System Update Adds XBox Features (December 6, 2011)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
A major XBox 360 dashboard update was released today, and there's a few neat improvements. On top of greater Kinect voice recognition and cloud-based gamertag and savegame storage, a couple additions can directly enhance your Wing Commander Arena experience. The new "beacons" feature lets XBox and Facebook friends know that you're interested in playing a particular game. Wing Commander Themes that you've purchased are a bit more visible in the new screen layout as well. It's also a couple of years old now, but the XBox Live Party Chat feature makes keeping a group together between games of Arena way easier than the game's default postgame chat!







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Original update published on December 6, 2011
 
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But if I agree to the new terms of service then... nothing will happen ever.

I'm going to grab this now. How well hidden is the HD-DVD drive now?
 
Hmm... Interesting... Doesn't actually sound all that evil to my ears. Mediation instead of immediate court sounds ok. The class action thing would bother me however AND I also kinda doubt that Microsoft would play by its own rules here when hunting down multiple users for whatever reason (they know why the exempted intellectual property stuff...)
Do such click through agreements actually hold in US courts? I know they wouldn't here - just curious.
 
Do such click through agreements actually hold in US courts? I know they wouldn't here - just curious.
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No, but that doesn't stop everyone from complaining about them. :)
Now queue the Internet technical argument squad with some fact about the one time in 2003 when some guy was successfully sued for breaking iTunes.
 
A quick update to that article is here - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...no-lawsuits-xbox-360-tos-update-after-all.ars

As for the legality - the courts have ruled all over the map - some have ruled that EULAs are perfectly legal, others have ruled that they aren't. Still more have stricken clauses. So their legality is up in the air.

In addition, depending on your local state, some of those clauses don't apply. Like in Canada, some province's courts have ruled that you cannot give up the right to use the courts - a company cannot enforce an arbitration-only agreement and the courts can overturn any arbitrator's result.

Either way, the choice is yours. I personally agreed to it as my Xbox has provided me with lots of entertainment, and Microsoft is probably one of the top 5 targets of any cyber attack. (Amazon would be another). They're attacked so much that they've set up secure barriers and secure handling. If either Microsoft or Amazon is breached, then basically we're all screwed because the other websites aren't going to be as well protected.
 
It's not whether EULAs are illegal, it's whether the contents of EULAs are illegal.

EULAs cannot grant or deny things contrary to law -- they're like any other contract: legally binding except when illegal.
 
So back to the topic, the new iOS XBox Live app is pretty slick!

And they just announced a Halo Windows Phone/iOS app which sounds amazing - it's more than just stats and information. Apparently for Halo Reach, it'll show a "near real time" GPS-style map of the multiplayer game you're in and highlight things like weapon drops and stuff. Pretty fancy, can't wait for more stuff like that.

xbox_metro5.png
 
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I really do not like the new look of the dashboard. The other one was a little more slick, this seems to have a lot more sub-menus and buttons.

I am very happy for the addition of cloud storage and the beacon system though.
 
Made an interesting discovery.... It seems they've quietly added MKV file support to the xbox with the latest update as well. I've been streaming x264 encoded videos to my 360 without issue as long as the audio is AC3 encoded. For some reason x264 files with AAC stereo audio seems to have synching issues where the audio plays, then glitches and the video speeds up to catch back up to the audio.
 
The Halo WP7 app has been around since launch - it's basically an app version of Halo Waypoint.

It looks like they finally ported it to iOS.

And yes, one of the new features of Halo Waypoint would be adding Halo Reach heat maps and such...
 
Yep. Got it during my daily survey of new iOS apps.

Though, I don't know what Microsoft is doing - the apps run terribly. Slow, laggy and unresponsive, both the new Xbox Live one and Halo Waypoint. Though I have to admit a lot of disappointment with Halo Waypoint as well - it seems half the stuff is just an embedded web browser to the website. (Hell, the Bungie app runs better and gives me the same stats). I hope they optimize it soon - it's quite unusable the way it is now.
 
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