A few weeks ago I posted a Developer Diary about the new Premium Themes coming to Xbox LIVE with the New Xbox Experience. Well, now that NXE is here, I wanted to share some of the Premium Themes available for download. There are a ton of great ones up, from the Fable II Albion Theme to Castle Crashers and more. Check out the list below for many of the Premium Themes that you can download today, and go browse Xbox LIVE Marketplace to see all of the great content we are offering and quickly add them to your download queue.
Gears of War 2 - Bare Your Teeth (went live 11/7)Gears of War 2 - Hope Runs Deep (went live 11/7)Gears of War 2 - Last Day (went live 11/7)Halo 3Halo WarsFable II AlbionCastle CrashersThe Last RemnantViva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise Forza 2Call of Duty: World at WarSonic UnleashedGuitar Hero World TourRock Band 2Tomb Raider: Underworld
Also, NXE Ships with a couple of new (free) themes. You can get details from the Top 10 list I posted earlier this week. Don't forget, all of the Themes you've already downloaded will work in the New Xbox Experience, so you don't need to worry that your Kameo Themes from 2005 disappearing.
"Don't forget, all of the Themes you've already downloaded will work in the New Xbox Experience, so you don't need to worry that your Kameo Themes from 2005 disappearing."
Major, your definition of 'work' is very different than the vast majority of the Xbox Community. No offence but they look bloody awful. Half obscured and they no longer change by flicking sideways. We'd like refunds please.
Oh, and 250 points for a Premium theme? Are you friggin' kidding us?
It would be nice if we could preview the themes first
Need a way to preview them.
Where is photo party at after I have downloaded it? LOL I can never find it, I have to go to my downloads and play it from there. I've looked everywhere. I see it in spotlight as well to go to the download page to play it. Is it under games? or what?
Is there anyway to preview the new premium themes, specifically the Rock Band 2 theme?
@Canary Wundaboy
I agree!
Its a shame that MS wants 250 Points each Theme ant cant make a preview for it!
Why shout I buy something I cant see before?
Here's a bit of a preview for you lads.
www.neogaf.com/.../showthread.php
I agree on the ability to preview. I have told the team we should do this.
I wish the older themes look better with the new update but they don't. Previews are nice to have when shelling out cash/MP.
Well, tell the team to add an option to do alpha transparency on the sphere so we can see through it to our old themes. If you can do color changes like some themes do, you should be able to give us a sphere that looks like it's made of glass so 60% of our themes aren't obscured.
good luck getting a refund, major always puts "refunds are not availible" under each theme
Cant we just get rid of that grey bar at the bottom that takes up around 60% of our themes?
Thats my only concern! it annoys me when I can only see half of my cod4 theme!
and yeah the prices are a way too much imo
Previews would be nice. And not all the old themes look bad but i guess you really can't compare them with the new ones...
@ Funny
I wouldnt be angry about it if they were at least usable, but they just arent. 2/3 of them are covered by the sphere and the pics dont change at all unless you select the actual square, the the entire time then they are obscured by the entire menu. It simply isnt fair.
the price is too high for the premium themes and the ability to preview needs to be added also on the old dashboard you could set a photo from a pc or mass storage device as background now if you that 60% of it is behind the ugly grey bar
Hey Major,
How about getting someone from the former Backwards Compatibility team on your show, to "officially" pronounce the project dead so that those of us still hoping for one more update can finally have closure and move on with our lives.
@ExtremeGamer: it's not in games library, the only way my friends and I have been able to launch it is from the party's quick launch option or the spotlight
Agree with the preview thing. 250 gamerpoints isn't too bad, but there's no way I would pay for themes not knowing exactly how they'll look on my dash
Btw, I grabbed the 3 GoW2 themes when they were still free and redownloaded them when NXE was released since I noticed they were all premium themes now. The downloads updated each theme to the premium versions so that was great - if anyone else has those (or some of the ones listed in the news post) they should try to do the same
Thanks, Major! I'll be buying the GH:WT theme for sure.
Quick question: is there any way you can set up your blog so that marketplace content links point to the correct region, or perhaps even leave out the region (eg: /en-US/) so our live account can work it out?
Otherwise people will be getting "Error: This offer is not valid in your region." messages when they click on content links that aren't available in their region.
I've experienced similar problems before, and resolving this issue would assist greatly in improving Xbox's international relations!
whats the dael with photo party?
I went to delete it like Major said and its not there?
I appreciate that the whole theme system has been overhauled to allow for content that plugs into the features of NXE - but there is no way that a static picture should be rendered behind a horrible grey amorphous blob. Also the ability to flick through the pictures would be welcome.
I would also like a screen-saver mode where after a couple of minutes of inactivity, the theme pictures rotate one by one, with nothing else on the screen except perhaps your XBL status and who is signed in.
If this isn't patch really really quickly to fix that horrible grey blob problem then you should stop selling old themes which are clearly redundant and broken under NXE.
On the whole though a big thumbs up to NXE, a couple of big improvements like and numerous small twiddles - but how on earth did breaking the themes sneak out into production eh?
I have some older themes on my xbox that work under my gamertag when i sign in, but when my younger bro signs in to his he is not able to use all the previous themes even though I am able to. I don't know why this is happening when he was able to use it before. One thing for sure i never understood is that you want us to pay for themes and gamerpic and all kinds of stuff with no preview of what we are getting. Then put "not refundable" at the bottom? Sorry won't buy something I can't see.
A few points.
1. Old themes need to be fixed, and a "cycle" option would be great.
2. These "premium" themes are a joke at 250 points. Also, those with four pictures need the cycle option.
3. You remember how we used to be able to change our guide background?
- 3a. Let us change the colour of the new Guide.
- 3b. Let us change the environment of the Friends channel.
4. A transparency filter on the "floor", squares and menu panels would be great, so we can actually SEE the pictures.
Also, nice to see that there's a Premium Theme out for Castle Crashers yet there's still no patch. "Online Multiplayer 2-4"? I don't think so.
As an aside, the old Hexic HD theme looks good with NXE, all my other old themes are USELESS.
Preview feature, and semi-transparent windowing so we can see the top and bottom of our old themes.
Hypothetically Major, if you were to post more screenshots of premium themes, i vote you start with the RB2 theme ;)
it's a seriously boneheaded decision to think people are going to drop $3 on these sight unseen.