The 360 thread!

[WiredWorm]

I'd love one of the codes for the Gears 2 theme if you've still got any left Phineasfool.

Please? Pretty please/

[benedictw]

I'd love one of the codes for the Gears 2 theme if you've still got any left Phineasfool.

Any more kicking around, Phineas?

[Bubba]

Likewise, if you have a spare code I'm sure that would look rather nice in the new dash

Cheers

Bubba

[PVB]

I'd love one of the codes for the Gears 2 theme if you've still got any left Phineasfool.

Any more kicking around, Phineas?

[AOL]

Me too please!

[/AOL]

[ESY]

Can you see my hand waving in the air??

Yes please, Sir!

[Rod_S]

HDD installs are a revelation. The rest of the update has been a non-event or made things worse - the avatars make me feel suicidal, the navigation is woeful and that pokey new guide that takes up about 10% of the screen is no compensation - but I can forgive all that thanks to the near silence when playing from the HDD. I love my 360 now. There's loads of subtle ambient sounds in CoD4 that were drowned out by the whirring and churning optical drive, and Dead Space becomes even more tense when you can hear all the background sound effects without the racket of the drive burying them.

Really disappointed that Crackdown won't install - it's probably the worst offender for constantly thrashing and grinding the DVD drive, so much so that I gave up on it. Bungie have reported that installing Halo 3 will give you a performance hit and recommend playing from the DVD, again a real pisser. Another couple for the trading pile then, but with sadness.

[RiK]

On the whole I think the new dash is ok, though the cynic in me did note the way they put spotlight tab first instead of 'my xbox' and the marketplace tabs *between* 'My XBox' and 'Friends' so you have to skip over them each time when it would make a lot more sense to put friends as the next tab, unless of course you wanted to ram the advertising in someone's face.

[Bubba]

HDD installs are a revelation. The rest of the update has been a non-event or made things worse - the avatars make me feel suicidal, the navigation is woeful and that pokey new guide that takes up about 10% of the screen is no compensation - but I can forgive all that thanks to the near silence when playing from the HDD. I love my 360 now. There's loads of subtle ambient sounds in CoD4 that were drowned out by the whirring and churning optical drive, and Dead Space becomes even more tense when you can hear all the background sound effects without the racket of the drive burying them.

Really disappointed that Crackdown won't install - it's probably the worst offender for constantly thrashing and grinding the DVD drive, so much so that I gave up on it. Bungie have reported that installing Halo 3 will give you a performance hit and recommend playing from the DVD, again a real pisser. Another couple for the trading pile then, but with sadness.

If a game is properly using the hard drive cache then I'd expect it to take longer to load from hard drive than from DVD, especially for games which aren't seeking all over the disc. The performance hit isn't that noticable for Halo 3 (a second or two here and there, will be faster if your dvd drive is broken and can only read the disc slowly). Shame about crackdown though, perhaps it has something to do with the halo 3 beta stuff that is on the disc

Cheers

Bubba

[juice]

HDD installs are a revelation. The rest of the update has been a non-event or made things worse - the avatars make me feel suicidal, the navigation is woeful and that pokey new guide that takes up about 10% of the screen is no compensation - but I can forgive all that thanks to the near silence when playing from the HDD. I love my 360 now.

QFTW++!!11!!

TBH, I've not tried the HDD-install mechanism: my X360 is only used for DLC and Rock Band (apart from those, the only disk-based games I've played are Dead Space and Bioshock).

But when it comes to the new interface, it's clumsy and confusing - for something which is meant to be a dumbed-down, easy to use Wii-challenger there's simply too many menus and sub-menus - and the system doesn't always remember where you were, so you can't "rewind" with any consistency.

If this is the best that Microsoft can do with all their technology, focus groups and designers, then there's something wrong in the world.

Admittedly, I'm far from their target "joe sixpack casual gamer" demographic, but I doubt even they will find this UI intuitive.

Still, I'm onjoying exploring the XNA community stuff.

[Rod_S]

If this is the best that Microsoft can do with all their technology, focus groups and designers, then there's something wrong in the world.

Weird one isn't it. The approach is badly misjudged, it seems like they've gone for maximum bevelled glossy drop shadowed Photoshop bling and worked back from there, rather keeping is simple and consistent. Everything could've been done with nice clear thumbnails and clean text. The UI is a schizophrenic mess, and partly because it's simply trying to do too much. MS want that under-your-telly space all to themselves, but already it's badly backfired as only the most hardcore nerds will be able to fathom the complexities of the sodding front end. The way the DVD/game covers are arranged in the perspective row going off into the distance is genuinely one of the worst designed, well, anythings, that I've ever seen. Mind bendingly bad. Compared to the Wii, PS3 XMB and Apple TV it's laughable really.

[Mark]

If you like golf it's well worth checking out Easy Golf in the community games. Looks like a nice little golf game, but also comes with an integrated course editor that looks pretty powerful. However since the demo times out after a few minutes it's not ideal for gauging how easy it would be to knock up a half-decent course. Worth a look though.

[CharlieF]

Yep. Love the HD install option. All the rest of the new dash is just fluff.
Now I need a bigger 360 HD...

[benedictw]

Yep. Love the HD install option. All the rest of the new dash is just fluff.
Now I need a bigger 360 HD...

Amazon have the 60Gbs for 50 quid
Linky

[Deckard]

I'm with Rod on this one - bar the hard drive install I think its a mess - how come its messed up my heroes theme ? How come I cant tell what my friends are playing or what that game is in the foreground as it has generic cover ? Shows how bad it is when all I do with it is press the central x button and skip all the fluff

[PVB]

How come I cant tell what my friends are playing or what that game is in the foreground as it has generic cover ?

I thought the 'generic' Xbox cover just meant that they were only using the dashboard (not playing games or watching videos, etc.)