New Xbox Experience: Thematic Issues
Gamerscore Blog has done another one of their Friday updates offering some more tidbits about the new Xbox Experience that is apparently due in November, or so has been speculated (nothing official has yet been announced). This time, they tackled the issue of background themes. Since the new interface was announced, there has been much concern about the background themes, and how they will work in the new look. Well, as you can see in the shots below of the Gears of War theme, they will work, and while they claim they'll look even better in HD, I think the green boxes are a little obtrusive and block the graphics. New themes will actually have dynamic interactivity, which could either be kind of cool or completely annoying. They will animate subtly, and each graphic will tie into the theme. I've grown very attached to my Katamari theme, and have never changed it, but if I can upgrade to something with cool animation, I may be lured to the dark side.
The friends list will now be more visual, with the avatar behavior revealing the player's status. If they're online, your friends' avatars will wave at you to join them, and if they're offline, they'll be snoozing. Again, the jury's still out on this one, because it might be fun, or it could just be overly complicated. I'm still not sold on this whole new experience myself. We'll just have to wait and see. Check out the gallery below for some sample images courtesy of Microsoft.
NXE - What You WAnt To Know: Themes 2.0 And Friends Channel [Gamerscore Blog]
Wootini
Posted to Galleries, Video Games on 26 September 2008
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: friends, microsoft, new xbox experience, themes
I'm very seriously considering not allowing my 360 to update when this comes out. I don't like the look at *all*. The boxes cover everything and it's simply not possible for me to care less about the Avatars. If only I could have the HD loading feature while keeping the current UI...
I think it looks great, and all the other features of the update that they've revealed have me very much looking forward to it.