Yeah any Xbox 360 owner with Live available will be aware of the update Microsoft created for it in a nutshell it basicly changes the way the main menu looks and adds various new features which double the experience.I've decided to give my say on the various aspects on this update and what I think of it.Plese note I am not advertiresing it in fact when I get the chance I will be critisizing it plenty.

Avatars

For starter the main new feature is the ability to create an avatar which you can edit to look like you or how you depict yourself.

For example I have my Avatar:

Yeah that avatar does me justice especially the hair.

The system has been given alot of flack for "stealing off the wii's mii characters" though avatars did not start with Nintendo people.

They've just taken the avatar system which has been used for years glossed it over and suited it to their needs.

The avatars however are lacking in the clothing styles only offering you about 13 shirts each and only 10 trouser options though more might become downloadable content.

Xbox Live Party

As you know many online games have a party system wherin you can hang around in the game lobby and just chat you can kick people out of the party and bring others in basicly the NXE takes this feature and brings it into the menu in the original xbox experience you can only talk to one person whilst at the menu through private chat.The Xbox Live Party is an extension to that allowing up to 16 people at once.The Xbox Live party also allows players to jump automatically to another game without losing contact example:Lets say the party leader has Gears of War 2 in his 360 if he selects to play it any other people in the party with Gears of War 2 in their 360's will automatically jump to it aswell.

This in my opinion seem sto have been something that should have shipped with the 360 to begin with as it seems to have been possible at the time though I guess they assumed nobody without Xbox Live would have usage for it so they removed it.

Premium Features

Premium features are special add ons to the 360 that interact with your Avatars such as downloadable games specially designed to incorporate the Avatars.

One of the more interesting things is the premium menu themes basically when you go to your freinds list on most themes you see buildings behind your freinds avatars the premium themes change these buildings to ones from the game the theme is based on Example:If they hypotheticaly made a Bionicle premium theme when you add the theme on and you go to your freinds list the buildings in the background of the avatars would become stuff like the Colliseum or the Kini-Nui.

This seems kinda unnecessary and the deal is made worse by the fact that the amount you have to pay to download these themes isn't exactly inexpensive though if you have the money then go ahead or you could just spend the money on chocolate .

Downloading Game Data onto Hard Drive.

Oh boy now we're into the dregs .

Microsoft though it would be a good idea to give you the ability to download the game data off a game disk onto your hard drive to supposedly lower loading times although for most games with the ability to play online(Like 1/2 of the selection of 360 games) the game suffers longer loading times freuently and makes it harder for you to find a match online.Take the hint microsoft don't push that far ahead for now games will be played the way they were made to be played.On disks.

Though in the future game developers may adapt to this and design the games so that the data can be more sufficiently transferred.Won't really matter as downloading the data onto the drive takes large amounts of memory<_<.

Overall for a mandatory update that happensa utomatically it didn't meet all my expactations I personally prefer the older menu though thankfully they've incorporated it into the push of a button so you can look on the menu oldschool style.It isn't perfect though at the same time it won't leave you burning your 360 laughing evily.

Overall:

7.5/10

Thanks for reading

:Yami: