I'm another that notices the drive as really loud, mainly when playing Rock Band or Rock Band 2. Kind of strikes me as odd as I usually have the sound system up pretty loud while playing and not all games seem that loud.

It's less about the noise and more about increasing the life of the console. The fan blowing all the time, and the disc spinning like that can't be good.

Yeah less wear and tear on parts can't be bad.

That said, I'm also one who plays with either the surrounds up(relative to apartment living ) or with gaming headphones so the actual noise of the 360 isn't and issue for me.

I just moved my 360 to my bedroom and the fan noise is absolutely brutal. It sounds like an industrial fan.

The only other console which was louder was the Dreamcast, which tended to sound like a mix between a combine and an old dot-matrix printer.

Yes, nothing will ever be louder than the Dreamcast. I always felt like it was sending out telegraphs while I was playing.

I want the NXE. I will use many of the new features.

The best part you can now delete games with zero gamer score!

Speaking of personalization... did they finally give up on the faceplate concept? I occasionally see it as part of a preorder promo (I think Gamecrazy had a Soul Calibur one), but I haven't really noticed them in stores. Maybe I'm just blocking them out. Seemed really dumb (unless only the front part of your console is visible), though I will admit to having the Halo one that came with a theme. Geez, I actually spent money on not only a faceplate, but a theme.

I think when your console had the red rings you could send it in without the face plate correct? I would think that a lot of 360 case mods have slowed down as well considering the hardware problems. I had a vinyl skin on my first 360. I didn't take it off when I had my first RRoD and sent it in assuming I would get the same unit back. It didn't. Since then I haven't done any mods including faceplates.

My first PS2 was the console that tought me fucking with the case was a bad idea. When my laser took a dump and they agreed to fix them all they rejected mine because I had opened it up. I threw a fit and told them that I opened it to try to fix the laser, but they weren't having any of my lies.

so if i dont like the look of nxe is it possible to switch back to the old dashboard? They should give you the option instead of making you stick with the new one.

Nope. NXE is the only way to go. Of course if you never connect to the internet the old dash is yours for the keeping.

No. I don't care about any of it, apart from my aforementioned liking of the install to the hard drive. I do not have a gold membership. I do not because I dislike playing games online. I just do not enjoy it. So the group parties with chat is out. As it Netflix, because of the lack of gold status. The ads do not bother me, as I rarely even enter into the dashboard, beyond downloading the occasional Live game or DLC.

This update will do little for me. But for those who will get great benefit from it, I can agree that this would be something to look forward to.

So, to carry over my question from the last thread: Anyone else notice a sudden change in rapid loading of your XBLA games? My list used to take forever to show all the games, now it counts up to 80 in well under 10 seconds. I did recently upgrade to the 120 HDD, but I'm pretty sure that this only started more recently than that.

Major is doing another wave of previews for the NXE. 10,000 invites are being sent out. So if you signed up be sure to check your e-mail & spam folders you may get lucky.

http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/...inal-wave.aspx

i just reactiveated my Netflix account ($9 per month 1 disc/unlimited streaming) due to the convenience of this plus the release (finally) of Mac support. Seems like a pretty good deal, especially if they are adding HD. Being able to watch via the Xbox makes me a lot more likely to use it than if i had to fire up a computer. oh and they still have HD-DVDs, cool.

I just got an email from them today saying that they will be getting rid of HD-DVDs for good on December 15th.

Oh and yay for new 1/2 off XBLA games. Picked up Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for 400 points.

I just got an email saying I was selected for the NXE update for tomorrow. I know it comes out next week anyway, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Woohoo! So did I!

Me too!

I'm pretty sure that their goal now is to just try to reduce server load on the official release date.

Meanwhile, I will be doing my part to reduce load by shipping my box to MS. I guess that the three minutes of Geometry Wars that I got to play yesterday was just too much for it to handle.

Yeah, I bet everyone that signed up got in at this point.

Nope, not everybody. I signed up but no email tonight, which is a good thing anyway since the console ID used to sign up with is on its way to visit Texas.

You're right. According to MajorNelson it is 10,000 more people this weekend. With 14 million Live members I don't think this will affect server load at all.

Well, a lot of consoles aren't hooked up to the internet and won't get the update at all, and another large percentage won't turn on the 360 on that particular day, so the ratio isn't quite that big.

You figure that the people who signed up for this are probably those that play their 360 almost every day, and are most likely to get the update on the first day. If they did 10k today, maybe 10k each of the first two days, and maybe more the next few days, it will make a dent. Even if the drop in server load is only a couple percent, it is worth it to them. There isn't really any down side.