new 360 dash preview program

[PeteRock]

One other thing.  This interface has winphone7 written all over it.

I wouldn't know about Winphone7 as my phone is made from recycled plastic, but the menus certainly look more like a cell phone navigation menu than a next-gen console.   

[denoginizer]

I'm not a big fan of the new interface either. Seems like a step back to me.

[Dreamshadow]

I think a fair bit was simplified so that Kinect gestures would work for navigation.

[Nth Power]

I'm not a big fan of the new interface either. Seems like a step back to me.

+1
I liked the old one much better.

[naednek]

pretty cool, able to watch the kings vs lakers game on the xbox.  not that I care, but I can.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Not a big fan of the style of the new dashboard, but I'll get over it. ESPN was cool to mess around with, but I thought the picture quality was terrible. Kind of a let down if you are like me and believe that sports need to be in HD.

I tried ESPN for the first time today and the picture quality was surprisingly high. Much better, at least, than hooking up my computer to the tv. It looked just as good if not a bit better than SD cable. It's possible that when the dash first came out the servers were so overloaded that it affected the picture quality.

[Purge]

So I've examined it closely -

The flickering at 1080p needs to get fixed. Get close to your set, and then go compare games with a friend from the X menu.

The gamerpics are the most obvious flickering. Horrible. Same with the top line of all the text.

The only thing I found was faster is, when you have a friends list of almost 100, scrolling through the Friends section of the dashboard loads avatars much faster.

[PeteRock]

I think a fair bit was simplified so that Kinect gestures would work for navigation.

It's fine to simplify operation and navigation, but the visuals have taken a big step back as well.  Navigation of the menus went from looking next-gen to a blown-up cell phone.  Some of the menu layering is actually quite nice and makes navigation through things like the game marketplace more efficient.  But the overall look and presentation is much worse than before.  At least in my opinion.  Granted, when I'm playing games I'm not looking at the menu, but I do spend a fair bit of time browsing for inexpensive games on demand, XBLA games, movie trailers, etc, and I already miss the older presentation.   

[Razgon]

Ouh, I agree - its pretty ugly right now, but of course its for Kinect users...that simply hadnt connected for me, but makes perfect sense.

I guess having multiple controlschemes or colorschemes isnt that easy for them to do since they choose this incredibly bad solution.

[Hrothgar]

So did this update remove the 100 friend limit?

[CeeKay]

So did this update remove the 100 friend limit?

Only if you use the hardcore dashboard.

[EddieA]

Wow - they royally screwed up the download system.  Instead of letting you play a game immediately after downloading it, they now take you to the "Active Download" screen, so you have to back out of that, navigate to your game library, wait twenty minutes for it to display your list of games, and then pick the game to play.  They also inexplicably removed the ability to choose the download location when you download demos or arcade/indie games.  Now, instead of choosing the hard drive or the USB drive, you have to download everything to the HD and then move it over.  I don't really care that they made the interface uglier, but removing important functionality for no apparent reason is horrible.  WTF were they thinking?

[Chaz]

I don't have a problem with the new update in general.  However, the new scrolling/zoom effect on the friends list does make me the slightest bit queasy.  Which is odd, because that never happens to me.

[CeeKay]

scrolling making you guys queasy?  you're all a bunch of pussies!