The XBOX Experience
On first look, Microsoft`s New Xbox Experience is an aesthetic evolution of its former, more mundane self. On closer inspection, however, this entirely new platform is the launch pad that will fire the Xbox Live community into the next generation of interactive gaming. Key to the New Xbox Experience is the personalisation of gameplay, which is ushered in with the introduction of fully customizable avatars.
According to Microsoft, an avatar is the “virtual you in the New Xbox Experience”. Almost all avatar features are customizable, from height and weight to eyes and hair – your `virtual you` can even be blinged up (or down)! Naturally, gamers will not always create avatars in their own image – in fact, much fun will be had by all in devising the most ridiculous or hilarious virtual characters. As a nice little side feature, which will no doubt be developed further in future generations, friends lists are populated by animated avatars which do various things according to their respective user status – for example, an avatar of a friend who is available to play a game will cheerfully wave and smile at you whereas a friend who has fallen into his Friday night beer and pizza coma will quite rightly be shown asleep. In short, Microsoft`s aim to inject added interactivity into the Xbox Live community cannot fail to miss and promises an exciting new trend for future
developments.
In many ways, the New Xbox Experience is like a game in itself. Aside from endlessly tweaking avatars, Xbox live users will experience an entirely different graphical interface to navigate. The old style menus are still present at the core of the interface but layered upon these are many visual and functional improvements. Inside Xbox, for instance, still provides access to exclusive video features and the latest marketplace content but with the addition of a content-saving archive. Additionally, the new Spotlight section provides users with an instant hit of the most featured content, including the most sought after new game demos and video releases. Marketplace has also had a significant makeover, which makes browsing significantly more user-friendly.
Finally, one feature that may be easy to overlook in the excitement of creating an avatar or downloading the latest marketplace offering, is the My Xbox channel (home page) itself. This section provides links to gamer`s favourite and most played games, but significantly there is also the facility to install disk based games onto the Xbox hard drive, which reduces loading times and considerably reduces disk access noise! Such a facility has the potential to kill two birds with one stone – cut down a little on in-game lag while keeping the other half happy…
Xbox Live gamers have been enjoying the revolutionary New Xbox Experience since the 19th November 2008, so ask yourself what video games you want to play tonight and get in on the action – your `virtual you` is just a few clicks and about a thousand edits away!
