Microsoft revealed the new and revamped UI for the X-Box 360 last week on E3 and it was about time.

The current dashboard although not being too bad, has a few problems which sucessive update haven’t fixed, such as  too much information on screen, a bit of lag, hard to navigate in so much content (you have videos, games, addons, music,etc) and some areas were simply over-complicated.

Old Xbox Layout:

New Layout below:

With this aproach I think Microsoft is going the “Apple way” and going for a more simple, less complicated but coese design. On the other hand, with Sony releasing it’s “Home” pseudo-Second Live world/dashboard and given the Wii’s success with the Mii’s, Microsoft felt the need to introduce some sort of Avatars into the console.

Joystiq has posted a video walkthrough of the new Dashboard and Xbox Focus has detailed information on the new features. Now it’s all about waiting for the next system-update and experience the new dashboard hands-on.

CD Projekt (a Poland based games publisher) announced last week his plans for a new games-on demand web based platform.

With a fantastic lineup of classic games (Fallout, Fallout 2, MDK, Sacrifice) from the 90’s, GOG.com (Good Old Games) promisses to change the current digital games distribution by NOT including DRM in the games.

That means after you pay for a game, you will be able to play in which computer you desire and download the game how many times you which, brilliant. The games will sell from $5.99 to $9.99 and will be compatible with Windows XP and Vista. 

It’s nice to see business models on the web abandoning the DRM stigma. 

I wish the best of luck for this program and wish more publishers jump on the wagon (c’mon, I want to see the classic Lucasart and Bioware games). 

Microsoft delivered yet another impressive update (for better or for worst) for the Xbox 360 Dashboard and Xbox Live (as the two are linked together), to make the list short, here’s some of the new stuff:

* Windows Live Messenger Integration
* More detail in the “achievement unlocked” pop-up
* Enhanced family settings
* New Marketplace blade
* Enhancements to Xbox LIVE Arcade
* Ability to fast-forward, pause, and rewind video as it’s being downloaded from Marketplace
* A setting for consoles to finish downloading content, before powering down
* Crappy Marketplace Region Lockdown :|

Meanwhile, the fine people at Craxtion posted a detailed full list of new features brought by the update, you can read the whole XBox360 May Dash Update (Real) Feature List at Craxtion.

But if you wish for a more visual walktrough, you can watch a video explaining all the new updated features over at MaxConsole.

The video reproduction settings and accepted formats were vastly improved by Microsoft so it’s no wonder alot of doubts were brought up about streaming speeds, resolution, sizes, codecs, etc. Luckily, Engadget sought to end these doubts and explored all the technical issues in the article Spring Dashboard - Video Hands on at Engadget.

“Technically speaking the Xbox 360 now officially beats out the Apple TV in the digital video arena, both in resolution and bitrate. (At best the ATV only does up to 720p at 5Mbps, while the Xbox does 1080p up to 10Mbps; neither supports higher than stereo audio.) ”

If you’re looking into even more details about the new video playback features, the Team Xbox Blog (FYI: MS owned blog) posted a Spring 2007 Video Playback FAQ.

Unfortunately, the update also brought new measures to restrict users from getting content from a region where they didn’t “belong”. The following is a explanation from Microsoft at the GamerscoreBlog reads:

“(…) I understand that there’s often great content that you, me and my cats want on the US Marketplace that isn’t on any of the European Marketplaces – but if people are able to download content in countries that it’s not licensed for, people get upset, content gets pulled, cool new content doesn’t get uploaded to Marketplace, and everyone ends up unhappy.”

“Q: So when will Xbox Live members in Europe get the chance to download the kind of cool content that is, for example, available to US Xbox Live members on Video Marketplace?

Michael Newey: At the moment we have made no announcements about Xbox Live Video Marketplace for Europe.(…)”

Yeah, thanks alot. Thanks for the 1/3 of the US Xbox Marketplace content (Gamerpics, Themes, Game Addons, Movies, etc) and making me pay the same price as the other users.

I’m also very unhappy with the Babelfish style translations over at the portuguese Xbox Marketplace mixed with the rest of the Dashboard items still in English, it’s soooo fun paying for an incomplete product with half the stuff from the other European countries and waiting double the time for all of it (even though, all the games are in English, so why the wait?).

In other words, if you neglect your users they will end up forgetting you.