The New X-Box Experience

**Kekvit Irae** · 11-19-2008, 22:24

Thoughts?

Personally, I don't like it. Sure, Netflix and being able to install the games you get (even though the playstation 3 had this feature long ago) are good, the menu system just seems too clunky and the avatars are too much of a ripoff of Nintendo's Mii characters.
Honestly, it should be called The Sims 2: X-box Live.

**Marius Dynamite** · 11-19-2008, 23:29

I haven't downloaded it yet. The only thing I care about is the ability to install games and how quickly I can access the guide while playing the game. It's always been annoying waiting ages for the guide to come up just to read a quick message.

Hopefully installing the games will stop my Gears of War 2 disk from ripping apart my Xbox like the original did. Seriously whats up with those disks?

**Ferret** · 11-19-2008, 23:49

Doesn't seem any different to me, and until I can figure out how to save games to the hard drive it was a waste of time downloading, I don't care what my avatar looks like...

**Praxil** · 11-20-2008, 00:13

1. Lacks the ability to hide/not to do avatar. I'm too old for this "Sims" thing. Get outta here! Creating avatar is forced, I bow down to Microsoft's monopoly way of thinking.

2. Themes are useless, you can't even see them.

3. Only slight improvement on laggy speed of your dashboard.

On other hand.

1. Ability to make copy on your HDD.

2. Slightly faster dashboard to use.

That's about it.

7) Install to / Play from Hard Drive. With the game in the tray, return to your dashboard. (pressing the guide button then Y works as always) then go to My Xbox. From here press Y, which will bring up a new menu which will allow, among other things the ability to install a game to your hard drive.
Hint: You can still use the Xbox 360 guide while installing a game to keep in touch with your friends or start a Party.

Bonus: Before you do #7, be sure to set up what happens when you turn on your Xbox 360. My Xbox->System Settings>Console settings. Then choose Start up to to choose Disc, Xbox Dashboard or Windows Media Center. Once you are done there…check the option right below it: Autostart. This tell your Xbox 360 what to do when you insert a game. The choices are enable or disable. I have mine set to disable so I can easily use install to hard drive.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/...xperience.aspx

**Kekvit Irae** · 11-20-2008, 01:10

The only thing I've noticed about the Wii60's new install feature is that it no longer loads from the disk. Load times in Fallout 3 are, unfortunately, unaffected. I have yet to install other games to try it out, but I'm not very optimistic.

**Ferret** · 11-20-2008, 23:31

Neither am I, I installed CoD5 onto the hard drive and you still need the disk in, the load times are the same and the machine still produces a stupid amount of noise.

The theme thing is annoying to, I paid for a theme IIRC, which I now cannot use...

**TevashSzat** · 11-21-2008, 04:08

You know whats funny about making the copy on the HDD?

In Halo 3, you actually end up decreasing performance by doing so due to some wierd way with the game loading its maps that makes it less compatible with the new system

**Praxil** · 11-21-2008, 09:10

Originally Posted by Elite Ferret

Neither am I, I installed CoD5 onto the hard drive and you still need the disk in, the load times are the same and the machine still produces a stupid amount of noise.

The theme thing is annoying to, I payed for a theme IIRC, which I now cannot use...

The reason for the disk needed to be in the DVD during playing a case game, is pretty clear and obvious. I personally don't care about load times, because the noise is more than halved due to disk is not spinning in the DVD all the time. Noise from two fans still remains and is quite noticeable, but this is so much better than before. I'm not even talking about that it should reduce the consumption of electricity and the amount of heat produced.

The theme is covered for some reason with some kind of floor for the avatar or something like that. I haven't payed for a single theme. But the way I see it since it shows the theme even less than before, this is pretty much robbery if you paid for it. I simply can't understand how they came up with this, THIS IS INSANITY

!

Originally Posted by TevashSzat

You know whats funny about making the copy on the HDD?

In Halo 3, you actually end up decreasing performance by doing so due to some wierd way with the game loading its maps that makes it less compatible with the new system

Nothing more than a technical difference/design.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The Xbox 360 HDD has a section for games to use called the utility partition. Games can use this section for whatever they want to; Halo 3 uses the utility partition to cache maps as they will load faster off the HDD than off the DVD. As a side note, the utility partition can be deleted when other games are played. This is why maps can take longer to load when you play another game in between various Halo 3 sessions. (As was the case with Halo 1 and Halo 2.)

So when Halo 3 runs, if a HDD is present, we copy maps from the DVD to the utility partition (on the HDD). Think of it as an on demand install of Halo 3 to some scratch space on the HDD. Halo 3 doesn't actually know where it's running from, so it always assumes it's running from a DVD. This is an unfortunate consequence of new features (namely, install to HDD) being added to the Xbox 360 after Halo 3 shipped. And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition.

