Microsoft released their latest Xbox Live update today, cleverly named the New Xbox Experience (NXE). While I haven’t had a chance to take a look at all the new features I can speak to the upgrade process.
I turned on my Xbox to play some Call of Duty 4 and was greeted with the friendly update notification. As with past Xbox Live updates, Microsoft forces you to upgrade or otherwise disconnect from Xbox Live. While I can understand the technical reasons for Microsoft doing this, its frustrating when all you want to do is play a quick game before fixing dinner. In any case I chose to upgrade and after about 5 minutes of downloading the Xbox restarted. I was looking forward to getting to my game when another download launched. Seeing that this one was expected to take 15 minutes I started fixing dinner.
After this download finished, the Xbox restarted yet again. When it came back on I was presented with the new Terms & Conditions (T&C) for Xbox Live. Curious to see how long they were I becan scrolling through them, not bothering to read them. After 3 minutes of scrolling continuously through something that could rival War and Peace in length, I reached the end and clicked Accept. Had I actually read through the Terms and Conditions I would probably still be reading it now 2 hours later.
Once past the T&C I was given the option to choose my avatar and not wanting to choose one of the goobers I was offered I spent the next 10 minutes trying to put together someone that looked like me. It was truly amazing how many different hair style, color, noses, ears, chins, and clothing options that were available. I finally found a combination that I was satisfied with. This part of the process was very Nintendo Wii’ish both in the graphics and sound effects.
After my avatar, I went hunting for the feature I had been waiting for in the new release, the Netflix integration. After finding the link in the Video Marketplace, I had to agree to and start yet another download. Once that finished I had to activate my account. This was the first part of the NXE update process I was actually pleased with. The Xbox gave me an activation ID that I had to take to Netflix’s website and enter once logged into my account. I entered the ID, clicked enter, and about 2 seconds later the Xbox was updated and had my 30+ Instant Queue movies available. This process was very quick and easy.
After all this, dinner was ready and I had to give up on Call of Duty. I haven’t actually tried to watch a movie yet so I’m curious how well that will work but all in all the update process was pretty frustrating. Given it took about 45 minutes to actually get through all that, I didn’t have any time for actual gaming. Maybe tomorrow…
