The NXE early access program. You there?

[Carnivol]

I dunno if everyone saw it or not, but for a short period, people could register in hopes to get early access to the NXE (official launch is on the 19th of November.)

I got in and just installed the new dashboard.
It's pretty nice looking and comes with a rather "epic" introduction sequence.

Looking at it in general, it's basically just a cross-breed between the current dashboard and Sony's XMB. (Just that all the main groups are on the left and goes "down" for additional info when you scroll out to the various sub groups.)


I really like what little hands on action I've had so far. Currently "installing" the 4th disc for Lost Odyssey now, to see how that thing works out (I figured I'd save my final grinding in this one until I got the new dashboard up and running).

It took a total of 7 minutes to install the 4th Disc of Lost Odyssey onto my HDD (read: as some already know, all it does is copy all data from the disc to HDD and access the HDD instead of the disc whenever you play the game. So that's a rough 1 minute pr. GB of data).


I dunno if I just missed out on this feature before, but I just noticed I have an option in my console settings to set HDMI color space to auto detect, Source, RGB, YCbCr709 and YCbCr601.


So far: This is gooood.

[Stu]

Have you bothered with making an avatar yet?

More to the point...can you get by with the dash board without having the damn fucking avatars all over the place?

[Carnivol]

You "must" create an avatar to go with your gamertag(s).

If you don't "want to", you can just shuffle the random generated template ones and pick someone random from there.

The only place on the dashboard where the avatars actually pop up is on the dashboard friends list and on the gamer profile part of My Xbox.


I spent like 2 minutes creating one that actually looks pretty much like me. And put it as my new gamer picture (seems like that feature doesn't work outside the NXE at the moment.)

Posing/Adjusting for a picture is actually pretty well done and easy to "adjust" if you want to use the avatar for your gamerpicture.


Even though it took a few minutes to get an overview of the new dashboard, I really like it. And I don't mind the avatars being "around". In overall, all it's missing now is some background music and stuff, and I'll have that "PlayOnline" feeling back (I love POL.)

[riderkid]

how do you reg to get a beta?

[Carnivol]

It was a sign-up thing on connect.microsoft.com
It was mentioned in pretty much all media. Sign-up was open for a couple of days, I think.
People who were selected from the people who signed up got the update this morning/last night.

[riderkid]

oh ok.

I cna wait for the 19th.

you can use netflix now though right?

[Carnivol]

If you're in a region with netflix support, yes.
Not all countries have that.

[Vector]

That whole avatar system looks ridiculous to me...unfitting of Xbox.

They look like next-gen Mii's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VExbd1oZ760

[Stu]

The avatars look like Miis? Can't believe that's not been noted before!

Well, i went for it and got "involved". It's fucking brilliant. It looks gorgeous! It's so clean, it's so quick...makes the trophy syncing on PS3 look fucking shite when your whole library and achievements load so quickly!

Currently installing Dead Space to the hard drive, it's the horror games that'll be amongst the best to benefit from the quiet drive now.

Love it, Microsoft delivered! Looking forward to the 19th now to see the new Marketplace

[James]

Well, i went for it and got "involved". It's fucking brilliant.

So we won't be seeing you online till the 19th then? I'm no where near man enough to even consider getting involved =P

[Stu]

I rarely play on Live anyway, and my "to buy" schedule is full up for the year so any demos within the next few weeks won't make all that big an impact, so it seemed a pretty simple choice to make in the end...particularly as i'm nearing the end of Dead Space, so a quiet machine is just in time really!

[Carnivol]

GamerCards work again. But seems like on LIVE you still can't see these new ones properly until you've got the NXE.

Old GamerCard (w/Avatar Photo)


NXE styled GamerCard:



I'm starting to like this.

And ugh, no Avatar update for Bomberman LIVE yet (it's one of the games that have been confirmed to get some sort of Avatar feature patched in.)

[Carnivol]

By the way, did anyone get in during the latest batch?

If not, you'll all be there in just a couple of days anyway
(or well, at least the 360 owners)

Also;

I like