So then the real question is why is copying from HDD to HDD slower than copying from DVD to HDD? In the first case, you are reading from one I/O device (HDD) and writing to the same I/O device (HDD). In the second case, you are reading from one I/O device (DVD) and writing to a different I/O device (HDD). In the first case, because we are reading and writing to the same device, the total copy time is the amount of time it takes to read the map plus the time it takes to write the map. Ultimately this is because for the HDD, you read and write through the same mechanism, i.e., the hard drive read/write head, and those reads and writes cannot occur simultaneously through a single mechanism. (If they could, it would be awesome, and I wouldn't have to document any of this. Unfortunately, it's not easy to do for other reasons.) For the second case, because we are reading and writing from different devices, the total copy time is the larger of the total time to read the map and the total time to write the map. This is because we can read from one device (DVD) at the same time we are writing to another device (HDD). There is some overhead because you can't start writing data until you read it, but it is dwarfed by the time to copy a map. (About 128k vs. 500 MB or a ratio of 4000:1.)

There are other factors that contribute to load times, such as preloading data from the map you are about to start so that you don't have to sit through a non-interactive loading screen; the only difference in load times occurs when we copy a map that has not been cached to the utility partition or has been evicted from the utility partition because some other maps were run. Once a map has been cached, the time to load it will be identical to running Halo 3 off the DVD with a HDD.

**frogbeastegg** · 11-22-2008, 13:46

I haven't updated my console yet as I haven't used it since last weekend. The update will be later today, when I'd rather be spending my time playing. Yay.

TBH I don't care about NXE. Never have. I don't want it; I don't feel any need for it. All of the screenshots have been ugly, bland, and look like they will be harder to navigate than the blades. The avatar thing is a rubbish "Mii too!", the rest wants to be Sony's PSP/PS3. Two imitiations replacing a system which was individual and perfectly useable. The marketplace was the only part of the old system which I thought needed work; the pictures of the new marketplace do not look promising.

Installing games to the HD is the only feature I might use. If it reduces load times. If it reduces drive noise. If it doesn't take ages to set up. If I can be bothered.

I'd much prefer they had used the money for NXE to provide extra servers for live, and given silver users back the 'privilages' they snatched from us early in the year. I am *not* paying to download demos! A demo is a sales tool. Demos are free on every other platform which offers them, and were free here until the server crunch hit and Microsoft took the cheap solution.

It loses them my money; if it's a multiplatform release I use my PS3, and if I like the game I buy the PS3 version. The gold account should be special. That's what people pay for, after all. Making gold special by stealing features short-changes all users. Gold users didn't gain anything when silver users lost rights.

EDIT to save double-posting: I've installed it. It's ... meh. Load of fuss over nothing much. That's good in that the new set up isn't as difficult to deal with as it looks, bad in that it begs the question of why they forced this change on us.

Does anyone know how to set the 'my xbox' row as the default one to be highlighted? Having to scroll up from the advert spam that is 'highlights' is irritating me already. There isn't a clearly visible option to kill it, unlike the 'NXE is fab' spam row.

**Ferret** · 11-22-2008, 23:08

Finally found a good point about the new update: up tp 8 way private chat with the party feature.

And yeah I understand why you need the disk in to play, but I can't notice any difference in noise so it just feels like a waste of time.

**Kekvit Irae** · 11-23-2008, 00:17

Originally Posted by Elite Ferret

Finally found a good point about the new update: up tp 8 way private chat with the party feature.

And yeah I understand why you need the disk in to play, but I can't notice any difference in noise so it just feels like a waste of time.

Supposedly the 360... excuse me, the Wii60... has a new reputation of destroying disks with the laser. I have experienced this first hand with my box devouring my copy of Overlord. So, less loading from the disk means less risk.

**Ferret** · 11-23-2008, 13:22

That only happened to me once, right back when it was first released and that was because I moved it from upright to flat while the disk was in there...if you keep it flat and try not to kick it things are fine, aat least for me anyway.

**frogbeastegg** · 11-23-2008, 19:10

I found this speed comparison between HD loading and the traditional DVD loading to be worth reading. Initial findings strongly suggest that a properly optimised game won't benefit much from HD loading. Halo 3 is actually slowed down! Multiplatform and less optimised releases may benefit more.

IGN had a video comparing noise levels. Vaguely intriging at best; it's heavily dependant on your console as some have quieter DVD drives while others have jet engines. I'd link to it but I can't find the page; I got to it via a link from another forum.