Kotaku
Xbox Live Marketplace
The Xbox Live Marketplace blade is getting a make-over making it easier to sort through the increasingly bloated offerings that can be found through Live.
The rework will include the addition of a New Media and Entertainment menu with the following categories:
New Releases
All Media and Entertainment
Movie Trailers and Short Films
Television, Music, Sports and More
Gaming Community Videos
Game Tips and Support Videos
Optional iPod Support.
You might have noticed that "Television, Music, Sports and More" category. Yeah, it caught my eye too. Here's what it means: Unfortunately, it doesn't mean full length prime time shows. Instead they are focusing on short form shows. Like maybe previews of next week's show or the Gears of War special. Music videos will also be here.
"We are continuing to develop exclusive content," Greenberg said, when I pressed him on the issue of the chance that prime time tv or other episodic content might be sold through Live. "Anything is possible, we have the platform for it and the partners in place."
Gaming community also has some amazing possibility, but so far it looks it will be free of your buddy playing DDR. Instead expect to see things like episodes of Red Vs. Blue and tons of machinima stuff. Greenberg added that they hope to one day allow users to upload their own original content in some way.
Another Marketplace addition is the Games option. In that category you'll find newly released downloads, Xbox Live Arcade, demos, trailers and videos for games, played games and the ability to sort through your game downloads by genre.
In general, the Marketplace is getting a lot deeper with a lot more ways to sort and find content, something that certainly comes as a reaction to the explosion of interest to the service.
Background Download Manager
Active Download will allow you to download games in the background as you do other stuff. Yes that means you can play retail games, or any other "full Xbox experience" during a download. The download manager will pause downloads automatically during multiplayer experiences. You will be able to rack up, up to six downloads at a time. Once one is completed it will go to the next. And you can see where everything stands with the Background Download Manager.
"This has been our number one feature since we launched," Greenberg said.
Control Marketplace Videos
The Marketplace video you download can now be rewound or fast forwarded at 2 to 16 times normal speed. You can do this with a controller or the Xbox remote control.
"We realized that people wanted to be able to control that," Greenberg said.
Enhanced Photo Viewing
This will allow you to preserve folders on memory cards when you transfer to your 360 and also tweaks the slidesow.
Music Player and DVD Playback Improvements
On the DVD front, the upgrade will add a feature called DVD Bookmarking, which will allow your 360 to remember where you stopped watching a movie and automatically jump back to it when you slap it back in after a few hours of GRAW. You can even turn off the console or unplug it. They've also tweaked overall DVD performance.
On the music side of things, the 360 will now remember where you were while browsing through your music. Also, now when you launch your music in the background, it will continue to play no matter what you are doing, even launching a new game or hopping around through the blades.
Dashboard Boot-Up
Finally, the update will add an option that you can set-up to allow you to boot up straight into the Xbox Dashboard instead of jumping to whatever CD, DVD or game happens to be in the console's tray when you start it up.
"We think this is going to be the default most people are going to want," Greenberg said.
Friends Status Update
Now, like instant messenger, if you're away and your screensaver turns on (usually after 15 minutes), your Friends status will show you are away. It also will show how long you've been away.
Xbox Live Vision
Msoft will also be loading camera setting to the 360 so the Xbox 360 camera will be fully supported when it hits in September. You might notice some stuff in the menus you can't use, but it's there because it's embedded in the update, you might notice things like a video chat option and the ability to take your picture and use it as your Gamertag image. Woo Hoo!
Here's the best news. This entire update will take less than a minute to download and apply, according to Greenberg and it will be applied directly to the console's flash memory. That means if you don't have a hard drive you will still be able to use the update.
Msoft is still pushing people to connect to get the update, but if you really don't want to, rest assured you can still get it. Greenberg said the update will be added to new game discs in the near future.
"This is the great example of the benefits of a unified service," Greenberg said. "We are soliciting consumer feedback and I think this addresses what a lot of gamers have been looking."
He added that since the 360 launched there have been a whopping 24 million downloads. Yikes.
"Marketplace has really taken off in a major way and we are scaling up for that usage," he said.
Wow, this sounds like a fantastic update, but I can't help but wonder what sort of anti-piracy or chip-mod prevention stuff they may have stuffed in there as well. I guess we'll all see next week.
Comments
Ahh sweet these are pretty nice updates.
I hope this doesn't brick my box... I opened the case to put on a chrome eject button (bad idea?... stupid walmart ran out of premiums on launch day...) so I'm hoping it lasts... bah!
Cool and all, but why can't they offer upscaled DVD playback? I want to play DVDs at 720p or 1080i, I'm sure the PS3 will offer this, get off your butt MS :)
wow, great scoop guys. thanks for the heads up!
damn good update, it removes all of the complaints I have had with the 360's dashboard/blade system
"I want to play DVDs at 720p or 1080i" What would be the point? your DVDs are still just 480p. you're just duplicating pixels. upscaling games works because the machine is rendering the video in real time so all is has to do is display polygons and textures at a higher pixel count. Your DVDs come in 720x480 and theres nothing extra to be done about that.
Shipley-there are fancy up-scaling techniques that high end dvd players do, that the 360 is capable of. They make the picture look better than if the TV simply upscaled it to its native resolution.
