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According to Major Nelson's latest podcast, the Xbox Live Team is working towards making a harder, better, faster, and indeed stronger Xbox Live Dashboard for the next update later this year. More »
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Microsoft announced today that the Xbox 360 Avatars will be getting an upgrade, with new items, known as Awards and Props, coming soon to add further personalization to your New Xbox Experience character. More »
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If your Xbox 360 is looking a little drab - and you're not adverse to spending money on tarting it up - then hey, this new Crackdown theme might be just the thing you're into. More »
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The virtual wardrobes of the Xbox 360's Avatars have expanded, offering exciting new options to outfit your virtual self, including booty shorts and sporty vests for the girls and terrible denim options for the guys. More »
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Your "New Xbox Experience" avatar has just gotten some grown up clothes, eight new pieces of formal and business casual articles that will be a hit at your next Xbox Live con call. More »
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For all their promise, the 360's avatars look a little...drab. This isn't 1998, Microsoft, nor the set of Frasier. Thankfully, Capcom are on the case, and with Crecente in mind will be releasing pirate costumes. More »
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Most people are more than happy with the improvements the New Xbox Experience brought to the Xbox 360's user interface. Those unhappy, well, tough: it's about to become compulsory. More »
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Microsoft is going all out in its promotion of The Lost and Damned coming to the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV. And by "all out," we mean new Avatar clothing options. More »
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Valentines Day is coming up, marketing teams need ways to somehow tie gaming into that most non-gaming of days...what to do? Romantic costumes are a good place to start, and Microsoft just signed up. More »
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The 360's avatars are, all copy-cat jokes aside, surprisingly endearing. Only problem is, some of the wardrobe and body options are a little...limited. That's something user-generated content could address. So, uh, will it? More »
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As it stands, we're getting new 360 avatars every, what, week or two? But soon, say Rare, we'll be getting them with specific games, "just like achievements". More »
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The Xbox 360's "New Xbox Experience" wasn't filled with the joyful noise of Avatar belches for some owners of the console. Some found their HDMI-ready systems without sound, which Microsoft is now, finally, addressing. More »
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Design firm Grid/plane worked with Microsoft on early design ideas for the New Xbox Experience. While the NXE we ended up with is a different beast, it's interesting looking at what could have been. More »
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There's a whole swathe of new clothing options for your 360 avatar today. Thing is, unless you're European, and a European football fan at that, they won't be of much use to you. More »
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The Xbox 360 has "premium themes", which will tart up your 360's menu in exchange for money. A premium theme based on Braid has just been released, and costs money. And Braid's creator is sorry. More »
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Wanted to go online New Year's Eve, but didn't have a virtual stitch for your avatar to wear? Never fear, totally fresh clothing and accessories for the New Xbox Experience are here. More »
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Soulja Boy's new song "Grind On" makes its video debut by way of his Xbox 360 Avatar. As horrible as it is for me to say this, I think it's actually a semi-catchy song. More »
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Hawty McBloggy is holding a vote, open until midnight Monday, to select the Fugliest NXE Avatar from these seven butt-fugly candidates. You're well past the deadline to submit yours, but you can still be heard! More »
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Phil Harrison, former Sony and current Atari exec, has heaped love on PlayStation Home, saying his former company "brilliantly realised" its goal. Then he smoochy-smoochied the NXE. Hey, it's all bidness, right? More »
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In the interest of getting some news to you in a slow cycle, let's start Sunday with a chatter roundup. More »
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Now that Microsoft has got the New Xbox Experience launch out of the way and we have had a few days to dig into the Community Games channel, Redmond has decided to open up the service to more developers. More »
