Xbox Live Dashboard May 2007 Impressions

Yesterday the spring update for the XBox 360 was released which contained a number of fixes and updates.

The update was relatively painless although when I was signing into my live account before the update was downloaded I had a heart stopping moment when the dashboard completely hung. I gazed at the status circle just in case I now had the dreaded circle of death but it comfortingly still shone green. I had to soft reboot the system and all was well once again. Upon sign in to live I was now prompted if I wanted to download the update. Phew!

There are a few immediately noticeable improvements, the "Marketplace" now has it's own blade which nicely categorises all the available content in one place. And if you've got an Xbox 360 game inserted in the disc tray the name of the game is displayed rather than just "Play Game". if the game is highlighted it will then show your last achievements, which is a nice little touch.

You'll also notice that the Xbox Live blade has the option "Chat and IM", this allows you to send messages or video chat as previously but there's now another option to use the messenger service. This will sign into Windows Live Messenger using the email address assigned to your Xbox Live account. As soon as I'd signed in I found that my messenger contacts were available and it was easy enough to start off a new conversation. However, I soon had hand cramp from using the virtual keyboard and I'm looking forward to the release of the new text input device that fits snugly onto the controller. This is due to be released sometime this summer and I'll be picking one of these up as soon as it's available. Just as a note, you can always use a USB keyboard for messages if you want. I like the messenger service, it's a far more dynamic method of conversation rather than sending static "messages" to another users inbox and having your inbox filled in return.

In other areas; The achievement notification has been tweaked so you now get the name and its gamer score value displayed rather than just "Achievement Unlocked". This is a very useful enhancement as it's always nice to know what you've just unlocked without having to leave a game to check. Background downloads have also been enhanced so that not only should they be faster but you can set the 360 to power down when the downloads are complete, this is great when you've queued a lot of large downloads but don't want to wait around for them to finish.

All the improvements I've seen so far fit in nicely with the dashboard and enhance the overall user friendliness of Xbox Live. For a full rundown on the dashboard update hit the link: Dashboard May 07 Details