New XBox Experience

http://www.gamevee.com/viewVideo/xbo..._PAX_08/757356

slightly higher quality.... and i am liking the new ui more and more but there are still some huge unanswered questions.

I think the new UI is really good, and it's good MS is giving us a new experience for our current consoles.

I was there live for one of the four demos. If nothing else, the speed improvement is massive. I also found the full in-game guide to be a massive improvement. Rare did a great job on the avatars too. There was live image tagging and whatnot for all the game related stuff that is on your 360, with far easier methods to get to game add-ons and stuff.

Sorry if I'm rambling a bit. 3 days of PAX is always exhausting.

hey ramble on more and more.... every detail you can remember because im sure other sections were shown that are no in that video. because we still dont know about alot of the sections.

I was rambling on more, but then my new cat just hit F5 on me. That post is now gone. Here's the short of it. Anyone that is saying that they don't like the new dashboard right now is just afraid of change. When it hits, this new dash will be universally loved.

Thanks for the rambling Dark. I am looking forward to the new dash.

I'm really looking forward to this, more than I was before!

party chat is cool, but I'd like to be able to put video in my bio

"but I'd like to be able to put video in my bio"

I'm glad you can't.

i'm liking it. can't wait to get it.

I'm liking it, and looking forward to it just for the Netlix streaming.

I'll also be glad if it's faster. I can't stand how my "Games Library" takes like 10 seconds to come up with all my demos and games I've purchased.

Just remembered a really cool thing. Live previews of themes. No more super slow process of applying the theme just to find you don't like it, then having to go through a couple menus to get back to theme management.

I saw that in the bouncy demo. It brought up a question, though:
Can the foreground gray overlay be adjusted? It seems to me it unnecessarily obscures too much of the background image. This was most evident during the preview of the theme; the new interface is so clean and uncluterred that it is a shame it doesn't let the theme background shine some more.

Another question that comes to mind:
Did they demo the media player? Any interface improvements there (Album art, metadata overlay on the visualizations, *new* visualizations?) or extra features like video playlists, anything at all?

Just asking. In case... ;-)

i am also very curious about the new media player.... especially albumart for videos that are streamed. from the info ive gathered it will read filename.jpg and use that as the cover but it doesnt work using a streaming server.

haha, best post in a while!

Looking good. Always thought the current dashboard's usability factor was awfully low. Logical structure non-existent, cluttered. I'm glad they're putting an emphasis on better cross-referencing of the different areas like linking the disc in the drive to the shop, DLC to game etc. without the need to navigate back to root and start digging. Current dash makes me not want to browse and shop, and that's before navigation puts me to sleep. This looks like a huge improvement.

Im still not sold and would have to mess with it. It has nothing to do with "fearing change". I just really have no interest in people on the internet knowing too much about me. I rather the mii you pick be able to be something other then a little big head kiddie pic. I would prefer that the theme be viewable without the gray land in front of it. But ,whatever, I dont get a vote I have to use whatever crp they throw up there.

As for speed. He was running it on a test environment, we will have to wait and see if it actually is any faster since it now will have a ton more images it has to pull down when you connect to it.....unless it stores all that crp on your hard drive. But it can't do that as some of the people using it wont have hard drives. Unless they do not get the "full functionality".

"Full functionality" as you describe it requires online access.
Online access requires a storage card to hold your profile.
*Everybody* has storage of one type or another so yes, they can cache stuff locally if they choose to. Or do what they do now and display placeholders until the online content is dl'ed...

"But ,whatever, I dont get a vote I have to use whatever crp they throw up there."

You do to get a vote. You can go play a PS3, Wii, PC, or not play games. You don't have to use it if you don't want to.

For me speed is the biggest issue. I can find my way around the layouts whatever they are and the avatar thing will be cool once we get to see what it is however speed is my only concern. The last update seemed to slow things down more than anything else.

Let us all remember that the dashboard now is offering way more services than I would have ever have imagined when the system launched.

I just wonder how cheap or old a video-cam has to be to shake like that.

You'd be insane to snub a console with a freaking boatload of terrific games just to make some sort of point about not liking the new user interface. Honestly, no matter how much the new UI experience may or may not suck, it's not going to prevent any serious gamers from playing on the Xbox 360.

Exactly. I dont get a vote on the interface. I do like the console in general and the games on it well enough that I wont just get rid of it and buy a more expensive console\\PC (wii is out of question for me) just because I dont like the ideas they have going for their new interface. Besides, like I said, I have to try it to really know what I think but just my general first impression is its just a stupid gimick.

Also I do understand that the 360 has some resident memory so I am not talking about your own setting, I was thinking more of the visual market place. Since the data there changes often you probaby are not going to cache it, so that visual data (plus the miis of your online friends) will haveto be transmitted when you connect.

The new UI seems pretty good...I just don't like the mii wannabees.

My two only problems I had with the current dashboard was the lack of a search and marketplace had no way to scroll through the HD videos only. I didn't see that anywhere in the demo but it would be nice.

If they disc load to drive things helps noise and overall gaming speed - then i could care less about the rest.

I'm pretty excited about the whole thing, but the party chat seems like the bigest/coolest deal to me.

I wonder how it's going to work with some games? For example Battlefield Bad Company. On that game you have squads of 4 and only your squad can communicate. If you have a "party" of 8 and want to play Battlefield together I wonder how that's going to work?