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Of course you do. Fortunately, there's wacky Manic Panic hued 'dos hidden away in the New Xbox Experience, giving you the option to create a more accurate Rei Ayanami or Maximilian Jenius or blue-haired senior citizen. It was discovered — as far as we know, by reader Samuel who told us that if you rotate the right analog stick for about a minute or so, you'll unlock a suite of new garish hair colors. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5096538&view=rss&microfeed=true <a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:df61044d-75aa-4605-877b-7797abc6a58c&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="Trailer for &quot;In the Pit&quot; for Dream Build Play 2008">Video: Trailer for &quot;In the Pit&quot; for Dream Build Play 2008</a> More »
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While the NXE's ability to let you install 360 games to your HDD is mostly a good thing (no more disc read errors at my house), it's been revealed that there's a few hiccups. You'd think that copying a game to your 360's hard drive would speed things up. Faster load times, that kind of thing. But in some cases it doesn't. Especially when it comes to Halo 3. Tests have already shown the game runs faster on disc than it does on HDD, and today Bungie have come out and confirmed this. Confirmed it, and explained it. Basically, the game was programmed to copy map files from the disc to the HDD to speed up load times. If you install the game to the HDD, it copies the files from your HDD to...another part of your HDD, which is a lot slower than a disc-to-HDD transfer. Why does Halo 3 do this and other games don't? Bungie's Mat Noguchi says "we shipped Halo 3 before Microsoft finalized this particular feature. As a result, we were not able to take advantage of it (or any other potential optimizations we discovered after shipping Halo 3)". While refusing to rule out the possibility of a patch fixing this issue, Noguchi says "it would be a significant undertaking to try and retroactively patch/update Halo 3 to be optimized to take advantage of the HDD install features of NXE". Especially when, you know. You can still play Halo 3 just fine off the disc. Like you always have. Halo 3 & NXE [Bungie] More »
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Seems like the New Xbox Experience isn't rolling out quite as smoothly as one would have hoped. Reports are trickling in about sporadic issues accessing content via the Xbox Live Marketplace. Currently on my end, accessing anything on marketplace is running incredibly slow, erroring out at times with various numerical error codes. Just a moment ago the new Fable II theme appeared on the service with a date of 11/20 attached, only to error out when trying to access it, which is probably good seeing as breaking the laws of space and time totally voids your warranty. We've put a shout out to Xbox Live's Larry Hyrb to see if there was any official word on the current stability of the newly relaunched service. In the meantime, how's NXE been treating you folks? Good? Bad? Ugly? Feel free to discuss among yourselves. More »
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It looks like the New Xbox Experience will be going live tomorrow with its first... Wii Channel? Sure it may not have the grid-like precision of its Nintendo counter-part, or the obsessive content (yet), but the first thing I thought of when I laid my eyes on Capcom's "branded experience" for Super Street Fighter II Turbe HD Remix, was Nintendo's Wii Channels. The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix "destination experience" looks to be a hang-out spot, a "channel" if you will, for fans of the game on the Xbox 360. More »
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If you've turned on your Xbox 360 this evening and been greeted with a request to update your system, only to find the New Xbox Experience loading unexpectedly, you're not the only one. Kotaku readers are coming out of the woodwork, firing up the tips line with reports that the NXE is arriving a little earlier than promised. That's without pre-notification from Microsoft that they'd been accepted into the early preview program. Last minute round of invites? Someone flip a switch they shouldn't have? More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5091599&view=rss&microfeed=true Upon completing your download of the New Xbox Experience via your trusty Xbox and finishing the install, you'll restart directly into this lavishly produced video, ushering in a new age of Xbox navigation. Grass will grow, cars will race, whole cities sprout from the ground, and a giant cloud of what I imagine flatus would look like were it visible rises out of the very earth, becoming some sort of fiery poop tree of Microsoft goodness. More »
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Microsoft has announced it is once again adding more LIVE members to the NXE Preview Program. This is the third and final time Microsoft is doing this, and the company is adding over 10,000 LIVE members. Invites are coming via email. According to Microsoft mouthpiece MajorNelson.com: "As before, we’re only pulling names from those that originally signed up (there is no way to sign up if you missed it, sorry) and this selection process will be at random from those that previously filled out the Connect Program Survey from my original post. Again, this is final wave. All Xbox LIVE members will be getting the New Xbox Experience via Xbox LIVE November 19th." More »