They should eliminate the pauses between music tracks. It makes it really hard to listen to dj mixes otherwise.
actually shipley, upscaling a DVD does make a difference. when watching a dvd on a high def screen, you can notice problems but upscaling can make it appear much smoother, and add detail (as it guesses what should be displayed between pixels...) if you get a good upscaling device, it can make a HUGE difference. check out the Oppo http://gear.ign.com/articles/689/689155p1.html
and wtf is "Leroy Jenkins Academy" and "Bobs CHeese adventure" from picture 7 (leeroy jenkins of WoW fame?)
"Shipley-there are fancy up-scaling techniques that high end dvd players do, that the 360 is capable of. They make the picture look better than if the TV simply upscaled it to its native resolution." This all depends on which has the better upscaler, the DVD player or the TV.
I think they have fixed every problem I had with the dashboard system. Even ones I always forget about that bite me in the ass like music stopping if I start a game. My only question is will I be able to send messages with pictures of my testicles to Gabe and Tycho with the camera?
Hopefully now when I download something and say "Play NOW" and the screen goes back what I wanted to play will appear afterwards, rather than some other menu like whats happening now.
well bloo, a specilized DVD player designed for upscaling has a bunch of upscaling techniques (not just making it more pixels). A TV dosn't have that, no matter how advanced it is, all it does is change the resolution as quick and efficently as it can...
Love everything except being able to upload a picture of yourself for your GamerTag. Honestly I really don't want to look at some person's O-face that they thought was funny when they uploaded it. Everything else is sweet, sweet butter.
Any word on a back-compat update to go along with this? People are getting antsy about that.
Amazing...I have 2 profiles on mine (since my Live account differs by one space from the offline initial one I made launch day 0_o) so every time I boot up I have to bring up the guide, go back to the dashboard, log out and log in with the correct profile, then start the game manually. This will make it so much easier. Wtg Micro.
@ Petie: I have two profiles too, because I needed an alternative American one for unrated demo and movie downloads in Germany D: But about the update, I think that quite honestly the boot to dashboard option is what I look forward to the most :D Download management is nice too of course ;) And the "upload your own image"-option bothers me slightly, MS and all the companies pumping out games for the 360 are supplying us with countless gamer-pics, many of which are really cool. But with an own image I'm afraid all I'm going to see on Live, from the day of the update, is self-made swastikas or "teh peen". (Or a combination of both.) My hope is that while not monitoring the upload of images, there will be strict ToS in which you aknowledge that you could get (temporarily) banned for "mature" images. Peace out, Blue_Six
"Leroy Jenkins Academy" LOL111 :O
Most impressive. *he says in a deep voice* Dashboard boot option is very cool but I think the most unlooked for was that the 360 will say your away when it goes into screensaver mode. That is automated coolness.
I can't believe that the system currently can't download demos in the backround. That should have been in place from launch.
Oh, Msoft told me one of the things they are looking into for future (perhaps Fall upgrade) is the ability to upscale DVD playback. Whoot!
Id like to see a feature where you can disable the *booP* noise when browsing threw things in the dashboard so it doesn't sound like my 360 is secretly the big wheel at the Showcase Showdown on the Price is Right. It would also be cool if they could enable video streams from your computer (even if there just wmv's). Change it up so you can have you own custom seperate pictures for each Blade, or even take some idea's from the ever improving XBMC (Xbox Media Center)homebrew's.
I hope they make it where the titles scroll in the downloads section of Xbox Marketplace. Sometimes the titles are so long you can't tell if it's the link to get the demo or the link to a video/pictures/whatever. It's not a big deal but annoying to me.
crecente, that is the best news i have heard in awhile... I dont really care too much for HDDVD/Blueray, but i saw an upscaled versions of some movies at bestbuy, and i wouldnt mind using my 360 for that...
LOL the Price is Right wheel. It will be nice as we get to customize our dashboards more and more. The music is pretty cool although I admit I haven't used it much in games yet simply because I need to buy the Apple-protected music download to get all of my mp3s from my iPod. But that straight to dashboard is going to rock my world.
I think by this time next year, you'll see lots of Marketplace spefic content like series and games that are built more like TV shows or mini-series where as regular retail games will be more the equal of movies and straight-to-video. Who knows, as compression technology gets better, maybe they'll find a way to cram and entire episode of Lost in to one file, or at least break it up into multiple downloads. If the quality isn't DVD I honestly don't care, as long as its viewable. a 30 minute show could easily be crammed to a respectiable quality well under a gig.
For all those fearing the appearance of people's wiis (notice the small "W", indicating a penis and not the Nintendo console), it's my understanding that Microsoft is going to allow each user to have 2 pictures associated with their Gamertag. One picture that people on their Friends list can see (a.k.a. the one that will be taken with the Live Cam, most likely) and the public one. The public one will continue to be selection only. So, the only tumescent members you should be seeing are those of your so-called Friends.
When, oh when, will MS get over this friggin WMC BS and just let us run shared (compatable) video from our networked Windows PCs? Just because I use the Xbox as a passthrough its not like I'm screwing with their "vision".
So this is why XBL was crapping out yesterday. Xbox.com and XBL both went down numerous times... Hopefully they get the handle on these "upgrades" or schedule a larger maintanence window.
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