Tag Archives: nxe

X3F’s put together a list of commands to change New Xbox Experience’s Avatars’ expressions, make them burp, make them dizzy, and whatnot. It’s Monday morning, so we thought you may appreciate it. Maybe not, obviously.

Take a look.

The X3F story, quoting German site dreisechzig.net brings word that promised Avatar clothing for NXE will be free… for now.

From the piece:

Boris Schneider-Johne (Microsoft’s Xbox product manager in Germany) confirmed that the first few weeks of new Avatar clothes will be available for free, but doesn’t go as far to say that all Avatar clothing in the future will be available for no charge. “More costumes will be made available for free in the next weeks” says Schneider-Johne, adding “what’s going to happen as of spring is yet to be announced.”

The AVForums are currently awash with people complaining about a sudden loss of sound through HDMI after they installed the New Xbox Experience this week.

If you’re one of these people then don’t worry: apparently all you have to do is turn off the 360, take out the HDD, turn in on again, and while NXE boots up whack the hard drive back in again. It’s worth pointing out that this is a temporary fix only, as once you switch the machine off again, you’ll have to repeat the process next time you switch it on.

Although there were a few minor errors at launch, the mass implementation of NXE has gone rather smoothly, all things been told.

Microsoft has told X3F that it’s aware of the sound problem, and is currently looking into it.

By Mike Bowden

TombRadar’s posted some shots of the Sugababes singing in Lips and NXE in London last night, and it all looked very sparkly.

Apparently the trio sang Duffy’s Mercy at the event. You had to be there, clearly.

Take a look.

NXE’s XNA community games don’t appear to be available in all European regions.

Reports on the Eurogamer forums suggest that both Denmark and Norway simply don’t have the Community Games menu option in the new dash. Which means we can’t play them either. Catastrophic.

Perhaps it’s just Scandinavia that has been left out? We’re contacting Microsoft to get official word on the subject.

Update: Finland, Sweden and now Ireland can add themselves to the list of regions without a Community Games section, so we’re told, and it appears the title, Weapon of Choice, is not available in France. Thanks to Paavi, netsabes and Michael O’Connor.

By Mike Bowden

The Major’s posted up links to a bunch of premium themes in NXE, just in case you thought the theme boat had saled from Microsoft console user interfaces.

There’s lots of stuff there from Gears 2, Halo 3, and so on. Go ahead and brighten up your life.

Nelson’s posted to say the NXE team is aware that Xbox Live Marketplace is experiencing some “issues” – as in, it’s not working properly – but that in general, yesterday’s release of the New Xbox Experience was “incredible”.

“As you can imagine, it’s been an incredible day so far for the New Xbox Experience,” said the exec.

“It’s great to see so much enthusiasm… it sounds like you are having fun exploring NXE. With an update of this magnitude, reaching more than 14 million people around the globe, we are aware some of you may be experiencing a few hiccups along the way.

“The LIVE team is closely monitoring the LIVE service and Xbox.com and are aware of a few issues including what’s happening with Marketplace. The team is actively working on the issues, so thanks for bearing with us.”

Some problems did pop up yesterday, but all told the release went remarkably smoothly.

More throughout the day.

Sony’s played down the fact it’s stopped Columbia movies being streamed onto Xbox 360′s via Netflix by saying it’s an issue not specific to the platform. Happens all the time, apparently.

“This issue is not specific to Xbox or any other individual platform,” a Sony Pictures spokesperson told MTV.

“Sony Pictures is currently in discussions with the relevant parties to resolve certain licensing matters related to the distribution of its motion pictures.

“Given the ongoing nature of these discussions, we don’t think it is appropriate to comment further at this time.”

More through there.

There’s a lengthy explanation from Bungie here as to why Halo 3′s load times are increased by installing the game the an NXE-enabled 360′s hard drive.

For the time-pressed reader: the game caches maps to the HD whether it’s loading from the disc or the drive. Hence, if it’s running from the HD, it’s reading and writing from the same source. Which means it’s slower than if it’s running from the disc. That’s the main reason, anyway.

Got it? No? Read the full thing through the link, thicko.

We’ve been hearing plenty of reports throughout the day of patchy access to the new Xbox Live marketplace following this morning’s launch of NXE, as has Kotaku.

The problems have been occurring for both the website and 360 interfaces.

The UI update his another snag in the form of US users not being able to access Netflix, one of the upgrade’s main features, but, according to this Nelson post, the problem’s been resolved.

