| New Xbox Experience hands on impressions |
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We've been lucky enough to get our hands on the New Xbox Experience (NXE) Beta, and have put the features to the test. We have to remind you that this is an update of the current Xbox 360 dashboard interface, and whilst aesthetically is completely different, the functionality of the dashboard remains pretty much intact. The first and most important aspect of the NXE is the ease of access to what's important for your needs; but firstly, you're going to have to watch an intro movie (this can be turned off) and then create a male or female avatar for your gamer profile, or any new/temporary ones you create.
The avatar creation process is pretty simple enough and if you're not truly bothered with how you look, then you can pretty much use the default character and get on with things. You'll be shown a group of presets which you can choose one and be done with it. For those of you looking to be a little more creative, then from a wide variety of options you can attempt to recreate yourself. You'll be able to choose from a number of hairstyles (there's around 90 to choose from by default), and if you really want to stand out, it is possible to mix the male and female hair styles around. You can also change the shape of the eyes and of course the colours. For further tweaking, you're able to change, nose shape, ears, mouth, chin,facial hair and skin features. To round off the basics, you are then able to select skin tone, and your body size - allows you to be taller/shorter or fatter/thiner.
Once you're happy with the basic model and have created a mini you, there's the final touches of adding some clothing. Now this is really where you are going to want to be more individual and perhaps cooler than your friends, however by default there are not so many options available and can already tell that this is an area that will be milked by Microsoft by adding charged for clothing packs. That said, with what's available, there are potentially hundreds of different combinations - sadly there is no option to change the colours of the clothes, but this could possibly be added in another update? With the clothing options, you've got tops, hats, make-up, trousers, eye wear, shoes, jewelery. There are two other options here for saving outfits, meaning you are perhaps encouraged to change your look once in a while. The other is a set dress up option for donning formal wear. It's all very easy to use and somewhat of a distraction, but probably something most of you are going to be compelled to tinker with. The good thing here is that at anytime you can change the features/clothing of your avatar. The final and optional task is to use the camera feature, which allows you to take a snapshot of your avatar's face for use as a truly individual gamerpic.
So you've spent 10 minutes or more making your avatar, and you'll be presented with the new dash view. You've no doubt seen the images and videos, which show that you can navigate using panels and left or right stick movements, you can also select between My Xbox, Game Marketplace, Video Marketplace, Friends, Inside Xbox by pressing up or down on the thumbsticks. naturally your avatar stands there on the My Xbox section and pulls faces and moves slightly. If you've added a theme well this time your image appears at the top half of the screen and is limited to one image still. The bottom is always covered so you'll have to think a little more carefully of what images you want to use. One cool improvement here is that you can see your themes as you cycle through them rather than having to manually select the theme and commit to it. It appears that some of the old themes which contained multiple images do not work.
For those of you who want to get stuck into gaming right away, then the first tab in the list is always going to be your direct route to the game, this tab shows what game is in the drive and includes an image as well. However before you jump in, perhaps the option to install the game to your hard drive could be tempting. If you've got lots of space then this will no doubt save wear and tear on your regular drive as well as improve load times and reduce the dreaded sound. I installed Fallout 3 in around 10 mins. The thing to note here, is that you are still going to need the original disk in the machine to be able to play the game. it's certainly a welcome feature for those of you with older machines, who might have concerns over the durability of the hardware - all things considered.
Looking at your friends list, and you'll be able to see their animated avatars and also a box art image of what game they are currently playing. You'll then be able to invite them to chat or join party of up to 8 people. You can then join games as a party, although due to the limited number of friends who have the NXE beta this could not be tested. What's neat and totally unnecessary but neat all the same, is the objects next to your friends avatars when browsing the friends list change depending on what theme you are using. I hope that some purchasable themes have these related to the game they are based on for a more personal touch.
Browsing the usual marketplace for content has kept its ease of use, although you've now got a splash of more colour and cohesiveness. You'll have a game info page to look at this time which comes complete with screenshots and handy tabs to select recent or all downloadable content. Sadly you're still not able to view game content prior to purchase fully, and it would be great if in the future, they could incorporate mini videos of content such as map packs. You can easily jump from marketplace section to section by pressing the Y button to give you more options which really does improve the speed overall. The general speed of browsing/loading images has been much improved and this is a key factor for many people who found the current and soon to be old dash, cumbersome. The only area which needs looking into is the time it takes to load the dashboard when exiting a game or demo. At present, this takes anything up to few minutes.
In closing, the NXE dash certainly is a lot more colourful with an abundance of images to convey content. With the avatars as well, it seems to make the old dash look rather dull and plain. I think for the most part, everything is intact and as easy to use as its predecessor, however you are going to need a few moments to familiarize yourselves with everything first. Naturally after a few moments it will be second nature. I think it's going to be hard not to like the new dashboard because despite being awash with colour it remains just as functional as before, which is what counts at the end of the day. It will be interesting to see how much further Microsoft develop the dash, and whether we will still see something like Sony's Home in the future? Either way, the NXE is an improvement aesthetically and in terms of its base functionality. It's not long to go before you can put it through its paces yourselves.
Posted By: Robert Cram
Date: 2008-11-04
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