New Xbox Live

The new xbox live dashboard update came out at midnight last night, bringing with it the availability of a few very nice upgrades.

I for one am loving the avatars, it reminds me of the wii and i loved that console, it's games just wernt the same though. Also, you can install games to your hard drive for quieter play, which im assuming means the xbox isnt whirring away all the time, plus it increases loading speeds by like times a gazzilion acording to will.

Whats your opinions on it? Yay or Nay?

Goose.

a bit of a let down from my side i think, you said it just now, its too similar to the wii. the xbox 360 appeals because its an adults console, i dont want silly little avatars running around!

I just downloaded it and made my avatar. In all honesty I don't really get why they did this. The majority of Xbox owners are your typical frothing at the mouth halo/gears of war owners who can't handle not killing shit for extended peroids of time. I don't think many of them will get past the creation of an avatar because the lighthearted wii music will make them kill themselfs.

It would be good if the avatars could have emotional status like when you make a character in Rockband and you choose if they're metal or classic rock, etc... but all your avatar seems to do is just stand still and looks around abit. If it did something had a pet to play with or a yoyo or became a hobo on your desktop and lived inside a cardboard box drinking cheap whisky then maybe I could relate more.

If you didn't already change your theme from the previous dashboard then that needs doing right away as that much bright green should only ever be on screen if slimer is. I suppose it is easier to figure out than the previous dashboard but who didn't get use to that? The only people who wouldn't be likely to figure it out were xbox arcade owners, and i doubt they know how to get onto the dashboard.

In the end I probably do prefer it to the old one. I just think it's pointless having wii-like avatars, and everyone knows the only reason they did it is for microtransactions. So get ready to spend your RL money on a gears of war t-shirt, and hat.

Ignore the avatars they're just a nice add on. Personally I'm a crazed frothing at the mouth gears kinda guy but the avatars make the 360 more approachable to my non-gaming friends (Oh its like the wii and I like that etc.) and thats only a good thing. There is so much more to the new update than avatars, like some half decent functionality for a change (group video chat, faster menu load times etc.) so all in all I think its about time it got a do over.

I agree styx, the new update has brought some, perhaps not needed, but certainly welcome additions to the 360. I particularly like the hard drive - games bit and also the downloading movies feature, despite the prices when you could *cough* *torrent* *cough* for free,....

having the 360 able to play .avi does kind of make there film section useless. maybe if you could rent a film and have a temporary download of it for a week for about £1 might be good though. although they're going to have to get more films than shark in venace.

I think the whole point of netflix is that you can remotely watch films with your friends over xbox live.

"I don't think many of them will get past the creation of an avatar because the lighthearted wii music will make them kill themselfs."

Dont you get it? Thats the point, there trying to clean up the live comunity. so now that all of the 'hardcore' 1337 pwningusuxOMGN00B!!111432 have gone and done a lemmings, I should be able to get a decent game of halo 3 in....should

Of course, I was so blind! Almost everytime i play on xbox live i'm left having to mute most of the people i'm playing with. GG microsoft, gg.

Whilst the addition of avatars is seen as an inconvience to some gamers its getting Microsoft exposed to the large Nintendo Wii market. It's also given them some new angles for advertising.

Whilst making little versions of yourself outside of the bedroom will never be good as the opposite implied, I still think its fun and "safe" way to show who you are and what you look like without paedo's banging off to your profile picture. The old gamer pics were dated and made me think that I was still on GameSpy. Saying that, I never know how honest to be when making my avatar, should I give him my belly?

Also the whole save the game to the hard drive. Renting games just got much better (although I haven't tested this and don't know how it works and if there's any procedures to combat this...) Worst case scenario I can play Barbie Wedding Planner at 2am without my Turbine waking the rest of the house. Excellent!

P.S I've always been able to play .avi's and DivX?

For skimmers: Jarvis likes the new update, lots.

Yeah only problem with the new install feature is that you actualy need the game in your cd drive to be able to run it from your hard-drive after you have already installed it.

Pros for this:

. Quiet Xbox (yay)
. Quicker load times
. Will not crash if it cannot read the cd (this is a problem which I have had with GoW and Assassins creed, huzzar!)

Cons for this:

. Takes up a lot of valuable hard drive space (as you know the 120gb hard drives (or is it 100gb?) have the worst Pound to GB ratio ive ever seen!)
. You need the actual CD to run it from your HDD (that means no installing gmaes from f riends or rental stores and being able to play them forever( that is ofc unless im mistaken ?)


Still I think its an ecellent idea because my games used to crash half way through a chapter and it would be piss annoying to have to replay it. GG microsoft