New Xbox interface is more about movies

One thing to note: You cannot manage your Netflix movie queue from the new Xbox interface. To do that, you’ll need to hop on your PC. But the changes you make to your queue are almost instantly reflected in your movie list on your Xbox. With my laptop in front of me, I added “The Office: Season 4” and “Empire of the Sun” to my queue, and within three seconds, both showed up on my Xbox.

I was surprised by both the speed and quality of streaming Netflix movies. It took two tries for the system to optimize the video quality for my broadband connection, but after that, the videos looked great on my widescreen and never skipped. Nice!

While Netflix is undoubtedly the highlight of the new Xbox Live, I’m pleased to announce that Microsoft has greatly improved the “Game Marketplace.” Here, you can browse games in many different ways: alphabetically, by box art, new arrivals, genre and game type (retail, downloadable games, Xbox Originals, demos, etc.). There’s also a new “most popular” field, which I found to be the most useful filter for discovering new games.

User ratings are not supported, unfortunately, but the new game detail pages feature everything about a game (screens, box art, descriptions and add-on content) in one convenient place, unlike the current system.

Microsoft Use the My Xbox channel to easily access your games, photos and movies.

Microsoft has also added a new “Live Party” system that lets you conference call up to eight Xbox Live members and stay connected when switching between different games, Netflix movies and photo albums. Since I was the only one in my friends with this new menu enabled, I couldn’t try this feature. Live Party holds a lot of promise, but I’m skeptical about whether it will be used that much by the community.  

Rounding out the channels, “My Xbox” lets players quickly access any inserted discs or downloaded content. You can also futz with your console settings here. Pretty straightforward stuff.

From there, the other categories aren’t as exciting. The “Friends” channel lets you view who’s online, eavesdrop on what your connected buddies are doing and add new friends. The “Events” channel lists upcoming community meet ups, which appears to be an attempt to herd online players to certain games.  “Inside Xbox” is a promotional channel that teases upcoming games. And “Spotlight” is what it sounds like — a channel that highlights the most notable items from the other six categories.

If you’re really in love with the current Blade interface, no worries: You can access a miniaturized version of that menu at any time (even in-game) by pressing the Xbox “Guide” or menu button on the controller. I found my time was evenly split between using the guide menu and new menu, as I like both equally well.

One gripe I have with the new system is that ads are not labeled as such and appear as normal channel items. You can usually spot the units you want to avoid (Uh, Subway sandwich? No thanks), but I got duped into watching something by an incognito ad at least once. (Shakes fist.)

Overall, the new Xbox 360 menu system is faster, more convenient and easier to use than the soon-to-be-defunct Blade system. Will it help Microsoft transform the console into a Wii-like system overnight? Probably not. Will it help them sell more 360s? I don’t think so. But it's a welcome improvement just the same, particularly when used to rent digital movies and find new games.

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