The New Xbox 360 Experience

So, the new Xbox experience has launched and while I haven't yet booted up my system to see how the upgrade goes (WotLK is eating my soul) I have heard mixed reports of how the upgrade has gone. Microsoft has reported some problems, mostly with the Marketplace, and Gabe of Penny Arcade is complaining that his box keeps freezing when he tries to open his friends list. The former is an annoyance, the latter is game breaking. We shall see how my own experience with the Experience goes.

One other thing that I found interesting about the upgrade is that it allows games to be installed to the HDD so that the disk doesn't need to be read. This is great since you could easily confuse the sound of the disc drive spinning with a passenger jet landing in your living room, but surprisingly this can also lead to a decrease in performance for some games. For example, Bungie made a post on their website actually advising against doing so for this very reason. Hopefully, this feature is better supported for future games because frankly, the noise of the Xbox 360 hard drive is just ridiculous and the ability to mute it most if not all of the time would be wonderful.