Xbox One

The media reaction to the Xbox One is going to be interesting. Most of twitter, Google+ and forums I've seen so far have been less than impressed - but they don't have to play nice with Microsoft for press materials.

I've not read any articles properly yet, but the headlines seem to be sticking to facts - the machine's name, launch window and other basic indisputable information.

I wonder when - or if - we'll start to see opinions seeping into the coverage, given how poorly-received it was by enthusiast gaming communities.

New Xbox Experience

On Friday evening (the night before I headed to Glasgow for two days to attend Auchinawa), I got into the preview program for the New Xbox Experience. I basically just had time to create my avatar (see below) and install a couple of games to the HDD before we had to leave, so I've not had much chance to get into the nitty-gritty details of the "experience", but it seems like an improvement in a lot of ways.

I'm not sure the new placement of some options is as intuitive - changing your theme is now located under your Xbox profile rather than the system settings - but it kind of makes sense since it's not a global setting for the entire machine.

Still, I'm sure after a couple of weeks using it this second iteration of the dashboard will be as easy to get around as the old one was.

I was pretty impressed at how well I was able to create myself with the avatar system though - compared to any other character creator I've ever used, none of which has ever been able to create even an approximate likeness of myself, my Avatar is frighteningly close to how I actually look. I don't know if everyone else will be as fortunate, though - my girlfriend wasn't able to make one that's as accurate.

Xbox Avatars

I'm actually quite looking forward to the new "Xbox Experience" update, the more I see of it. I still can't figure out why this video focuses on the creation of a hobo, though.



Now I'm off to listen to @hodgman's list of hobo names for the next hour.