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Subscribe to RSS feedWe had to wait for it for months but today I finally saw the message “an update is available”. It took about 5 minutes to download and presto the new look and feel for my X-Box was there.
“Welcome to the New XBox Experience!” …. cooooool. It is followed by some cool 3d effects and lets me sign in. I see that the terms of use have changed and I am asked to view it and accept it Submit. I think it covers mostly logical things
Since I don’t have my camera nearby, a little review with pictures taken from the X-Box site 3/7.
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Right away all 3d avatars are running on my screen… wow. “choose and avatar as starting point” it says. Amazingly, compared to the “flat” older GUI. When I go around selecting avatars a sort of “beam me up scotty” effect comes around and the character begins to float. When I move “the beam” they drop down, funny. I let the whole crowd jump up and down a few times and then select one of the guys to be my starting point. Too bad I can not show you which one I choose. |
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It now lets me customize my avatar somewhat more - change my features: changes the hair, eyes,body, etc… I start with the hairstyles and notice … 90 pages of hairstyles….3 pages of haircolor… 5 pages of eyes… and the funny thing is each style wears a name… on with ears, facial hair, I gave myself some wrinkles, a fearsome mouth - clothing: 4 pages of tops, caps, make-up, I can choose between cargo shorts, chino shorts, punk pants, pinstripe pants, boot cut jeans, turn up jeans, worn jeans etc… I decided to pick one of the cool art house glasses, no earrings, black formal shoes… hmm.. wait I take the suit, a titanium sports watch, a gold ring, no gloves - Hmmm lets save this outfit under “ed1” on the harddisk and lets save it as my game picture As far as I can understand it should now be visible via avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/cogmios/avatar-body.png … yes
This 3d avatar I can now use in actual games so I always have the same look, pretty good idea! There is a seperate section for that “games with avatars”. Lets continue with the real stuff: the new gui! (see here for all new stuff 3/739) |
This is me with my “Bali” look - To bad I don’t have more friend using the X-box 360 since the party feature (with 7 people in one room) look pretty neat.
- The new popup menu when you press the XBox Guide button is much handier than the previous version
- Another cool thing is “Install to hard drive”. I can now insert a cd, got to “my xbox” and then install the cd to hard drive, in that way I don’t need to insert the disc again and… I can play the game from the hd. (Although I need 6.4gb free space which I Completely filled up with downloads 
).
- The information on games, etc… is now shown as “cards” that you can scroll through which provide a much better user experience
- I also like the profile info, it show in 3d, all the cards of all my games and on them all my achievements so I can scroll through them, makes me having the desire to REALLY fill all achievements
- Overall the new 3d gui is an enormous improvement, I am still clicking everywhere to find out what’s where.
One thing I really would want though one day though is the ability to view albumcovers of my music since they are stored in my iTunes.
I’m going to explore somewhat more, the overall verdict is : superb ms!
