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“When Missy Higgins first approached me to write the preface for her new book I must admit I was a little surprised.”

'eGames & Entertainment Expo 2007' Preface
by Brett


AIE - Mid Year Courses Start in July






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feature :: nxe

NXE

AJ takes the new Microsoft Xbox Live overhaul for a spin


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NXE

News from AJ - November 20th @ 12:31am

As it turns out, I got accepted into the NXE preview last week. Unfortunately, due to lack of internet connectivity in my new house, and eGames over the weekend, I didn't realise until just now. Of course, I don't have proper internet at the moment... I am currently using my mobile phone as a modem. Mmmmm...pricey!

Initially I thought there was no way I could get the update for the 360 until I had a bit of a play with Windows connection sharing, and now... bingo! We have an NXE update! So what's it like? Well, initially the update just looks like a normal update. Until your Xbox reboots and starts a whole new "updating" box. It took me a couple of attempts to download it, purely because my phone can't manage to hold a connection up for more than 2 minutes!

The update appears to come in 2 parts. The initial update appears to provide you with the new dashboard itself. Once the dashboard has been installed, another larger update is downloaded. I’m guessing it provides the artwork for Avatars and the rather unnecessary intro video. Once it is all done, you get launched into the new dashboard. In actual fact, the content of it isn't a whole different than the old one. It's really just a reorganisation of what you already had... well... for us Australians at least!

They’ve definitely done a good job of highlighting the things that people use, and pushing the shit that no one looks at into the background. Everything “current” receives a lot more attention than previously. Jumping into your favourite arcade game is now much quicker as you don’t have to wait for the entire list of games you’ve downloaded to load. The last few games you’ve played are listed and you just select them to start playing. Same goes with achievements; there is now no need to hit a bunch of menus to find your current status on a particular game, all your latest achievements are there on the dashboard. Similarly, getting access to the latest XBL Arcade games is made much easier with new content loaded directly to your dashboard. The whole process for things you do regularly is now a lot more streamlined. It’s all the same shit, but at least its quicker to get around in.

The two main features us Aussies are interested in (given the absence of movie and TV downloads, and the absence of several other “announced” features available to the US), and they are Avatars and the new Load from HDD features. Unfortunately, both of these features fail to impress at this point.

The Hard drive pre-load seems like it should make things load a whole lot quicker. But the reality is that most games for the 360 cache a lot of data to the hard drive anyway. What it does mean though is that games that do feature “load screens” will be quicker. I did a test on Fable 2, and after a 12 minute install, level load times reduced from around 25 seconds to around 20 seconds. A reduction for sure, but not a huge one, and arguably not worth the 12 minute install time (until you’ve gone through 144 zones at least!) Of course, games like Burnout Paradise don’t even have loading screens (beyond the initial load up) and therefore the benefit is significantly reduced, unless you stop and start the game a lot of course. Bottom line here is, games that have been written to make use of the HDD for caching will benefit little from this feature, whilst games which run purely from the disc could see around a 20% reduction in load times. Of course, then there is the issue of only have a 20Gb hard drive, which has only 14Gb usable space, 3.9Gb of which is taken up in game saves, Xbox Live Arcade games and downloadable add-on content and then with 2.9Gb of demos leaves 6.9Gb of disk space of which Fable 2 takes up 6.7Gb. Yeah....awesome. I’ll be skipping that feature in future.

The second big new feature is the new Avatar system. I don’t like them. At all. Given the relative simplicity of the Wii avatars, it is surprising to find that they are actually significantly more flexible (and fun) to mess around with than the new Xbox attempt. Yes sure they’re nice and 3D, but they’re incredibly inflexible. Whilst my simplistic Mii looks pretty similar to me, as do the rest of my family, the Xbox Avatar has me looking more like Peter Moore. Needless to say, I’m not that happy with it. The Nintendo version lets you position, scale and rotate eyes, eyebrows, noses and mouths giving gamers a huge degree of freedom to create a Mii that at least looks a little like the person that created it. The Xbox Avatar is a case of choosing from 50 odd hairstyles, 20 odd mouths, a dozen or so noses and crossing your fingers to hope that your various parts have a matching online version. Mine don’t. The end result is a fairly vague characterisation of oneself that pales in comparison to the “simplified” Wii version.

But of course, all of this is free. And that, we know, is the kicker. I have no doubt that one day I’ll be able to pay for a hairstyle like mine, and I know that one day I’ll be able to pay for clothes that look like what I’d wear. Regardless of how I dress this particular avatar up, however, it will never look as much like me as my Mii does.... and that makes it pretty crap. Really, if you’re going to steal someone else’s idea (and I don’t care if they DID start making it before the Wii), when you launch it you should definitely make sure it is better than the competition. In the end, a comparison to the Mii system is probably less valid than comparing it to the Sims. I think it is less about making something that looks like YOU and more about making an online persona.... an amplified version of you if you like.

One thing that did kinda slip under the radar is the new Themes 2.0. I’m not sure how much use this will get, but the new Themes available actually change the interface of some parts of the experience, most notably your friends list. Choose the Night theme, and your friends list is converted to a NY style Ghetto. I’m not sure how users go about customising their little “area” of the friends list... but if you can in the future that’d be pretty neat. At the moment, like most of the NXE, it’s just fluff.

I would’ve like to have checked out the new Parties option, but as none of my friends are online at the moment (and from what I can tell, none are using the NXE yet anyway), I haven’t been able to test it out.

When all is said and done, the New Xbox Experience, doesn’t have a lot to offer us Aussies. With no Netflix, no Movies, no TV, no Inside Xbox and no Xbox Live Primetime (well even the yanks don’t get it yet), the whole thing seems like a bit of a waste of time. Pretty much there are only 2 features, and neither of them are really worthy of much more than a passing glance. Of course, we already know that half of the features planned for the NXE were cut prior to launch, and should make an appearance in the future, but at the moment it all feels like nothing more than new wrapping for us Aussies. It’s very nice wrapping, don’t get me wrong, but we’re clearly only seeing half of the half that will be launched in the US.

Get the update on the 19th and be prepared to be unexcited.


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