new xbox dashboard

[RackGaki]

Can't say until I've tried it myself. I would think that launch games and such could see improvements. But since I have two 20GB hard drives, I'm not about to install anything anytime soon.

[Lazer]

I just installed Fallout 3 on my HDD. The load times were a little faster, but the cool thing was that the xbox was completely quiet. I don't know about you all but my xbox makes quite a racket usually. Not only was it stone-cold quiet, but it was (I assume) running cooler, thus reducing the possibility of RRoD (I supose). I like this new feature! Only crummy part: it took up 5.6 gigs of my available 7.4 gigs. But, whatever.

[RackGaki]

the xbox was completely quiet.

Okay, silencing the disc drive should be reason enough to applaud this update. My NTSC/J 360 is relatively quiet, but my NTSC/U sounded like a jet taking off at times. Hopefully they will take care of that as well when my 360 comes back.

[otaku]

I miss the old setup, only thing I like about this new update is the game burning to hard drive feature-makes the system so much quieter and I no longer have to worry about my shitty disc drive failing during play.

[Droid party]

The only feature I've liked has been the ability to run games from the hdd. So much quieter. And I have plenty of space for my game collection on my 120gb hdd.

Seems like alot of fanfair for only one decent feature.

[nickfil]

i agree with pretty much everything here. It'll be nice to run games off the HDD, but it isn't really something you need to do.

netflix is good.

other than that.... uh... .yeah....


When i created my mii on nintendo i had a lot of fun doing it. It felt creative. When I created my xbox avatar it was more of a chore. I felt like i had a lot less control over the features and because of that a lot less fun. On nintendo i could make rejected lab experiment humans, on xbox they all came out like.... well... people. Which- all this is weird. I don't understand why if microsoft was going to set out to completely copy nintendo- why did they take the fun out of it? Additionally- do most halo/call of duty players give a shit about this kinda thing? It seems like this marketing ploy was to make the xbox seem like a half step between ps3 gamers and Wii gamers when no one really asked for a half step at all. I noticed they were pushing that karaoke game a lot on the new dashboard. lips. I guess thats a casual game? Thing is... i can just go out and do REAL KARAOKE for fucks sake.

[Daniel Primed]

What about managing content? I thought that it was one of the most significant reasons why they made the edit right? Is it much easier to scroll through content?

[neilwron]

If you have netflix you can watch anything they have for instant watching online, on your tv through your xbox. Its actually really cool.

[Niode]

The avatar thing was rubbish. Not enough customization.

Saving games to hard drive is useful because it gets rid of that stupid fan/jet engine sound my 360 makes. Only having one of the 20GB hard drive is a huge pain though. It means I can squeeze 2 games on there and have space for like one or 2 demos along with all my arcade games. There's just not enough space.

The menu system is much faster now and easier to navigate. Plus you can access more content from your guide button now which is even better.

All in all it's pretty meh. It feels better than the blades but I don't know if it actually is better...

Also the people complaining about not being able to remove the disc with playing a game. It's to stop people pirating games. OBVIOUSLY.

[RadarScope1]

Overall I like the new UI, even though its really just a different can with the same contents inside. It does seem a little easier to navigate the major categories but somethings are worse. For instance, I liked having the list format on my friends page that showed what everyone last played. Now it's a 3D representation of everyone and their avatar that you must scroll through and click on each individual person to see the last played game. (Though I guess the little backgrounds are supposed to be an indication??)

Mainly the new features are the thing. Community games seem to have promise (though there's a lot of crap) and Netflix streaming is awesome. My wife and I watched a movie tonight and it was great. We are already Netflix subscribers and I already have a gold account so this is the equivalent of getting a free set-top box to stream Netflix movies. Very nice.