Posts Tagged ‘new xbox experience

27
Nov

Marketplace is offline and content region lock [UPDATED]

By gameophiliac 2 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

I’ve been using Xbox360 a lot, especially the demos and the videos. I enjoy the moments that I can view trailers and try out so many games.

Recently XboxLive offered a web based Marketplace. You don’t have to turn on your Xbox to purchase or download your 360 content, now you can queue them from your favorite browser. I like the idea, I enjoyed the idea so much that I immediately logged on to the store to try it out. As soon as I try it, I was surprised to see that there was so much content. More than what I usually see when I use my 360. I try to download a free video called “The Guild”, suddenly, I was greeted with this message “This offer is not valid in your region”. I presumed as much, but it feels like it’s not fair to show these items to me and not let me get it. What’s this supposed to mean? Like Live teasing me? Telling me that living in the Philippines is not worthy to see free video? I mean, if the marketplace don’t intend to give it to me, then don’t let me see it anymore. I understand region locks, they are there for a reason, but don’t tease me. It’s irritating once you feel like you can get it, then you suddenly notice that you can’t. The Xbox Live Marketplace needs a lot of work, other than the region lock, they should really do previews of the Premium themes. I just hope Microsoft improves their service.

About the Marketplace again… for some reason, I can’t get in. What’s irritating is that once it has this problem, logging in your profile takes very long, to the point I thought my Xbox hangged up. I actually had no problems that Microsoft is working on it, but if you are online it’s a requirement to log into Live, and with the Marketplace down it takes like less than a minute for it to respond. Even when I’m already logged in, there are times that the NXE takes a little longer to load properly. I haven’t tried logging in today, but yesterday was a pain. It’s not an intense pain since I was still able to talk to my XboxLive friends through it’s chat system without a problem. Again, I just hope that Microsoft improves their service.

UPDATE: Looks like the problem with my connection is related to my internet connection. I had to change my DNS and suddenly, everything worked fine again.

23
Nov

Installed NXE without a problem. Whoohoo!

By gameophiliac 939 Comments
Categories: Xbox360
Tags: , , ,

I also installed the New Xbox Experience. I was actually worried because downloading system firmwares are dangerous if it’s cut off in the middle of some kind of power failure. Living in Paranaque, Philippines doesn’t make you feel any safe from that. But then again, I can’t miss out on this since the new menu system has been hyped to the full extent, and a lot of my friends has loaded up the NXE as soon as it got up on November 19th.

The system update took 30+ minutes for me. I didn’t actually time it, but it’s around that time. There were 2 download updates. It went smoothly and there were no problems. Except that I almost thought my system broke because it hangged up right after my initial installation of the NXE. Good thing it didn’t.

The new menu is wonderful, I can’t believe that the system can totally make itself fresh and new. The first thing that pops out is the introduction of the new Avatar for your profile. The system reminds me of Mii, and it’s fun to play around. There are so much things to play around with your avatars looks. I just wish that there were more customizable options like changing the position of the freckles or changing the color of your plain clothes. But obviously, Xbox Live will charge for any new clothes in the future, since they charge for pretty much anything, like really small images that are used on their profile and themes too.

The menu system is not really revolutionary, since it does remind me a bit of Playstation’s Xross Media Bar, but NXE’s more refined and more visually stunning. The look itself is not the only change, there are other improvements too, like games can now be installed to the hard drive. Some games work wonderfully nice, since the system is more quiet without the disk drive spinning. Some games even load faster now once you install them. You still need the disk for it to boot up the game. The only problem now, is that 20Gb won’t cut it anymore.

There are also issues of banning. Everyone who has modded their Xbox360 units, even with stealth mode will have problems if they are online. Too bad that they will be missing out a lot of the good stuff that Live has to offer.

Anyway, I really enjoy the new menu, and for what’s its worth, It gives the 360 owners something fresh and feels like a new console all together.