I was reading through my Edge magazine and saw the new xbox live and I have to say I am rather disapointed. I mean I have never liked the idea of a little character since I saw the Mii's and these do look like a rip off (I know they said it inspired them but still) I love my gamer picture and yes I can have it on my characters T Shirt but it's not the same but really that's not what is annoying me. I Love the XBL blades. I think they are easy to use and get me into the game fast and efficantly, ok so xbox live is a lil' bit cluttered just add a search feature. I don't like the look of the new menu it reminds me of the Zune down scroll menu combined with iTunes Coverflow (is that the name?) I loved all the colour and the swoosh noise. I think it is a bad idea to change it. I will admit the blades took time to get used to but now I wouldn't change them for anything. I just feel it's a bad choice to change it and they will deffinately take alot of fire from other companys for having to change it and it looking like a Mii HOME scross over.

What do you guys think?

All for it. Looks great, but if it doesn't run as smooth as the concept videos, I will be very upset. I hate how the blades feel laggy now and far to cumbersome with all the options crammed on. So just as long as it is a REAL improvement, I'm totally down with it.

The Zune menu is called Twist, btw. I love it :D

I'm very skeptical but well just have to wait and see
I'm sick of everything trying to mimic Apple products
Im sick of everything having that I POD Apple look so this dashboard looks like the vista version of the dashboard

What I'm getting from the opening posts is "I'm used to the current system, don't take it away". Even though the current system is cluttered, not very pretty or even customizable. I personally am glad that MS is trying to do something to fix it, even if the result is a much more "normal" menu.

fusion_cell:
ok so xbox live is a lil' bit cluttered just add a search feature.

Compensating for the fact that your system is a cluttered mess with a search engine is a bad idea. Especially on a console, since you'd need a keyboard just to do basic things on it.

I've seen better mock ups for a new dashboard on the net but yes the current system isn't all that great.

I like the blades but this new one looks ok. It's not like it really matters, it will still play all your games and that's all I really want from my Xbox

I like the blades, but there's definitely room to improve. I'm not opposed to the announced dashboard update, and there's definitely a lot to look forward to.

I have to agree with the sentiment that everyone seems to be going for a web 2.0(or 2.5?)/Apple look. I'll take ugly and functional anytime over sleek, streamlined clutter.

It could be a lot worse, considering what we pay for it.

I could care less, I don't have the internet at home right now, so won't be getting the upgrade when it comes, hahaha.

i just hope i can keep my dashboard backround because if i can't i want a refund

Whats the difference?We can all bitch and whine but in the end it is the microsoft brass who tell us what we can look forward too.All companies make errors and we get all pissed off,perhaps we should have formed a multibillion dollar company then we could make the decisions best for us gamers but until then i will be flexible with their trial and errors.After all they are doing what they think will make our experience better.

I actually quite like the blades and never any difficulty finding anything, except for some games on Xbox Live Marketplace. The last dashboard update moved on feature slightly where you can stream videos from your PC, gave me about a minute of terrors until I found it again.

But then again, my Xbox is currently red ringed so I don't really care.

whats going to happen to current themes and gamer pics!
thats what I want to know

i love the new one coming out. It looks alot easier to navigate and i really think it's an improvement. We'll just have to wait and see.

And to Leon P Microsoft has said that they're letting you keep all your themes and gamer pics. I don't know how that's gonna work out but we'll see.

Even though I'm a PS3 owner and I think the new dashboard is a complete ripoff of the XMB only turned sideways, I still like it better than the original dashboard because the original one was so clunky for me to navigate (at my friends house anyway).

Plus, the select button being so near the dashboard button sortof helped the hate to.

I like the stuff they'll be adding in, and the idea of being able to do more with my XBox when I don't feel like playing a game or watching a movie is amusing (though I'm not yet convinced that it's *good*).

That said, I have the same problem with the layout that I do with my PS3. Way too much empty space. Interfaces are like resumes, you shouldn't have giant patches of white (or grey, I guess) space in them. So hopefully it'll be slightly moddable and I won't have to deal with that aspect of it.

- J

Leon P:
whats going to happen to current themes and gamer pics!
thats what I want to know

You can choose to use a gamerpic instead of an avatar. I would bet that you actually configure them independently (like how you can configure one gamerpic for the public and a different one for your friends).

Existing themes will supposedly be able to be used as backgrounds for the interface. They'll probably actually look better than they do now.

Jumplion:
Even though I'm a PS3 owner and I think the new dashboard is a complete ripoff of the XMB only turned sideways...

It's actually an interpretation of the same UI Microsoft has been using in Media Center and the Zune. The original Media Center UI was first released with Media Center 2002, so it's pretty unlikely that they're ripping off Sony (or Apple, as someone else implied). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn_WwstUIlE - skip to about a minute in.

It's also generally better to be inverted compared to the XMB, at least for westerners. We read top down, left to right, so it makes sense that the UI is organized that way. The XMB is organized more like Kanji is read (making sense for a Japanese design).

Yeah yeah it's a rip off sure. But i don't mind it. What strikes me as pointless is that on the wii, the mii's are very much integrated into the gaming experience. In wii sports your mii is your character, in mario kart they turn up in the levels, etc etc. If in the new live they're just like bigger avatars then I don't see the point.

Virgil:

Jumplion:
Even though I'm a PS3 owner and I think the new dashboard is a complete ripoff of the XMB only turned sideways...

It's actually an interpretation of the same UI Microsoft has been using in Media Center and the Zune. The original Media Center UI was first released with Media Center 2002, so it's pretty unlikely that they're ripping off Sony (or Apple, as someone else implied). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn_WwstUIlE - skip to about a minute in.

It's also generally better to be inverted compared to the XMB, at least for westerners. We read top down, left to right, so it makes sense that the UI is organized that way. The XMB is organized more like Kanji is read (making sense for a Japanese design).

I find the XMB much easier to navigate than the current dashboard and most likely I will still prefer it over the new one. I think the reason for that is because I memorized pretty much where every icon is but also because when you click on an icon in the XMB it goes to the side of the current colum. Like if you click "Theme" it goes to another menu directly to the side.

The new dashboard still looks a bit clunky to me as you would press up and down, then you click on an option and all of a sudden you're moving it sideways and possibly if you choose an option it would go to a completely different menu making you waste time on something you didn't want to be at (though I don't know about that, that's just speculation). The XMB conversly is Sideways (for primary icons) up and down (for subsections) up down (for options in the subsections) and if you chose the wrong section then you easily press the back button and you can see where the section was in the first place.

It may be because i'm used to it, but even when I first got it I was fine with it.

No dedicated servers, therefore, it still sucks.

i have no problems with interface works smoothly in my opinion
so what is this new thing just like miis? if so its silly

I find it rather amusing that so many people hate the "new" dashboard without ever using it. Its hard to tell anything about it based on a handful of screen shots

The currant blades interface is a joke for navigating videos and XBLA games. and a change in interface wont effect how it handles normal 360 games (put disk in, game starts up) so I fail to see how the change will resort to anything bad as they couldn't make it less obvious on how to navigate to downloaded games then the current system

These are my guesses based on the screenshots:

1) It looks as if you can use more then Mii style avatars, Ive seen one screenshot with optimus prime as an avatar

2) the current blades based dashboard replaces the current one blade mini-dash that pops up when you hit the xbox guide button. Screen shots have shown it with it being just a little bit smaller then the screen and translucent showing the game behind it.

3) It looks a lot like the windows media center interface, hopefully it will have better integration with media center, and possibly IPTV support that they have been claiming is "coming soon" for 2 years now