New Xbox Experience: Your Questions Answered
We ask Microsoft the questions you want answering about the new 360 dashboard.
Attention Xbox 360 owners: The New Xbox Experience is coming. November 19, if you're wondering. Some of you might have read our hands-on preview of the free downloadable update, but we know there are still many questions still unanswered. So, we thought it would be a good idea to ask you, the lovely VideoGamer.com readers, what you wanted to know before we left for a NXE session with James Houlton, UK product manager, LIVE, and Robin Burrowes, EMEA product manager, LIVE. Read on for the answers you so crave.
FantasyMeister: What was the precursor for driving such development in the first place?
James Houlton: The whole idea of NXE is to reinvent, and for us we feel it's the first time that anyone has done this from a consumer electronics point of view, particularly a console, just using the upgrade of software, and create something that really fresh, really easy to navigate, uses audio and visual to really get the thing to pop up so that people can easily identify and find what they're looking for and just make it a lot easier from a navigation point of view.
Obviously with the price drop that we recently announced, that the Arcade starting at £129 being the cheapest next-gen console, it's a big Christmas for us in terms of where we think we're going to go. We feel we do a fairly good job with games like Fable and Gears, but with NXE and our other broadening titles we feel there's an opportunity for us to grow that market as well. So not shift our direction at all but actually grow into that more mainstream and NXE is there to help us on that journey.
Ghost5: Will we still be able to use gamerpics?
James Houlton: You don't have to use your Avatar picture if you like. So you create an Avatar, but your Gamer Pic is your public display. You can take a picture of your Avatar and you can use that on your Gamer Card, or you can use whatever image you've got now, currently.
User Comments
FIech
I dont really like the avatar characters but the new dash is a lot better, and as its free then why not.
Wido
xboxlive
ugh!
pblive
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.
FantasyMeister
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.
Jumbo Beans