The recent Dashboard update that Microsoft pushed out seems to be drawing many negative comments. The comments seem to boil down to the fact that many feel that the look and feel is just too plain Jane, and the coloring uses too much white as a background color. It appears that the fonts for the text seem to appear “softer,” which can make it difficult to read.

This isn’t the only complaints that we have heard. A number of users have reported to us that they have had problems with updating avatars and games that freeze after the update is applied. While no roll out ever goes as smoothly as planned, Microsoft seems to have corrected the reported issues and these types of reported problems have been solved.

Independent Developers have been very vocal over the update, as they believe the update makes it more difficult to find independently developed titles. Microsoft has responded by saying that they are not at all trying to marginalize indie title development on the platform. As one indie developer told us, “The competition is already pretty tight with the number of indie titles that are being put out, and now it seems like we are buried away and it is going to be all the harder for people to find the indie titles at all.”

We have to echo the frustration that some are feeling with the new dashboard. If we were to describe the look and feel of the new dashboard, with one word it would be “flat.” The look of the dashboard has too much white in it and feels like a cross between something you would see on the Zune with a splash of perhaps the XMB interface on the Sony PlayStation 3, all with a color scheme that is hard on the eyes.

It is likely that owners are going to have to live with it for a long time, as we don’t suspect that Microsoft will be overhauling the look and feel of the dashboard anytime soon.