We have an update to the Dashboard upon us, and it adds several new features. This is not going to be just the usual song and dance of repeating the feature list Microsoft has already put out, since there are a few things that aren’t immediately obvious about some of the new options. Let’s take a look at what they’ve given us...

Marketplace: Works much, much faster now. Product pages, options to purchase, and so on now come up within just a few seconds, and sometimes instantly. This makes buying stuff a lot more convenient.

Games on Demand: Is a sterling example of just how out of touch Microsoft is with reality. This addition to the Marketplace sounds awesome in theory, letting you purchase retail games and download them right to your system. In reality, the prices tend to cost more than a retail box copy in new condition goes for. Shop around on Amazon for any of the games in the Games on Demand catalog so far and you’ll see. Sometimes even Newegg has better deals. That said, perhaps someone out there can make use of it, which leads to my next point.

Buying Games on Demand titles with Microsoft Points: It may look like you have to use a credit card for Games on Demand, but that’s not true. Go to the game’s product page, click Buy, and when it prompts you to ’add a payment method’, press Y. The price will be converted to Microsoft Spacebucks and you can buy it with those. Ta-da!

Avatar Marketplace: Accessible through a few different ways, though I tend to go through My Xbox, scroll one panel right, select that, and pick Manage Avatar. You can then pick the Marketplace option from the avatar editor, and buy ’premium items’ for your Mii Too. And if you do, you clearly have too much money on your hands. Things like 400 Microsoft Points ($5 US) for a lightsaber prop, 240 for part of a character’s outfit from Monkey Island (not even the whole thing, just one part of it), etc... it’s ridiculous. The basic Avatar features aren’t even as sophisticated as Nintendo’s Miis, and they want to charge premium fees for silly little toys like this? I’ll pass, thank you.

Avatar items per account, not console?: While I have not personally tried it (I’ll be darned if I throw out money for Mii Too items costing as much as actual games on the system), some user reports suggest that Avatar items purchased are per account, not per console. That is, if your main account buys an item, your other accounts cannot access that item, and vice versa. If true, this needs to be addressed immediately. Buyer Beware in the meantime.

Party Improvements: These now auto-reconnect if when someone gets dropped, which should be helpful.

There are several other improvements and changes, but you may as well just read Microsoft’s own release notes on this.

As for me, I’m both pleased and annoyed. The performance improvements are very welcome, but a lot of other changes just make me envision Microsoft executives in a meeting room, all rubbing their hands together fiendishly as dollar signs replace their eyeballs.