Xbox 360 Dashboard review
Platform Xbox 360
Type Update
Release November 19th
I received the fall update 5 days early thanks to the great people at Microsoft.
So to get to the point I thought I would write a review about the new dashboard features.
When you first install the dashboard you are are greeted with a very high quality NXE intro video designed to get you hyped about the new software. The following screen brings up the Avatar creator. You can customize your avatars hair,eyes,eye brows, ears, nose, chin, facial hair, mouth, height, weight, skin tone, shirt, hat, make-up, pants, glasses, formal dress, shoes, and body accessories. So as you can see the options are nearly limitless. The avatars are often compared to the Mii's of Nintendo. But the truth is these guys are a whole different ballgame. The detail put into the customization of your avatar is great. For each of the options there are about 3 pages of choices with 9 choices per page. One cool thing I noticed was the feature that you can save your avatars outfits for later. There is also a camera where you can take pictures of your avatar and set it as your profile picture. After you are done you are sent to the Dashboard .
The Dashboard is just like the XMB except done right. You are greeted with the spotlight section which is and 8 box long category with all of the new Xbox live info and events. The boxes are beautify organized and fluid. I found it very hard to navigate with the poorly made D-Pad on the 360. The next category is the My Xbox has your games, profile, achievements, Game Library (games that are saved to the hard rive) Videos,music,photos, and settings. A very cool feature is that from the games library, you can select a game and it will bring up a game photo as the background. The photos that are selected are awesome and look like great PC wallpapers. From here it will bring up all out gamer score and achievements for that game. From the disk in tray menu you can press Y and it will give you the option to install the game to your hard drive. Most games take up about 6.8 -7.4 GB. Halo 3 uses 7.3GB. The hardrive notably speed up the process of online matchmaking, it took 44 seconds to find and join a game of rumble pit . One downside is even if you load the game to your hard drive the dashboard still asks that you have the disk in when you play. There is also the video marketplace where you can rent movies and buy T.V. shows for you Xbox. The channel is vibrant and full of color but in the end not to much different from the old market place listings. The friends feature is slow right now because no one else has the new dashboard update.
The new thing is the mini dashboard. The new minidash is awesome and uses the blade system like the old dashboard. A big flaw is now when you want to play music in game and you haven't already selected a music source in the dashboard you have to leave the game to chose where your music comes from. The party feature is kinda useless for me right now because no one else has the dashboard. You can now open the try from the mini guide which is sweet. Basically anything you could do on the old dashboard is now in the mini dash.
Other thoughts
Another big thing is themes. Themes that you bought on the marketplace still work. They basically take the back ground picture and put if behind the Grey globe like thing. The new themes look good. Contrast is the best theme for the new dashboard. The Music visualization feature is not completely fullscreen any more at the 720P resolution . The video players menu bar got a theme update.
Conclusion, the new dashboard is a huge upgrade from the old basic blade system and has so many advantages over it's predecessor. I still cant find the option to go back to the old dash if I wanted to but that's okay because I don't want too ever go back.
This is the email I got from MS on November 13th
The Xbox 360 Fall Flash update will be available to you by 2pm PST on November 14th (5pm EST on November 14th, 10pm GMT on November 14th).
If you would like to post comments regarding your experiences with the New Xbox Experience, or interact with other preview participants please use the Newsgroups link on the connect site.
If you need technical assistance with the Xbox 360 Fall Flash and you're in the US or Canada and speak English; you can also call 877-783-1507. Phone lines will be open between the hours of 8am and 6pm CST. Do not publish or otherwise share this phone number with people that are not participating in the preview.
In participation with this program, you should not move your storage device (hard drive, or memory unit if you do not have a hard drive) to any other console as it will also update that console. If an unregistered console is updated with the NXE update, that console will not be able to connect to Xbox LIVE until the NXE has been officially released on November 19th.
Please remember that your participation in the Public Preview Program is subject to the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use.
We thank you for your participation and hope that you enjoy the New Xbox Experience.
See you online,
The Xbox 360 team
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