Change is coming. Next week, a major update to the Xbox 360 will arrive. With what amounts to many small fixes all over the operating system, Microsoft promises to make the Xbox 360 experience richer and more robust.
"This is the answer to what they've been requesting. We've spent the last few months listening to them. We read the boards, the sites, we listen to feedback from the community. Our development team takes this very seriously. We know you can't always do everything for everyone, but with this we feel we've hit all the key things that people are asking for."
-Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft
Much of the spring Xbox 360 update revolves around Microsoft’s successful Xbox Live Marketplace. As the amount of available content is tenfold of what Microsoft expected it to be, and the number of downloads exceeded their year one estimates during E3 alone… Well, it’s understandable why it would be high on the list of priorities.
Speaking of priorities, one of the main things gamers disliked about the Marketplace was the lack of background downloading. When any download is in progress, gamers are essentially stuck watching your files come in without the option to do much else. With the update, that will become ancient history. Thanks to the new background download manager, up to six downloads can run in the background at once with the option to sort them to prioritize the order of downloading. Not only that, but a reworked downloading system should make for faster download speeds. As well, downloads will automatically pause and resume if an online game is started to avoid creating lag.
The Xbox Live Marketplace frontend has undergone a redesign. Included changes are mostly small and based around reclassification, with the most notable being the new “media and entertainment” option. Instead of shoehorning all videos into a “demos and trailers” subcategory, instead they can go one of two places. “Demos and game videos” is, of course, the category for game-related content. Separate from that is the “media and entertainment” category, which caters to all non-game related content. Movie trailers, music videos, original video entertainment—whatever it is, it heads to its own separate category.
After downloading media from the Marketplace, an option comes up to play the video directly. Instead of loading into a separate menu, hitting “Play Now” will cue up the video in the 360’s media player (similarly, you can install themes from the download prompt). The update also brings the capability to interact with downloaded videos like DVDs. Rewinding, fast forwarding, skipping to specific places in the video—all will be available with downloaded marketplace videos after the update.
The musical side of the 360 will also get an overhaul. Most notably in the custom soundtrack department—as of right now, custom soundtracks stop when a game is launched. The spring update promises to throw out that stop and have uninterrupted play-through. Also, the tagging system for audio files is upgraded, making for more complete information about songs on the 360.
And last, but not least, the much-desired “launch to dashboard” option is available. As the 360 has a few key features that are either not available or inconvenient to get to once a game is launched. As it is also inconvenient to take out a disc to launch the console to the dashboard…well, it was a fairly large oversight. The 360 spring update fixes that, with an option to launch either to the dashboard or disc upon power-up.
All in all, the update sounds promising. It fixes much of what the populace had issue with and sets a precedent that makes the promised Fall update will be hard-pressed to match.
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