"Here's the breakdown:
- Facebook: Almost everyone in the world is on Facebook; Now you can access it from your 360 console. Update your status, leave messages for your friends, play games and upload pictures, just like you would on your computer. You can also compare your Xbox Live and Facebook friends lists to see which of your friends are on Xbox Live .
- Zune: Listen to music and watch videos right from your 360 with instant-on HD in 1080p and 5.1 channel surround sound. You don’t even have to wait for buffering or downloading, the video or song is there as quickly as a button push. You can also share your music with up to six friends through Avatar integration and voice chat.
- Twitter: Along with telling people what you are doing every second of the day, you can also view friend profiles, trends and conversations, and search to see if anyone is tweeting about your favorite game.
- Last.fm: This feature allows you to listen to your own personal radio station right on your 360. You can skip, ban, or love a song is it seems fit; create your perfect mix. There are even now “gamer stations” with game related and styled music, picked just for the gaming community." Gamertell
Each piece must be downloaded and updated separately; which seemed kind of strange to me. Twitter and Facebook are jammed into the Community menu which kind of smacks of a rushed push. The Zune Channel is much like the old Video Channel; just black with some thumbnail previews. I wasn't in the beta but I think it's still running; at least from a design standpoint.
The new Netflix does pop faster and some of the menus definitely work better. But the whole streaming tech that slowly ramps up is all right but I wonder how this will perform on high lag nights. Facebook and Twitter seem clunky to even get to from the main menu and both take a whole area of their own just like Netflix. If they were going to institute these I would have liked them see them both be in a side bar or something you could expand and contract. No one is going to sit there and watch Twitters go by or Facebook updates go by. Unless you don't have a PC and then I think you have bigger problems. I have not used Last.fm as yet. But I'm told, I'm going to need to create an account which I usually hate. Hopefully it will be quick and easy.
The biggest cool thing about this update for me, was the initial text showing Star Trek in the spotlight menu. I was all ready to download it until I saw: Star Trek is available on the Zune Marketplace for purchase only in Standard Definition for 1200 Microsoft Points. Standard Definition? Why would I want that? The XBOX 360 will upscale DVDs for God's Sake. This seems like a crappy move, they should have waited until both versions were available for purchase and rental.
I don't usually have a problem with the consoles trying to expand their horizons. But perhaps they should have lowered the prices for their Games on Demand service rather than putting the extra man power and resources into designing feature interfaces that virtually no one will use.
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