So how everybody like the new coat of paint? Personally I like it quite well. When I first tested it the new side-to-side view was a little disorienting. It took me awhile to adjust from the isometric view. But once I did, I haven't had any probs since. I like the new "softening" they have done to everything. Much cleaner look. But other than that the new look hadn't changed my day-to-day use a whole lot. It still does everything I did before with about the same effort. Although there were a few changes that I wasn't real pleased with most notably with the Game Library.
The Game Library is now a shell of its former self. Gone are the ability to rate your games, see details about them or check out their Marketplace content. All that is now done exclusively in the Marketplace. In the Game Library the only thing you can do is play or delete them. I'm now way more likely to skip rating games since I have to go find them in the Marketplace. I wouldn't have so much a problem with the leaner content if it had actually sped up the loading of the Game Library, but it's still damn slow & the only way I found to speed it up is to actually to start deleting games.
As for the Games Marketplace, it's much better all around. It's organized better & easier to find content. But as an Indie gamer I have kind of have mixed feelings about the channel being demoted to Specialty Shops channel. You can no longer find Indie games in the main Marketplace section with all the other Game content. But at the same time it's really well done with better ways to filter content by genre, title, etc. And it greatly helps that the top lists are now 50 deep instead of 20. A couple of new cool additions were added to the Game Marketplace late last week, both found in the updated Featured channel. They are the Kinect Games & Add-Ons for Your Games channels. They were both suggestions I made early in the beta. It was great to see some of my ideas make it to the final build. Unfortunately, the Add-Ons for Your Games channel is not exactly what I was wanting. I complained about it, but since it was so late in the beta, I don't think they were able to make any changes to it. BTW, I'm still running the same build that was released last Friday. I only got a new Terms of Use message this morning. There wasn't anything else to download.
My favorite new feature is most likely the new ESPN app. For those that have participating ISPs, it's great! Just wished it was available to everybody. Just another reason why I'll never buy cable or satellite TV ever again. Of all the other app updates I like, Netflix is my next favorite. Love the ability to search titles & not just streaming content either. But other than that the rest of the dashboard apps I'll probably never use or at least not regularly.
Other notable features are the new family settings and easier access to account management and privacy settings.
All in all a great update. I probably only had one bug the whole time and even then it didn't take them very long to fix it. My biggest pet peeve of the whole experience was not being able to submit to Connect. Didn't really feel like I was really helping much since we were relegated to posting on the special Preview forums. Other peeves was not being able to voice chat except in games. Didn't realize how useful cross game & party chat was until I wasn't able to use it.
Anyway, that's it for my feedback. That is until I get Kinect to try out. That's going to be the best test of the dash. Can't wait!
Tommy McClain
Wish I had full control over what tabs appear since I do not ever intend to use the Zune/Music/Videos sections ever.
