Discuss New Xbox X-Perience

[cowsgoquack101]

I installed Gears of War 2 on the hard drive but my dvd drive is decently quiet as it is so I deleted it. I wanted my 7 gb of data back.

[jones]

1) Checking Achievements in-game (though like XMB on PS3 the in-game menu is somewhat limited) Also browsing achievements in the dashboard is slick as snot and twice as handsome, compete with "progess bars" showing amount of achievements per game.

This could be done before. All you had to do was hit the guide button and then select your gamercard (the spot where your gamertag and gamerscore were) and then I believe you had to select "View Games" and then choose the game you wanted to look at. It is more streamlined now, but it was definitely there before (I used this feature a lot).

2) Stupidly easy media sharing. If you have Zune software on a PC you can access to everything, much easier than Windows Media Center actually. It just works.

This also worked before NXE. All you needed was a PC or laptop on your home network with Zune software on it and music/video sharing turned on. Once this was setup it could be accessed from any 360 on the same home network. I have been using this feature a fair amount since I started messing around with the Zune software a few months back.

Admittedly I was somewhat skeptical of the NXE (hate that acronym by the way, but it is simple to type) as I was a big fan of the old interface. Now that I have the NXE installed however, I have to admit to being a fan.

The #1 best feature of the NXE is the speed of the interface. You can see this right from startup as your profile is logged in right after the Xbox logo goes away and the dashboard comes up. No more spinning disc on the screen as your profile logs in to the system.

Other things I noticed with regards to the speed of the new interface...

1. Changing a Theme - This used to be an arduous task. You would navigate to the themese and then it would take 20-30 seconds for the dashboard to populate the list to choose from. The cycling through them was slow and it was just all around clunky. The new one loads super fast and auto-previews the themes ridiculously fast compared to the old one.

2. Populating the list of Arcade Games - Much like the themes this was pretty slow in the old dashboard, but now is lightning fast. Navigating the interface is a joy now, whereas it could be a bit of a pain before.

Other Stuff I Liked...

1. The ability to disable Autoplay - I honestly don't recall if this was an option before, but I don't think it was since this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time. Long story short you can disable autoplay now which will keep a game from loading after you pop the disc in. You actually have to select it and say play. This is a seemingly small feature that made me very happy. I can't tell you how many times I left the tray open with the next game I was going to play in it while I was finishing something else up. If I would have closed the tray the game would have booted immediately. Not anymore.

2. Deleting 0 GS games from your Games Played List - Another seemingly small feature that I had been waiting for. Now those Arcade trials, and crappy games you never even got an achievement in can go bye bye. I was able to remove 57 games from my list using this. Very nice.

3. Netflix integration - This works surprisingly well and is quite fast. The only disappointment is that there isn't a lot of HD content yet and the SD stuff doesn't look so hot on my 60" HDTV. That said, it is nice to have the option and the service can only get better as time goes on.

4. The Interface itself - It is very slick looking and quite easy to navigate. I like that they have added community events in now. You used to have to go to Xbox.com to dig these up and it wasn't exactly an intuitive thing to figure out. Navigating your games played list is, again, lightning fast and very detailed to boot. The presentation has been taken up about 10 notches from where it was before. Big thumbs up here.

Not so hot...

1. Avatars - They're okay, but I really could care less if they were there or not. Maybe they will become more interesting once there is more content for them. It would be nice to see games have unlockable clothing for your avatar. So if you got the "Brass Balls" achievement in BioShock, you could get a shirt with a picture of Alec Baldwin holding a pair of brass balls up. That particular shirt might be a pipe dream, but I can dream can't I.

2. Ads - These are a bit more prevalent than before, but unfortunately digital downloads are the wave of the future so I don't think this is going anywhere. They did manage to somewhat tastefully integrate them when looking at game details as they gave the DLC it's own blade there. Not a big deal, but it does get kinda old when you just bought a $60 game at the store and then come home to be slapped across the face by ads saying "Look! We've got a bunch of other crap for you to buy right here!"

I've only had a few hours to mess around with the NXE, but there are my first impressions. Overally I would say it is a definite steup from the old dashboard which is not something I expected to be saying by any means.