Be Excellent To Each Other

I've just downloaded the new Xbox dashboard update. My first impressions are as follows:-

Bit confusing at first and that's a massive advert on the first screen!
Twitter seems hidden.
Facebook is all over it like a rash. This is ok, if you have a Facebook account. I don't.
You can share achievements over Facebook but not on Twitter? They missed something with that I reckon.
Still not sure how the beacons work.
Or the cloud saving for that matter (I didn't actually play a game though. Maybe it'll be obvious when I do?)
It's taken me several screens to actually get to my games. There's videos and all sorts to get through first. Bit annoying that.
Bing search. Bit pointless this I reckon.

As far as updates go, it seems quite nice and it would be interesting to see how it integrates with Kinect. I'm guessing it does heavily. Youtube and the other video services haven't launched yet but they're coming late this month apparently.

Right then... onto the 3DS update!

I had a very quick play with it



When you start a game and it asks where you to select your save device there is an extra icon at the bottom called 'cloud'



I had mine update this morning and when i came back into the room the first screen told me i was not signed in (i had to accept the new TOS) and from there the game in my drive was still the first icon to click on (i did not go looking for where my game library was)



More of a show-off for Kinect , and may make more sense when the TV integration comes into it more (search for and find TV programs / Games / movie rentals etc from a few keywords sounds good especially if you just have to say it)

Can you transfer existing saves to the cloud using the dashboard tools?

So logging into profiles is just that now... logging in? No hefty download needed?

Mypsy - are you seeing the companion app in the WP7 marketplace yet? Not showing up for me.

Sorry - only had 20 minutes or so with it this morning and didnt try :-(

I would try it myself, but y'know - I DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT.

Nope, not yet.

Yeah you can myp.

Cool, I'll start backing up to that as well as USB stick. Shame you can only do it one file or folder at time. I'd love for it to take an image of my entire 360's HDD.

Awesome

This will make life so much easier for those of us who are 2 xbox families, or TWOXers as I have now termed.

Well, I like this.

I'd really rather not myp. It's a most disturbing activity.

I'd rather jack.

I forget you were such an expert at typing.

I've just had a look too. Games are right there on the home screen and I saw nothing about Facebook until I actually looked for it. Apart from that I don't have any feelings about it one way or the other.

Man, they've really gone out of their way to fuck up what is arguably the 360's greatest asset and the greatest contribution to videogaming this generation: The XBLA.

The games you currently own now have to be side-scrolled through, four at a time, looking at their DVD-style artwork. It's a right ballache to quickly find one of your XBLA games. Even better is the new store, which buries XBLA, Indie games, etc three (or is it four?) levels deep in the menus, under the confusingly titled "game type" menu. Developers are going to be loving this. Unless you're selected by MS to appear on one of the higher levels, they've just made it even more difficult for people to find new games. Also, what's up with the "Games" tab appearing all the way across after TV, Social, Video, etc? Come on! They're really setting their stall out here. Is flogging TV show streams more profitable than making and selling games?

Of course, you could always search for what you're looking for with Bing!

As for everything else, I welcome the new features such as cloud saving and the beacons thing, but my word they've fucked up the interface a fair bit. I wonder how many "normal" people will understand to use the right stick to flick between those larger boxes?

I'm happy with the interface overall, and I'm sure with time I'll learn to navigate it just fine. I just don't understand why they've hidden stuff even deeper than before? I'm concerned for the health of the Indie and XBLA stores because I seriously doubt that non-nerds will be able to find stuff and buy it. They should've been making things easier to find, not obscuring it even further!

Well, quite. Why isn't that better? The Store is struggling under the number of titles in it; it's hard to develop a UI that allows easy browsing of thousands of items. The new search feature works pretty well.

The problem with search is you have to know what you're looking for in the first place. Granted, that solves my first issue, but it does nothing to help developers get their now even more obfuscated games the mainstream exposure they need to do well.

Interesting as well, how it decides which friends appear on the first social tab. You'd think that if you were in a party, those friends would appear but they don't.

Maybe it's arranged by who's got beacons out?

Yeah I don't like that either. You have to go deeper to find your full friends list.

That is remarkably similar to how I navigate my late night tv watching...

Agreed, but then given how XBLA is groaning under the weight of titles, browsing doesn't exactly give you a great deal of opportunity for exposure either.

It's much like the iOS app store - there's so many titles in there that people really aren't going to stumble on your app at random. They'll read reviews or get recommendations from friends, and then search for the app directly.

Yeah I totally agree Craster. I can't think of a perfect solution myself, but they've buried the Marketplace even deeper this time around. You still get MS's picks and recommendations at the top level, plus some adverts and a "new releases" section, but if you want to browse the whole XBLA shop or the whole Indie shop without any of those filters applied, it's about four screen deeps into the menu and under the "game type" heading. "Game type" could mean genre rather than "Indie, XBLA or Games on Demand". Seems like a silly idea to bury the meat of the store - as difficult to navigate as it is - so far down.

So it seems that if you put your save in the cloud, you can only play if you have an internet connection. It's not a local save that is sync'ed, it's a local save that gets moved....

That's a bit rubbish.

You can do what now?

I like it, though I rarely need to go past simply lunching whichever game is in the tray. I checked out the LoveFilm app, which looks promisingly alright, but I doubt I'll use it.

Exactly!

You're supposed to eat square meals.

