Ladies and gentlemen, I will just not shut the hell up about the Xbox 360 dashboard. There was an update yesterday morning, and I feel like I have to say something about it, given that my previous statements on the subject were, to quote, " this is bad enough that it almost seems like you're deliberately sabotaging yourselves, Microsoft."
 
Somebody out there was listening. To me specifically? Probably not. But I was hardly the only voice. While the display issues with certain apps does not seem to have been corrected, yesterday's Xbox Dashboard patch has seemingly redesigned a significant portion of the Game Marketplace. 
 

Ladies and gentlemen, I will just not shut the hell up about the Xbox 360 dashboard. There was an update yesterday morning, and I feel like I have to say something about it, given that my previous statements on the subject were, to quote, " this is bad enough that it almost seems like you're deliberately sabotaging yourselves, Microsoft."
 
Somebody out there was listening. To me specifically? Probably not. But I was hardly the only voice. While the display issues with certain apps does not seem to have been corrected, yesterday's Xbox Dashboard patch has seemingly redesigned a significant portion of the Game Marketplace. 
 

It's nice to see they're trying to make it work better, but it's still way too unorganised. Nothing makes sense - especially the god damn Youtube app.

I don't know how they screwed up something so mindnumbingly simple as a Youtube app, but boy did they succeed there. The search feature is abysmal (what was wrong with the normal on screen keyboard? Having everything in a line takes forever, and means my keypad doesn't work.) Secondly, it takes forever to load, as for some reason it has to load the thumbnail of every video you could possibly access from any of the buttons before those buttons show anything. And the videos behind the buttons behind those buttons. And so on. Thirdly, you can log in/sync your Youtube account. Sweet! So I can watch all the videos I subscribe to on my TV, right? Wrong. The subscriptions button isn't even on the front page of "My Youtube". What?!?! Even when you do get to your subs, they load in a random ass order, and I only want to even view like 5 of the 50+ I already have.

Lastly, to round the shit-show out, the videos don't even display correctly. The edges are cropped off the goddamn screen, which means whenever I watch Starcraft videos I can't see the supply, minerals or gas, or most of the minimap. GG NO RE Youtube app, thanks for nothing.

Fuck yeah! Still needs work but the thing that bugged me the most is over. Real life unrelated shit isn't a good way to point me in the right direction.

Thankfully arcade games are easier to get to now.

I like how it still takes nearly a minute (which may as well be a million years) to open my games library or look at the 'storage' option in the system settings.

Oh I had no idea that's what the update was for. I usually get used to dash updates even if I dislike them but this one has been really awful, and the inexplicable tucking-away of the Arcade section specifically irked me. I'll have to check this out.

Holy shit, nice job pointing that out. Now if only they'd make the rest better.

Interesting. Haven't seen the update myself yet, but I hope this does indeed make things a little bit better. I truly dislike the current dashboard. The old dashboard worked much more intuitively for me. I don't mind getting used to a new interface, but I still haven't been able to like most of the changes, even after a few weeks. I especially dislike the (absence of) current options to search for arcade games.

@BlazeHedgehog: I'll ruin your topic if I find out that it still sucks!

Nope, I still don't like it.

Fantastic

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Thankfully arcade games are easier to get to now.

This. Navigating to them before was a pain in the ass.

i was wondering what that update was for. glad to see they're getting on the right track, and i hope they keep it up.

Nice tweaks but I wish gold members had no ads or less ads.
I just hope someone improves the new netflix interface. It's terrible.

Thank goodness. Just last week it took me over 10 minutes to try and find where they hid games on demand so I could get Psychonauts. Then it took me another 10 minutes to realize Psychonauts was no longer available, what the heck.

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Thankfully arcade games are easier to get to now.

I haven't seen the new update yet: please tell me they're on the first or even second page now. The previous layout felt like MS was deliberately trying to hide the damn things.

That's a little better i guess. Now just tell me why the "games" tab is like five tabs over on my video game machine. Also, why doesn't netflix have a "restart episode" option anymore?

It's still got a long way to go, but that is such a huge improvement.

It's still garbage, the PS3's XMB is so much better than this. No ads, nice app for the store, and Netflix doesn't suck balls on that. (unrelated but somebody fucked up that 360 version)

Great to see Arcade getting a fast link. Never understood why I had to run around in circles to get to those games.

I like that Xbox Live is a paid subscription yet they waste space with advertisements.

I just wish Microsoft would stop changing the dashboard so much. The oldest/first one is still my favorite, and I miss it very much.

I don't like the marketplace mind games there doing, they mixed all of the games up. I liked when they had categories for the type of games they were, old Xbox, New Xbox, Arcade and Indie. The way they have it now makes me think they believe all the games will sell better if there just jumbled together.

Stupid because I finally got a bigger hard drive and wanted to see what old Xbox games I might have missed out on, but the way it is its just to much work to look for them.

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Thankfully arcade games are easier to get to now.

I haven't seen the new update yet: please tell me they're on the first or even second page now. The previous layout felt like MS was deliberately trying to hide the damn things.

Nice tweaks but I wish gold members had no ads or less ads. I just hope someone improves the new netflix interface. It's terrible.

I don't like the marketplace mind games there doing, they mixed all of the games up. I liked when they had categories for the type of games they were, old Xbox, New Xbox, Arcade and Indie. The way they have it now makes me think they believe all the games will sell better if there just jumbled together.

Stupid because I finally got a bigger hard drive and wanted to see what old Xbox games I might have missed out on, but the way it is its just to much work to look for them.

I still think the dashboard is an eyesore and really poorly done.

Its nice that they are listening to the users on this, the original design is pretty but less functional than the previous dashboard, a few more changes and it could be great again.

@BlazeHedgehog said:

@agentboolen said:

I don't like the marketplace mind games there doing, they mixed all of the games up. I liked when they had categories for the type of games they were, old Xbox, New Xbox, Arcade and Indie. The way they have it now makes me think they believe all the games will sell better if there just jumbled together.

Stupid because I finally got a bigger hard drive and wanted to see what old Xbox games I might have missed out on, but the way it is its just to much work to look for them.

But they're still categorized. Go to the Game Marketplace, and under the Games tab, select "Arcade". Boom. All XBLA games. Select "Indie", you get all Indie Games. And so on. What Microsoft REALLY REALLY REALLY needs to do is have some way to show me all the games I've purchased whether they are installed or not. There is no way to look at your entire game library, only what's currently on that system at that given time. I'd assume it has something to do with the fact that every time you boot up your console it verifies your installed games over Xbox Live (seriously, try unplugging the ethernet cable when you first turn the system on and watch how much faster "My Games" loads). If it had to verify one's entire library, regardless of install, it would just take that much longer. If that's the case, then Microsoft is a little too strict with security and it's bogging down the user experience.

Yea your right they do break it in categories, I actually found this out later on while playing around in the marketplace looking for some old games that I can't figure out where they have gone after upgrading to a bigger hard drive! I think the new interface was suppose to be simple but seems to be complicated in some areas with a lot of button presses being needed... Microsoft has never been a company that can simplify a interface IMO.

That leads me to your request of showing us grayed out games that aren't installed like steam, I second that one too! My Rootbeer tapper classic is very lost in the roots of Xbox Live at the moment because of Midway going out of business!!

@BlazeHedgehog: O.k. found my Rootbeer Tapper, had to go on the Xbox.com site, they have a section were you can see all the games you have bought and just match it up to what you have on your console, your able to put any of the games you bought in your download que. I'm still all for grayed out titles meaning you don't have those currently installed on your console, but this is a good fix for now.