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XBOX Live Update - Brief Review
Thanks to my friends I am the happy owner of an XBox 360, and recently they did an update to their XBox Live service. I thought I'd give a brief rundown for anyone who is thinking about a 360, since I'm really enjoying mine.
Avatar Awards: Apparently they will be adding in clothing items and other accessories that you can earn for your avatar as awards in games. Now, I don't really care about this feature, since I don't play anything with the avatars and haven't used them for anything other than a gamer pic. I also have no intention of spending cash on virtual dress-up items. Also, the whole avatar thing is a blatant rip-off of Miis. All the things I don't care about aside, I know some people who are excited to sink their teeth into this new feature. It's not something I'm terribly excited about though.
Friends Lists: Now you can organize your friends lists in several different ways. Great if you want to quickly see who is playing a game and jump in. Not a big change, but certainly convenient.
NetFlix Instant-Watch update: This one is the big deal for me. Everyone already knows that you can watch NetFlix on your Xbox, but now they've enhanced the service in several different ways.
- You can now add videos from several of the major categories (Not anime/animation though, sadly) directly to the instant-watch cue, without having to add them on your computer first. Now, some categories aren't there and you may need to search for older or more obscure titles on the computer first, but if they continue to improve the service, it could eliminate the need for your PC altogether when using instant-view.
- They now have Party-Watch, which is a really awesome feature. If you and your friends all have a 360 and are in a party, you can all watch the movie at the same time through the party leader's account, AND talk over the headsets at the same time. This way everyone can get together for a movie night even if all members are all over the country. I absolutely love this idea and I can't wait to browbeat the rest of the crew to get 360s so we can all watch stuff together...but ScoJo can't pick titles, it's actually in the EULA.
- They also enhanced the speed and variety of the streams from NetFlix, making videos download a bit faster to the system.
Just thought I'd let everyone know my experience so far. I'm glad I went with this next gen system over the others!
Avatar Awards: Apparently they will be adding in clothing items and other accessories that you can earn for your avatar as awards in games. Now, I don't really care about this feature, since I don't play anything with the avatars and haven't used them for anything other than a gamer pic. I also have no intention of spending cash on virtual dress-up items. Also, the whole avatar thing is a blatant rip-off of Miis. All the things I don't care about aside, I know some people who are excited to sink their teeth into this new feature. It's not something I'm terribly excited about though.
Friends Lists: Now you can organize your friends lists in several different ways. Great if you want to quickly see who is playing a game and jump in. Not a big change, but certainly convenient.
NetFlix Instant-Watch update: This one is the big deal for me. Everyone already knows that you can watch NetFlix on your Xbox, but now they've enhanced the service in several different ways.
- You can now add videos from several of the major categories (Not anime/animation though, sadly) directly to the instant-watch cue, without having to add them on your computer first. Now, some categories aren't there and you may need to search for older or more obscure titles on the computer first, but if they continue to improve the service, it could eliminate the need for your PC altogether when using instant-view.
- They now have Party-Watch, which is a really awesome feature. If you and your friends all have a 360 and are in a party, you can all watch the movie at the same time through the party leader's account, AND talk over the headsets at the same time. This way everyone can get together for a movie night even if all members are all over the country. I absolutely love this idea and I can't wait to browbeat the rest of the crew to get 360s so we can all watch stuff together...but ScoJo can't pick titles, it's actually in the EULA.
- They also enhanced the speed and variety of the streams from NetFlix, making videos download a bit faster to the system.
Just thought I'd let everyone know my experience so far. I'm glad I went with this next gen system over the others!
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