saying:

 

"If you have any problems...you should contact support using the number

in one of the first threads."

 

So all i can do is wait...my reply:

 

"Yeah well, I dont live in the US...so that international call is

certainly out of question. So All I can basically do is wait until

someone makes the call and sorts this out."

 

Hope someone catches the sarcasm...

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:dance:

 

@ KillRoy

 

Thanks a lot for the preview!

Can't wait for it to officially launch.

 

One good thing is that Spotlight would be available to India unlike Inside Xbox!

 

 

PS - I am feeling so tempted to install that leaked Update :dance:

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