+
It's quick and that's the main improvement. No more waiting a minute for my list of games to be populated.
Bing is equally rapid. Type Halo and woomf - everything I've got that's Halo.
Beacons - all I've done is set up a thinger that says I'd like to play War for Cybertron online - no idea if that will ever get me a game or how it works from there but I feel less annoyed at the lack of friends playing it than I did before. At least I can advertise my interest - somehow.
Adding apps- obviously this isn't much without some apps to add but it looks to be a decent enough system for the future
Cloud saves/profiles - I've 2 Xboxes, I hate having to copy a save onto my memory card and take it upstairs. Sorted.
Sheep jump over the heads of offline people, not sure if this is just at night but it FUCKING RULES.

-
Games are not as front and centre as I'd like them to be
Facebook seems well embedded and I'm not on Facebook, I'm on Google+.
I tried playing Astropop last night and it said it wasn't compatible with Pal-50, so I followed directions into settings and told it to auto detect my TV, which it did, then asked me if I could see properly in 50hz mode, I could but said I couldn't, it defaulted to 60hz, and the error mesage remains. Checking my TV, it's getting a 60hz 1080p signal from the 360. Not sure if this was a proble before, as I've ve not played Astropop in years.
Why give me an error message telling me where to change settings - just give me the option to change the settings in the dialogue box.
Twitter is still completely and utterly pointless. If I want to tweet when gaming, I can quit my game and go into twitter. Or I can just bring it up through my TV while the game is running, or tweet from my phone or laptop while the game is running. Waste of time.
All these tabs across the top, and there's a square in each of them I will use often and plenty I won't. I want a tab which I can customise the squares on, so I've got game-in-drive, friends, music (not zune), iplayer, lovefilm, marketplace for example. All my most used things in onetab. Or even a tab which shoves what I use most in there. Sorry, I'm a typical Android user - not happy unless I can customise my interface and remove detritus.

?
Not sure what the objection with the marketplace is - everyone knows that you get piecemeal notification of new games and the only way to see everything is to go into Live or Indie or Originals. I think the speed of navigation is more important than the moves one has to make and in this regard, it's perfectly acceptable.
I agree with others that the search thing is the only way in future to get through the huge amount of stuff listed and we're at a bit of a junction in terms of interface navigation where some have speech and wavy hands while others have a joypad or a 360 remote. It'll take time to get an interface which works brilliantly in the specific way it can best do that and we won't see it till the next console.

Overall though given what the future will inevitably be hardware and software wise this is a very decent first proper go at making it all happen. And again, it's rapid, which is all I wanted.

Err.. And how does one do that using a remote rather than a controller?

It reminds me of Media Center. And I for one am a big fan thereof.

So, turns uot the wife has a Lovefilm account, and I can log into to the LF programme using that; her account is a really cheap one, £4/month, but I have the option to watch films on the 360 LF thingy. Is she going to get charged if I watch a film, how many can I watch? I don't get it, this actually seems quite good, so I assume I am missing something.

I think I've only got 4 hours online viewing with my Lovefilm account, which you can use on either PC, PS3 or the XBOX 360. I've just changed my package to an unlimited viewing online one because it was only 1 quid extra a month.

I had the idea to look at the account and it says no online streaming, quite why I have the option of "watching now" on the app then, I don't know.

Is there an active downloads list? I read somewhere that it wasn't where it used to be.

A bit late to the party here, but can't you at least still use quick launch from the guide menu?

Yeah they haven't much changed the blade menu pop-up thingy.

You can filter the DVD boxes by XBLA/Indie/Trials etc by the box in the top right. Phew.

Not much help when you have 142 XBLA games mind.

Do they at least load up faster?

I now have this. Boy, Xbox live is really slow and semi-broken in Spain. I can't even stream the Welcome video without spending 75% of the time staring at a spinning circle. Much less watch the new, apparently free, TV channels from Movistar Imagenio. I'd really like to watch some Eurosport right now. I have lived without that for half a decade now.

Anyway, WTB, I don't understand what you mean about the right stick. I haven't found any part of the interface where the right stick has any function.

Have you always lived in Spain Lasermink? I was convinced you lived in England..

Anyway, the right stick lets you scroll through the ads on the big squares in the centre of each tab.

Nope, I have lived 5 years here, but I am from Denmark.

Oh, great tip, ta.

Another reason the My Games section is fucking terrible. You can filter recent games, Kinect games, Arcade games and Indie games. What about Xbox Originals? Games on Demand? I have to set it to 'All' and sift through to get to Resi 4. That's fucking shit. Search is fine if you have Kinect or whatever, but what if I want to just browse my Games on Demand and pick one to play? It's fucking rubbish, this. If it doesn't fit into the little squares and adhere to the uniform look of the new layout, it's chopped. Total style over substance.

Hate the way friends are set out now as well. Feel totally removed from what everyone is doing. I have to go to social, then into friends just to see who's online. And then if I want to see if people are partied up I have to go into the Party menu from the Friends section to see parties. I preferred it before where parties were front loaded and you could see immediately if everyone was playing Gears together or whatever.

I really liked the changes from the original blades to what we had previously, but I'm seriously disappointed with this. Even the lack of capitalisation on the menu text is pissing me off. It's rubbish! Tiny little boxes. Urgh. It must be shit on a small telly because those boxes are about two and a half inches tall on my 40".

Like I say, I'll get used to moving around it and will undoubtedly grow to accept it, but I'm properly disappointed regardless. I really think they've just made it considerably harder for more casual folk to navigate their console. People are going to find this confusing, surely? I suppose when Windows 8 comes out and it's all set up like this as well people will know what's what.

Lowercase is their corporate identity, just like avoiding hyphens

Oh, and don't get your hopes up for Lovefilm streaming. It's 'free', yes, but it's very limited and in grainy SD, just like their website and their Smart TV app as I discovered recently. If you don't mind watching pirated VHS quality films from an extremely limited selection, great. Otherwise just keep posting those disks back!