The "New" New Xbox Experience

The new Xbox 360 Dashboard Update was released today after a bit of a delay. I, like everyone else, has downloaded it and seen what the differences are. I figured a little "what I liked, what I didn't" was in order so that's what you are going to get today. I'll break things out into pros and cons and describe them a bit too.

Also, I don't have a Kinect and won't mention anything about related features.

Pros:

- The console now boots with the cursor on the Play Disc option.
This was something that always really annoyed me about the previous update. When you booted your Xbox before today, it would start on the Spotlight channel which was filled with ads for things I couldn't care less about (most of the time, anyways). Having to press up on the stick to get to "Play Game" was kind of silly. That has been solved now and I am very happy with the change.

- Less advertisements overall and better ones.
Advertisements have existed on the Xbox 360 dash for awhile but became very prominent after the NXE (New Xbox Experience). The number of ads certainly seems to have diminished with the update. I also noticed them were only to be found in their particular areas, game ads in the game tab and so on. The new Windows Phone-esque style also means that they are much smaller, making the whole experience much more unobtrusive.

- New achievements layout.
I like achievements quite a bit. I don't quite go crazy with them (renting games like Avatar or buying a Japanese 360 for more points) but I enjoy 1000/1000 a few games here and there. The layout for displaying your achievements has been updated and has a good amount more detail now. Upon entering the screen, you are clearly shown your total points out of how many you could have earned for every game you have played, total number of achievements out of how many you could have earned (both of these were present before but easier to find now), and a number telling you how many games you have completed all the achievements for, including a way to view a list of just these games. It is a much slicker interface and runs a lot better than the old version did.

- Slicker presentation overall.
I wasn't entirely sure about the Windows Phone looking layout for this update. It seemed like something that would be more suited for a phone, not a gaming console. After messing around with it for a bit, I think it has potential. It may just be the shiny newness of it but I am coming around on it quickly. In particular, I like the much bigger box-art/movie cover/album cover display that is now shown when looking for a game/movie/album.


Cons:

- Your games are a little harder to get to.
The games tab is not the first one after the home screen. Neither is it the next one. It is three tabs over, after social and movies. This is mostly a minor annoyance but it is a bit more distance to travel to access your game library (except for a list of your last 10 played games/apps on the home screen).

- Marketplace a bit cluttered.
The marketplaces on Xbox Live have never been the greatest and now would have been a great time to fix that. Unfortunately, they made a few things a bit worse. Game marketplaces are sorted by release date first, just like they always have been, but now games that are updated in any way count towards this release date. For example, I went to the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace and saw that one of the first games was Sonic CD. I opened the game's page and saw that it was only an announcement trailer that had pushed it forward on the list. The games marketplace is also oddly sectioned off and has some ads between it and your owned games. Still needs some work.

- Demos are buried deep.
Another minor issue but demos are quite hard to find now. They aren't present on the games tab until you access the marketplace and go to the last tab to find them. I'm sure newer demoes might be promoted on the front page but the older ones can be a chore to get to.

- Keyboard for searching.
When using Bing to search Xbox Live for content, you are forced to use a keyboard displayed at the top of the screen. It is an alphabetical keyboard along the top and it is the only option for typing. I really don't like this keyboard, and would have preferred a pop-up keyboard like the Xbox 360 uses elsewhere. Not a big deal but still annoying.

- Apps can only be deleted from Storage screen.
Apps are a big new part of the update and let you use things like Hulu Plus and (later) Youtube on your Xbox. These are small shells that you must download and run from you Xbox to access. Unfortunately, when you want to get rid of these apps, you can only do so from your storage options. They are relatively small files but it isn't hard to imagine someone might want to delete one here and there. Also, they are paired with your games in the storage database, so you must scroll through a potentially large list to find them.

- No warning messages before downloading an app.
What do I mean with this? Well, Netflix and Hulu Plus (among others, I believe) require you to both be an Xbox Gold member and have subscriptions with the individual services. Upon downloading either of these apps, there isn't a single warning about needing either of these things to access it. Instead, you must download and run the app before finding this out. Some kind of description or pop-up would be nice.

- Search isn't quite right.
Upon searching for something on Bing, you are given a thrown together mess of search results. The exact text you search for is usually first but not always. DLC for games and individual television episodes show up as separate items here, cluttering the results. I think it would be much better if the search put games, movies, and albums first on the results and then put the extra content after. Small thing but I think it would be beneficial.


Well, there are some of my thoughts on the new Xbox 360 update. I haven't quite decided if I truly like it yet (since most of my cons are for things I plan to never use) so I need to give it some time. Either way, I and all of you are stuck with it. At least until the New "New" New Xbox Experience.