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FantasyMeister: What unique features will be available to each country/region?
James Houlton: You might be familiar with Inside Xbox. It's like a news magazine programme created by the guys at the office. They get to programme it locally, so they go out and do interviews with, say Guillermo del Toro, and they can just pop that straight up there on the service. They go to game launches filming and interviewing people. They can then take that content and put it straight up here so they can create really relevant content. If it was around an Arcade game coming out that day they can put up a video talking through it and announcing it's coming out. They can link to Game Marketplace.
Spotlight is an area that we can program around new launches, or content we think is relevant or new. So if a brand new blockbuster film had gone up we can change that there, or the PES demo might be up. We can try to help people by pulling up the new stuff that they might want to see. It uses art work, like movie posters or game box art, to really help draw people to it, so you're not searching through lists of stuff, you see it straight away.
Video Marketplace is ever growing for us in terms of partners, with MGM on board as well from a European point of view. You can go in, as you can with all the other channels, do New Arrivals, Most Popular, we can feature up stuff. We can actually program that so we do give a good idea of the variety, if we just happen to get a load of titles up there that appeal to a certain audience when people start downloading it doesn't put people off. With the price point now at £129 we feel a real switch point in terms of broadening our audience. Hopefully as we drive people to LIVE the last thing we want to do is go, 'actually it's all Hellboy and stuff like that'. So we can program it around family titles or slightly more action, or whatever we want to do, we have control of that.
Netflix (US movie service) is certainly somewhere we want to get to and we're evaluating who and what that could be with but we haven't got anything to announce. For us it's one of those things that's definitely a priority for us. That whole idea of being able to get access to a lot more content.
Robin Burrowes: It's basically a business model that we're exploring right now. Netflix obviously launches with the NXE in the States, and it's a great way of extending the entertainment capability as well as the fact that form a social entertainment point of view people can access that content on different consoles at the same time, and it's that social entertainment experience that we're really looking to evolve. We see that as one of our key unique selling propositions. So you can have an Xbox LIVE party where you can socialise with your friends more visibly, the fact that you can have quick launches into certain games, if you've all got the same game in your Arcade selection, having those games more easily launched and playing with each other becomes more achievable. It's a rich area for us to continue to evolve. So there will be lots more that we do within that shared space.
Wido: Will you still be able to use themes?
James Houlton: You can still use existing themes, a little bit like the Gamer Pics. If you've bought themes, or one theme or unlocked them, they still work within the New Xbox Experience as well. If you were to go to My Xbox and change the theme to say something like Night, the background changes. If I go to my Friends list then all the items on that Friends list look different as well. It's a fun, little bit more visual way of looking at your Friends and being able to find them quite easily. Existing themes obviously won't drive this content but the backgrounds still work. We were really conscious of that, especially if people have bought them or they've won them. They mean a lot to people.
FantasyMeister: Do you plan to come out with an environment similar to Home at any time?
James Houlton: It's when you're in your Friends list, that's when you'll see your Avatars, in there. You could then have a party, if there was a group of them together you could go up and join the party. This is the area where you would do most of your Avatar interactions, so to speak, but not in anything more than this Friends list.
pblive: Are there any plans to support more video formats at the same time in the update?
James Houlton: No, it's the same.
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I thought they were a bit evasive on the subjects of piracy and trying to go head-to-head with the Home environment, but other than that it's always refreshing to get straight answers.
I can see NXE as their platform for cracking some of the Wii market, it seems squarely aimed in that direction, but from a hardcore point of view I wouldn't mind using an avatar in Call of Duty 6 multiplayer just for a laugh if Infinity Ward were to incorporate it as an optional extra.
Personally I'd like to see them extend the NXE to incorporate more ways of interacting with your avatar (give it a home, decorate it with items you've unlocked in games, have a garden, grow stuff, invite your friends around and play swingball in the back yard, throw in a pet log etc.) just to give us more attachment. That way the dashboard itself could become a fun area and time waster in its own right, and possibly a good incentive to get silver members to go gold.
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Shame about the video formats, there are a couple that I'd like to see and thought they might be updated alongside the new front end, but maybe in a later update.
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I dont really like the avatar characters but the new dash is a lot better, and as its free then why not.
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