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Microsoft Flaunts NXE Stats
Microsoft’s Larry Hryb has disclosed some revealing Xbox Live statistics which the company recorded following the launch of NXE.
Posting on his semi-official Major Nelson blog, Hryb claimed that in the week after the NXE launch, movie downloads were found to have increased by 49 percent, with downloads of TV episodes climbing 30 percent.
More encouragingly for the company, Hryb suggested that XBLA titles had “almost tripled” in sales in the first week after launch, and that the average user had increased their friends list by 33 percent.
Aside from electing an indulgent use of simile (“if Live were a US city, it would be the largest city with over 14-million members. The equivalent of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined” [emphasis theirs]), Hryb claimed that the downloadable card game Uno saw a 650 percent increase in sales in a single day after the game was updated to feature NXE avatars.
“In the past year the average number of unique visitors to Xbox Live each day has risen 66 percent,” Hryb added.
Interestingly, there was no sign of details on the uptake of Netflix, NXE’s new flagship subscription service which allows users to stream movies to the console.
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I've noticed the increased download times as well. It's become extremely time-consuming to browse through and download from the Marketplace since NXE was released to the general public; it was significantly faster during the beta. A XBLM-wide search feature is still needed, as paging through that much content is time-consuming when I'm looking for older content.
Also, the recent rash of new content being released with an initial 1-week delay for Silver accounts is counterproductive. As a publisher, I'd be pretty pissed at Microsoft for preventing potential customers from trying the latest demo this close to Christmas.
As a consumer, I no longer find the value in maintaining a Gold subscription. I'm usually only able to play later in the evening when my friends are either sleeping or busy doing other things. I'm also able to stream quite a bit of online media through MediaMall's PlayOn Server, so I'm not limited to just Netflix streams. Aside from the initial $30 cost, there's no additional annual fee to watch content that's either already paid for or free.
The most worthwhile new feature is install-to-HDD; it cuts down on noise, heat and loading times. That allows me to play into the wee hours of the night and should also equate to less 360 failures. The xmb functionality is nice, but it's still pretty easy to go to the wrong place; that should be less of an issue over time.
Also, does anyone know how to keep from having to login twice? If I enable security, I have to login to my profile both on the 360 and then again on Live. I only had to do it for Live before NXE.
Xorse
The last I heard was that the 1 vs. 100 game and various other features based around the 'Prime Time' concept were not quite ready to launch with the NXE and have been postponed until spring.
If they implement this Prime Time thing correctly it could be awesome :)
Thanks!
Yes it could be great, they have the best online service and user base... hopefully this will take advantage of it!
I've been using it for longer than I'd like already... my time online is down, my downloads are down, and my avatar(like so many others) looks decidedly gay!
The avatars are high-def but are no where near as charming as Mii's or as customisable. The Wii system allows significant alteration of the size, separation, and position of facial features which is sadly missing from Microsoft’s effort.
Finding things on the marketplace if harder than it used to be, in the past items were grouped in (game) folders. Now each item is displayed separately at the top level meaning multiple entries for a single game can swamp the menu's. Displaying the box art looks pretty but eats up space therefore minimising the amount of useful information on view at any one time. The old marketplace was not perfect and as the total amount of content on offer grew so did the need for a search engine, in light of NXE’s failings I now consider this an essential addition.
The final and biggest irritation is that load times of the most critical information have increased massively. The pretty pictures etc load fine but the download information can take longer to load than my patience lasts meaning I simply give up and play a game instead. I am a patient person but knowing that this used to take a second and seeing no good reason for the minute plus delay has somewhat shortened my resolve…
It would have been better if, instead of giving us customisable avatars, they had given us a customisable dashboard… or at the very least the option to roll back to the old experience!
I haven't actually used it, but NXE looks to be more flashy and gimmicky than functional. Any thoughts from people who've had their hands on it?
The Avatar bit is definitely flashy and gimmicky, and is the thing I care the least for or about. The big improvements are:
1) Play game entirely off of hard drive which is a big deal for Fable 2 or other games that are constantly accessing it, not so much for games that preload everything. But mostly it means the console runs quiet.
2) It's much faster and responsive in general. Much less of that little hitching the old one had when it was presumably trying to find something on disk or get a server response.
3) You can hit the X button on your controller and get a speedy mini-blade dialogue anywhere (even in games) - you can even use this as your main control system, almost entirely bypassing the NXE.
4) Bringing up your my games list no longer takes 30 seconds as it rummages through the disk looking for games you own (with the most recent found last) - that was always the dumbest thing. It's cached now.
So just ignore the flashy eye candy crap - it's a big improvement.
Hi
Yes it does have its good points. I agree with everything you say but the issues I raised about the marketplace are valid. I tend to use the method you describe in point 3 most of the time as it does exactly what you said... bypasses NXE, though It does not bypass the new market place which is a shame.
I wonder if the film downloads have increased because the number of films available has?
I still think that a company with such a long history off making operating systems should be able to do a better job, then again maybe not... Linux anybody?
Anyone know what happened to the fifteen to one game?