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Best feature of the New Xbox Experience isn't avatars, or a new UI, it's the ability to install games to the console's HDD. It was - in our wildest dreams, anyway - meant to cut down on two of the 360's biggest problems: loud DVD drives, and long waits for load times/disc caching. But does it? Eurogamer put a number of games to the loading-time test and found that...results vary. Some games, like The Orange Box, see massive decreases in load times, but others (like Halo 3) weren't much improved. Most depressingly, Mass Effect's famous elevator sequences were as nap-inducing as always. Turns out installing a game to your HDD does little for a game that wasn't coded to take advantage of one in the first place. Hopefully that's something we can expect to be rectified in the shining, glorious, post-NXE future. New Xbox Experience: DVD vs. Hard Disk Face-Off [Eurogamer] More »
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The forums trolled by Xbox Live subscribers are thick with accounts of bannings today, with what appears to be a broad sweeping set of Live accounts deleted, keeping thousands from accessing online gaming. At this point, we're not sure of the root cause — and neither, does it appear, do those affected — but there is rampant talk in the Xbox Scene forums, at least, about the abuse of pirated copies of games like Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World At War. It's all cleaned up "played early" and "back up copy" talk — thinly veiled "I pirated Game X before launch day" — amongst some users. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5083456&view=rss&microfeed=true We've read about how to create an Xbox 360 avatar. Thanks Mike! Now it's time to see how you create an Xbox 360 avatar. Still think they look, as a whole, kinda goofy, but the gamerpic photo booth thing looks surprisingly neat. More »
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On Gamerscore Blog, Major Nelson explains the functionality of two new features — parties and photos — coming to the new Xbox dashboard (nyah, nyah, didn't say "experience") on Nov. 19. There are more screenshots and a video narrative of the two features at the link. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5080648&view=rss&microfeed=true Perhaps the best new feature of the New Xbox Experience is the ability to install 360 games to your HDD. Least, it is for me, since my console's DVD drive sounds like a Blackhawk trying to take off. But the advantages don't stop with a reduction in noise, they extend to faster load times. Just how much faster? MTV threw a few vids together to demonstrate. It's quite a lot faster. More »
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Thousands of new Xbox 360 Avatars will be created this week, as Microsoft will begin the New Xbox Experience Preview Program on a smaller public trial. Today, Microsoft sent out preview code e-mails to registrants to let them know they were accepted. Those lucky enough to gain early entrance will get the NXE update "later this week." Check your e-mails kids and let us know in the comments if you got in. More »
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One of the more exciting additions to the Xbox 360 is the streaming of Netflix movies for subscribers of the video rental service and Xbox Live Gold. The service has been available to Netflix subscribers via their PCs or dedicated boxes like the Roku for some time now, but the Xbox 360 will be the first console to support the streaming of standard and high definition "Watch Instantly" content. More »
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We've been playing around with the New Xbox Experience for the Xbox 360 for a while now, testing out the "Blades" interface replacement that goes live Nov. 19 to every console owner. In short, the NXE is an impressive improvement, removing much of the unnecessary visual clutter that was present in the Xbox 360's original interface. It's faster, easier on the eyes and better organized — a good thing, considering the update is mandatory. More »
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The early public look at the New Xbox Experience, as teased by Microsoft's Larry Hryb on a recent podcast, is now accepting applications. The "Xbox 360 Fall Flash Preview," as they're calling it, will be admitting "a few thousand participants" who are chomping at the bit to build one of those flashy Avatars. More »
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Xbox Live - so much more than a way of playing games against sweary 14 year olds. Live is also, according to Vice Prez John Schappert, an "online retailer" committed to making niche content more accessible. More »
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While most of you will fake excitement for a new user interface, we know that, really, you're excited for the new 360 dash because you'll get to dress up a console-bound avatar without having to turn on your Wii. And while the little tykes won't be available until the launch of the new dash next month, you can get a sneak peek at them right now if you grab the Scene It? Box Office Smash demo. The full game will support them when released, so to fudge it until then, there's a range of pre-fabricated avatars to choose from. We're downloading right now, in the vain hope that it comes bundled with a Don Mattrick/J Allard two-pack. More »
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