New XBL interface Nov 1

[Izuno]

Tonight I loaded up my Xbox and of course Microsoft had a system update for me. This has been the biggest clusterf*ck of an update. The XBL interface is totally Wii-ified. It's all casual and Kinecty now. I can't even find the marketplace. I liked my old interface. zomg.

Here's a link...i'm sure there are better ones out there.

http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2010/07/16/next-xbox-360-dashboard-update-releases-this-november-includes-slight-design-changes-family-plan-kinect-hub-and-espn.htm

Discuss.

Update:

OK games marketplace etc. is back now. I just had to do an additional restart and it all came back.

[PhilipK]

I dunno, I thought it looked very similar to the old one. At first I didn't find the marketplace etc either until I noticed I wasn't signed in

[Thrik]

Video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l8d7Tvxh8s

Looks mostly the same really, save for more conspicuous use of the avatars and a general lick of paint to the interface (the video guy's crappy wallpaper notwithstanding). I can see some nice tweaks such as the fact that you can now see the previous box when you cycle through them, whereas before you had no way of knowing what the previous box was or even if there was one apart from the '3/20' or whatever at the bottom.

I wonder if this new version runs in proper 1080p. I swear the old one ran at 720p (even if upscaled) because it looked suspiciously blurry on my screen in comparison to the ultra-sharp interface on the PS3.

[Warby]

i hope they let you configure that dashboard ! because the xbox dashboard is such a redundant cluttered up mind fuck of a usability mess... its unbelievable it got to this state of popularity that it has !

i am always offended how many pointless buttons and categories there are ! i have never clicked on 90% of the buttons on the xbox dashboard

my community & my friends ?! whats the difference sounds the same to me !

my xbox and inside xbox sounds like the same thing to me !

i believe the inside xbox is actual hot new stuff on the marketplace so why dont you put this into the market place ! why do i need to have redundant marketplace buttons ?!

there is a zune button for the 5 people in the world that have a zune that shit should only show up once you hook up your zune ! for 99.999999999999% of the rest of the world this is just unnecessary clutter

i only want 3 buttons on my xbox dashboard

1)play the disc in the drive !

2)xbla game library ( and go to the store from there)

3)system settings

BAM done ! thats all the xbox needs ! why wont they let me configure it that way

[Skjalg]

I think im gonna sell my xbox and buy a ps3

[Nysuatro]

I think im gonna sell my xbox and buy a ps3

I am also thinking about it. But ps3 is still 300 euro :s

[Serenius]

I was hoping with the simpler interface, it would be less laggy, harkening back to the legacy Xbox dashboard of the days of yore. Sadly, it was just as bloated and unresponsive as the last revamp. You know what else got continuous revamps that didn't improve the product? Star Wars Galaxies.

[Thrik]

To be fair the first redesign of the interface was an absolutely massive improvement. I truly hated the original blades interface with every fibre of my being, both for its aesthetics and usability.

[Izuno]

Yeah I apologize if I over reacted at first...but I was logged in and the games marketplace was gone so I was annoyed...then I remembered "Oh yeah it's a Microsoft product. When in doubt reboot and pray." Anyway, the interface is structured mostly the same so I'm actually not that upset anymore. Is it my imagination or is it slightly less laggy now? Still, better than the original blades as Thrik said. I'm sort of stuck on playing Borderlands right now on my Xbox...maybe I'll go back and play some RDR on the PS3!

[ReNo]

Worst thing about it from my point of view is the marginalizing of the Xbox Indie Games marketplace. Previously once you hit game marketplace we had our own row, just like XBLA, showing the top downloads in a row. This gave a direct window into the XBLIG market and what was available (ok, not always appealing games on show, but still!) which helped pull in potential customers. Now we are the second box along in speciality shops, with a rubbish picture of some avatars as our "box art".

But hey I'm not privvy to the same marketing data that Microsoft is. Maybe they're right and this is truly the best place for XBLIG to flourish. We'll need to wait and see what it does to sales. There's a lot of conspiracy theories going on that we're being pushed to the side in order to avoid cannibalizing sales/exposure from XBLA titles though, as well as Microsoft trying to turn all us XNA developers onto their "sexy new market" on Windows Phone 7. As said, just need to wait and see how it pans out.

One thing I CANNOT see there being any positives to though is the removal of box art, game descriptions, screenshots, and (most importantly) the ability to RATE a game from your game library. Sure, they've made a nice new page for the games when you view them on the marketplace, but once you've downloaded it and access it from your game library you are presented with a bland, boring menu allowing you to play or delete, that's all. Who the hell is gonna rate games now you need to go in to the marketplace page in order to do it? It makes no sense whatsoever to remove this function from the place it was most likely to be used. It makes the box art of DLC titles feel much less important now too, which will discourage people from putting in as much effort.

It's not ALL doom and gloom though. There's a few really nice changes too. Once you actually get in to the XBLIG marketplace they've made great improvements, particularly in the genre browsing and increasing the length of the top rated/downloaded/new releases lists from 20 to 50.

[Taylor]

For me all this means is my menus go right instead of right and back a bit, but I'm hearing a fair bit of rage about XBLIG.

[AlexM]

Worst thing about it from my point of view is the marginalizing of the Xbox Indie Games marketplace. Previously once you hit game marketplace we had our own row, just like XBLA, showing the top downloads in a row. This gave a direct window into the XBLIG market and what was available (ok, not always appealing games on show, but still!) which helped pull in potential customers. Now we are the second box along in speciality shops, with a rubbish picture of some avatars as our "box art".

But hey I'm not privvy to the same marketing data that Microsoft is. Maybe they're right and this is truly the best place for XBLIG to flourish. We'll need to wait and see what it does to sales. There's a lot of conspiracy theories going on that we're being pushed to the side in order to avoid cannibalizing sales/exposure from XBLA titles though, as well as Microsoft trying to turn all us XNA developers onto their "sexy new market" on Windows Phone 7. As said, just need to wait and see how it pans out.

One thing I CANNOT see there being any positives to though is the removal of box art, game descriptions, screenshots, and (most importantly) the ability to RATE a game from your game library. Sure, they've made a nice new page for the games when you view them on the marketplace, but once you've downloaded it and access it from your game library you are presented with a bland, boring menu allowing you to play or delete, that's all. Who the hell is gonna rate games now you need to go in to the marketplace page in order to do it? It makes no sense whatsoever to remove this function from the place it was most likely to be used. It makes the box art of DLC titles feel much less important now too, which will discourage people from putting in as much effort.

It's not ALL doom and gloom though. There's a few really nice changes too. Once you actually get in to the XBLIG marketplace they've made great improvements, particularly in the genre browsing and increasing the length of the top rated/downloaded/new releases lists from 20 to 50.

Yeah, I've been hearing this from a lot of XNA developers lately. I kind of thought they were marginalizing XBLIG developers so I've begun porting all my XNA engine code to C++/openGL. It's not too bad but I have the benefit of a much more experienced coder than me handling the low level OS stuff like input and rendering. The benefit is now we can compile for pretty much anything that supports openGL, which is basically any platform EXCEPT xbox

[Patrick_H]

Indie games are back in their own category. Yay!

I know this interface was made for Kinect-ability, but I don't like the overuse of white in the scheme. It hurts my eyes after looking at a display all day. Also the nice soft sounds of the old interface were replaced with a high-pitched noise that is a tad on the grating side. Netflix browser is more useable when you click on a title, but the red to grey-crap-brown gradation on the background looks awful...why not just have a shorter gradient to black? Dumbasses.