Albert Penello wants his wife to turn on the Xbox 360 when he's not home.
It's a challenge that many video game enthusiasts are familiar with, trying to get a significant other to take interest in the game console, but the task is more important for Albert because in addition to being a video-game-loving husband, he's also director of marketing for the Xbox.
Albert explains that the TiVo and the Xbox 360 are the main entertainment hubs at home. The trouble is that when he isn't home, "she'll use the TiVo but she won't use the 360." He doesn't expect her to fire up Halo 3, but she could use the console to watch video downloads or networked content through the media center extender.
The try-things-out-on-the-wife design angle isn't new to gaming. Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto famously gauged his wife's reaction to see how well new games might appeal to an expanded audience and gave a GDC 2007 presentation on how various Nintendo products scored on the "Wife-o-Meter." Penello doesn't wield quite as much design clout as Miyamoto, but the Xbox design team has already been working on solving the wife dilemma for the 360. Albert hopes that his wife will use the Xbox more when Microsoft releases its New Xbox Experience (NXE) dashboard update this November.
The first thing you'll notice about the NXE is the upgraded menu system. Sharp graphics replace or augment the plain text in the menus. Adding more visual information makes navigation easier by exposing instantly recognizable options to the viewer. The new menus will also expand out to make full use of the screen in widescreen aspect ratios.
Submenus previously hidden behind menu text listings now appear in full preview mode to the right of the parent menu, showing you what's available without requiring you to select the submenu from a list and wait to load the new page. For example, if you're viewing Halo 3, you'll be able to see the featured downloads, screenshots, developer information, and other menus off to the right of the current display menu.
Designers also replaced the fixed-blade system with a Rolodex-style channel rotator menu. The current dashboard menu system would have eventually run out of room as the service added more blades, but the new channel rotator allows the service to expand the number of available channels. The menu shows only five channels at a time, but you can rotate the list up and down to see more channels.
The Netflix channel Microsoft announced at the E3 Media & Business Summit this year wasn't operational in our demo, but Penello confirmed that it will be ready for the NXE launch. Console users who also have a Netflix account will be able to watch any streamable movie from their Netflix queue on their 360. You won't find many new releases available for streaming, but the library does have several popular older movies, and newer content is coming.
We also didn't get to see the new Primetime channel, which will give Xbox Live subscribers the opportunity to participate in game-show-style games, such as 1 vs. 100. The Netflix and Primetime channels may not have been ready, but Penello and XNA senior strategist Robert Gruhl were ready to show off the NXE features created for the core Xbox audience: avatars, the redesigned Xbox Guide, parties, and themes 2.0.
New Xbox Experience Feature Preview
Microsoft gives us a progress update on the New Xbox Experience coming November 19.