Aside from that, there doesn’t appear to be any other major hiccup with the NXE roll-out. So big hugs all round.

It couldn’t all be good. OXM’s posted up some shots of old 360 dashboard themes not working very well in NXE. Looks as though one thing didn’t make a smooth transition, at least.

See for yourself.

UK band the Sugababes are to launch NXE in Britain tomorrow night, “with a very special performance in central London as they’ve never been seen before,” according to Microsoft. The mind boggles.

Apparently the “girls” are going to have a bit of a go on Lips and meet their Avatars, all in the aid of the now-launched New Xbox Experience.

“We’re all really excited about tomorrow night,” said one of the group. “As massive music and movie fans, we were keen to get involved when we heard about the New Xbox Experience, and when we first tried out Lips last week you couldn’t get us off it!”

Press release after the link.

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The Major’s just confirmed the release of A Kingdom for Keflings, the first 360 game to supports Avatars.

The title’s a world-building thing, with the main characters your lovely new Avatars.

Blurb:

[ESRB: E (EVERYONE) MILD CARTOON VIOLENCE] Xbox LIVE Multiplayer 2-4, HD (High Definition). Unlock the full version of A Kingdom for Keflings for even more homes, buildings, and workshops to build! Join up to three of your friends via Xbox LIVE to cooperatively construct the kingdom of your dreams. The full version of A Kingdom for Keflings includes achievements to earn, more Keflings to attract and many more opportunities to fill your kingdom full of love! This game requires the Xbox 360 hard drive or the 512MB Memory Unit for storage. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

It costs 800 points.

Major Nelson’s just posted up a top ten list of things to do with your brand spanking, now-launched, New Xbox Experience.

First iff is to create an Avatar, apparently. Then to take a GamerPic of it. Then loads of other stuff. Get it all after the break.

Thanks, Roybott!

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Rare knocked up an Avatar of me a while back, but we’ve had to sit on the images until NXE launched. So here they are, after the break. That’s me, there, laughing and smiling. This is something I very rarely do, but this ably shows the cartoon nature of NXE’s Avatar stuff.

As you should know by now, NXE’s just gone live, meaning you can make your own persona for the service and stop looking at mine. Go!

More »

Speaking to VG247, Xbox Live product unit manager Jerry Johnson has confirmed that Avatar clothing will be constantly streaming onto the New Xbox Experience for the next half a year.

“We’re going to be continually releasing and unlocking clothes for the next six months,” he said. “They’ll be coming out in theme packs.”

There’s no word right now on whether or not you’re going to have to pay for this stuff, but don’t be hugely shocked if you will.

NXE is now live! Go get it!

The New Xbox Experience is now live and available to download. You are now living the “biggest moment in the history of the internet.”

The UI’s release marks the end of an epic journey of hyping and media bombardment since E3 this year, and heralds, according to Microsoft, a “new era of entertainment.”

Xbox boss Shane Kim said yesterday that NXE is “a big part of [Live’s] transformation from a multiplayer matchmaking service to a social and entertainment network.”

For all the official information on what NXE means for you and your 360, hit this for details on Parties, Netflix HD streaming (if you’re American), Avatars, the UI’s functional structure and tons more.

We’re still waiting for direct confirmation from Microsoft, but it seems official: New Xbox Experience will launch at 10.00am GMT this morning.

The plan is to deliver the new 360 user interface to 14 million people in an orderly fashion. We’re still disbelieving that the internet won’t melt.

We’ll bring you confirmation as soon as the update goes live. There’s a video explaining how to install NXE here.

According to Joystiq, NXE will launch this morning with a service devoid of “hundreds” of Columbia films. Why? Because they’re owned by Sony, silly.

MTV clarified the removal of a swathe of movies from the service is indeed a licensing issue, carrying the following quote from Netflix comms boss Steve Swasey:

“As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content licensed for all of our partner devices. We’re doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal.

Today, titles regularly come in and out of license and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have on license at any given point in time. In the case of Xbox 360, a few hundred titles are temporarily unavailable to be streamed via the Xbox game console. Those titles are still available to be watched on subscribers’ computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they’ll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly.”

This X3F story claims that New Xbox Experience will launched today at 5.00am EST – that’s 10.00am GMT, or 11.00am CET if you’re on the mainland.

We’re chalking this up as rumour because we’ve asked Microsoft about this twice this week, to be told both times that the specific launch time of the UI update hasn’t been made available internally yet.

That doesn’t mean this isn’t true. In fact, it almost certainly is. We’ll try to get a confirmation of this UK time this morning.