from the moment it was first shown i hated it, i've just installed it on my xbox, sadly i had no choice. so initial thoughts. i still hate it, it may (i stress may) grow on me. but forcing you to have an avatar, when i chose xbox becasue it wasn't the wii is in my opinion a bad move. they look terrible, you can't get them to look like you at all. they stand around on screen been stupid, your friends list looks daft....i 100% hate these things...and hope, really hope microsoft update SOON with a hide option...as they should have included to begin with. overall the presentation kinda works, but if they'd just made loading quicker on the old blades, it would have been fine. theme's, these look rubish now, partly due to the giant pointless semi circle that covers the lower half of the screen at all times. thie is annoying as i like having a theme cover the screen so it could be seen. sound effects. again it's gone all wii, it really really anoyed me while making my avatar, but afterwards i thought it can't be that bad, but when going through the system and rearranging some settings deleting this and that it kept annoying me a lot. why they chose to gimmick up the sound effects is beyond me...again i really hate this. the ps3 now has the best interface in my opinion, it's mature, sensible, functional and does not make me angry that my great machine has become a wii. you can argue that if you just want to play games it doesn't matter much, but for the whole entertainment package i know a lot of people like the xbox for...i find it sad and annoying.

thankyou microsoft..........seriosuly, burping avatars????