My First Day With NXE: Lots of Good, A Few First Day Problems
I arrived home from work extra early yesterday (yes, I have a full time job, Project Silence does not pay the bills), to jump on the NXE and check out all the new bells and whistles. I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of my experiences with those who haven’t yet had the chance to try, or just don’t know about some of the new features.
Installation.
The first thing you notice is that Microsoft actually thought this one through. The initial download and install was very speedy and less then 5 minutes, even including the silly intro video that Microsoft and every technology company on the planet seems to think their product needs. Even considering the trailer, the initial experience is fast, simple and streamlined, exactly what we all wish Microsoft would do with some of their other core products.
Avatars.
Immediately after installing the NXE (shouldn’t that just be XE, now? or maybe CXE, Current Xbox Experience?), you are immediately pushed into the avatar creator. Initially you are give some (seemingly random) choices for a base to begin your Avatar, but once you pick one you can change it to your hearts content. Lots of face, eye, nose and shirt options are available (and even accessories like watches and wedding rings), allowing to make a relatively accurate representation of yourself. There does seem to be a lack of clothing options, probably to allow for DLC in the future. Also, you cannot move individual elements around, so no placing eyebrows on your Avatars head to make them look like antennas (or something more sinister).
A nice touch, when you finish your Avatar, you are given the option to take his/her photograph for your gamer picture, you can position the camera, zoom in and out, change the background color and direct your Avatar to move slightly. The addition of some kind of action poses would have been nice, but not necessary, and what is included is more than sufficient.
All in all I really like the Avatars, it was fun scrolling through the friends list and seeing what others had done, and Rare did a great job with the art on them, they are much more detailed than Nintendo’s Mii’s and, honestly, make them look a bit amateurish by comparison. That being said I was a pretty big fan of the Mii’s on Nintendo’s Wii initially, and the comparisons between the two are natural, but I grew sick of them quickly and felt that Nintendo never used them anywhere near their potential, Microsoft seems to want 3rd parties to join in the fun and that should add some longevity to the Avatars.
Interface.
The new interface is nice to look at, it’s certainly shiny and new, however I’m not sure it’s any simpler to navigate. The Xbox 360 has gotten it’s fair share of feature creep over the years and is capable of some great things, but this makes actually finding the feature you want still difficult. Thankfully the new pop-up blade interface when you push the Guide button has more options and is better laid out, so this helps, but I still think new users will be overwhelmed. The addition of a ton of advertising doesn’t help this matter.
The new interface doesn’t seem much faster, either. One of the promises was faster access to the Guide in gameplay, but honestly it still takes a few seconds to render text and seems about the same speed as the original. Perhaps I need a new hard drive, I do still have a launch 20GB, but the speed increases seem incremental at best to me. I was unable to try loading a game to the hard disk, as my 20GB has 2.2GB free at the moment, maybe I’ll have to fix that with a purchase today.
While everything went smoothly in the morning, by early afternoon Xbox Live was having some issues, clearly people were using the NXE, and Microsoft’s servers were taking a pounding. I was unable to download anything from the Marketplace, and even browsing was slow. This should be fixed quickly, but it’s always sad to see things not go smoothly on day one.
Netflix.
Downloading the Netflix streaming add-on was quick and easy, less than 4MB, finding it’s place on the NXE wasn’t as easy, it places an icon under the Video Marketplace tab, which seems odd to me, shouldn’t it be under My Videos? Anyway, I found streaming Netflix very well done, on my 5MB Cable connection Heroes HD looked fantastic, much better than my Roku box in Standard Def. While the quality wasn’t as good as broadcast or Blu-ray, the fact that it was streaming at that quality was impressive. There were a few delays, twice I had to re-buffer (something my Roku never does), but that could have been my line or just first day bandwidth strain on Netflix HD, I expect that to improve in short order.
Parties.
By far the best feature of the NXE. The ability to group with up to 8 friends, chat and even launch the same game all at once is a must have feature and something I have been complaining about for years. After just one day of using it, I could never go back to the old dashboard, it really is the way you will play games with your friends and I can’t wait to see games support it more completely.
Conclusion.
In the end the NXE is something the Xbox 360 needed desperatly and while there were some first day probems and some things will still be confusing to new users, it is a quantum leap for the Xbox 360. It really makes it seem like a new machine (of course my favorite thing about getting a new console has always been checking out the UI, I am a Geek) and shows that the oldest horse in the console race still has legs and will certainly be around for quite a while to come.
Tags
microsoft, new xbox experiance, nxe, xbox 360Related posts
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I agree, the install couldn’t have been smoother, and I like the look of the new dash, but OMG whats with all the ads?? They need to remove at least 2 whole menus, and I would re-arange the myxbox menu, put my sign-in page first, rather than the launch game page, since I have multiple xboxes (yes I have 3 now) I don’t do the auto sign-in, and I’ve found myself launching games before I sign-in, I too like the mini-blade much better for quick navigation. Finally, I think the pages need to be in a circle rather than liniar, so when I scroll to the left, they don’t just fly off the page, I find myself getting lost in sub-menus easily, maybe I’ll get used to it in time though.
wow, didn’t realize my post was one big-ass run-on sentence
sorry.