When the New Xbox Experience was announced earlier this year, one of the first things that came to my mind was how Microsoft would be monitizing the Avatars. I caught some flack for the article and people in various forums called me stupid for assuming Microsoft was going to rape our wallets to dress up our Avatars. Guess what? They will be.
An Avatar Store will be coming next spring to your local Xbox 360. You’ll be able to buy all kinds of new clothing and accessories to spruce up your digital self. Want that new Burberry bag or Sean Jean t-shirt? It’s going to cost you. Ultimately, I think many people will opt to not purchase anything and you’re going to see plenty of avatars all wearing the same clothes.
To everyone that said I was a “dumb fanboy” for thinking Microsoft would charge for this stuff, let’s see what you have to say now.
Are you stuck with the lowly Core or Arcade SKU for your Xbox 360 with no hard drive? You might end up with a surprise come November 19th when the New Xbox Experience requires 128MB of space to download and run. Unless you have a 512MB memory unit, you’re screwed. Even with that, you might be up a creek with no paddle.
Fret not, my minions. Microsoft wants to help. While they recommend clearing out some of your old files to give you enough space, you can enter your Console ID and Serial Number on their website to see if you qualify for either a free 512MB memory unit or a 20GB hard drive for only $19.99. Word on the streets is the hard drives are refurbished, but for $20, you can’t really complain.
While it’s not to see Microsoft helping out some, it makes you wonder why they didn’t plan for this in the first place or take action earlier. They knew Arcade users wouldn’t have enough space for their new dashboard update, so why not start this process earlier? Either way, if you only have a Core or Arcade, you better hit them up for some storage.
Want to know how ripping a game to your hard drive will effect load times after the Next Xbox Experience update drops later this year? Check out this comparison video showing GTA4 both from the DVD and from the hard drive. A good 10 seconds or more quicker is a nice bonus if you have the hard drive space to use. Ch-check it out.
Xbox Live is going down on Monday to get some massive server upgrades and software overhauls to prepare for the upcoming New Xbox Experience. From the one and only Larry Hyrb (better know as Major Nelson):
On Monday, 9/29/2008 from 12:01 AM PST for up to 24 hours, Xbox Live will be offline for maintenance. As a result, Xbox LIVE and the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won’t be able to post.) The remainder of Xbox.com will be available with limited interruptions.
This service maintenance is in preparation for the new Xbox experience which will be available later this fall.
Let me reiterate: When the service returns, you will not have any new features and you will not have the new Xbox experience update. That will happen later this Fall.
So don’t plan on playing online with your Xbox 360 on Monday. I’m betting we get the update sometime in October. If we go by past dash updates, things usually come out around a week or two after the scheduled maintenance on the servers. We’ll see what happens.
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