New Xbox Experience finally launches – What you need to know
The long-awaited New Xbox Experience finally launched today with the 20 million Xbox 360 owners around the world having the new, improved service automatically downloaded for their pleasure. But now that it’s here, what do you need to know, and what should you be doing with it?
It’s been well known for months now that Xbox Live was going to be seeing a major upgrade shortly. But it wasn’t until the Tokyo Game Show in October that Microsoft announced the full details of the New Xbox Experience. The new overhaul is basically an effort to steal the thunder of Playstation Home, the even longer-awaited new service coming to the PS3 sometime this century.
What You Need To Know
The New Xbox Experience is available via a quick and painless download. Anyone with a hard drive will find the installation no problem, unless of course it is 100 percent full, in which case something will have to be deleted. Xbox 360 Arcade owners will have to hope their memory card is big enough to cope with the download.
Creating a new avatar isn’t compulsory as your existing gamer pic can still be used. But it is fun spending five minutes trying to concoct a virtual version of you. He or she probably won’t bear much relation to you by the end but it’ll certainly be better looking that the bubble headed Miis on the Nintendo Wii.
The New Xbox Experience sees the dashboard better organized, more fluid, and faster to boot. Browsing is now a pleasure rather than a chore thanks to the system using more resources at any one time.
Those of you in the U.S. will now have access to streaming Netflix movies and TV episodes. Existing Netflix subscribers or Xbox Live Gold members get the service for free, while everyone else can sign up for a free trial to see what all the fuss is about. A fast connection makes the service a joy and also adds the opportunity to stream HD content (putting the Xbox 360 almost on a par with the Blu-ray enabled PS3).
Beware the adverts. Promotional content is now mixed throughout the menu system and can sometimes be hard to differentiate from your own content. So instead of starting a game of Gears Of War 2, you’ll end up downloading a GoW theme for your Xbox.
You can now party with up to seven friends via the Xbox Live Parties option. Any of your friends who are currently online can be added to the party, and you can then all chat together, play games as usual, or share photos. OK, so it doesn’t compare to a real-life party but it’s cool nonetheless.
You can install a game to your hard drive and then play it whenever the mood takes you. The disc does have to be in the Xbox 360 at the time you play it (otherwise rentals would suddenly become very popular), but the benefits include faster loading times, less wear and tear on your DVD drive and no annoying DVD noise.
Conclusions
There’s more to explore than I’ve highlighted above but they are the main things you’ll need to know to get started with the New Xbox Experience. I was quite unimpressed when the NXE was first announced, especially when comparing it to the revolutionary Home, but it’s actually much better than I thought.
[Thanks to Major Nelson and Gizmodo]
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18 Responses to “New Xbox Experience finally launches – What you need to know”
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November 19th, 2008
Wow I was wondering if you guys would even write about this. I’m glad to see you did. I’m heading home to try it as I only downloaded it this morning before going to work and all I did was install Gears of War 2 on the HD. It sounds great. I was wondering though, wasn’t PS3 Home suppose to launch today? Maybe sometime in this century like you said. Also they said watching movie as a party will happen in a future update I can’t wait for that. I also wanted to mention for those Arcade owners, Microsoft is giving you a FREE 512mb card but you have to sign up for it. Have fun everyone.
November 19th, 2008
I downloaded it today, it’s very nice! Looking forward to having a play with it later today.
An added benefit of it was that it didn’t crash my Xbox *cough* firmware 2.40 *cough*
November 19th, 2008
Well if it hasn’t rrod’d yet you could probably nuke it and it would be ok
*jab* muahahah
I prefered the blades, but you gotta move with the times
November 19th, 2008
wow… nice lil jab there harry… I thought you would be so happy that you wouldnt be such an ass like Ivan or the other assholes…
Well… if you havent Red Ringed… DONT INSTALL HALO 3 ON YOUR HDD!!! It seriously screws it up…
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/19/bungie-just-say-no-to-nxe-install-of-halo-3/
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
See what you made me do now?? Youve brought me to Ivan’s level… I hope youre happy… atleast now the 360 wont sound like a lawnmower when you play your games…
HAHAHAHAH!!! oh I’ve sunk so low
November 19th, 2008
hahaha @ DWH. Calm down sweetheart, it was a light hearted jab.
November 20th, 2008
I hate it is pathetic lucky i have 2 Xbox 360 one hacked. I can go online with previous Dashboard this looks too kiddy and gay.
November 20th, 2008
“I hate it is pathetic lucky i have 2 Xbox 360 one hacked. I can go online with previous Dashboard this looks too kiddy and gay.”
But I bet you you’ll spend hours renovating your virtual house in HOME. Nothing more gay than that Ivan.
November 20th, 2008
me too is right Ivan. The Home sounds alot like the sims game. which is gay.
November 20th, 2008
Now that was a great JAB at Ivan. HA HA!!!
November 20th, 2008
Well PlayStation®Home is optional not mandatory gayness LoL like the new Xbox 360 Experience. Weird name i know. Sony has block Neflix from streaming movies to Xbox 360 gotta love business. And Home is cool because you can actually interact with other players they actually walk dance just like the Sims from EA aka Crapy Game Developer.
PLAYSTATION 3 is for fanatic gamers, must have exclusive freaks, movie lovers, Linux fans, futuristic advanced technology enthusiastic, and high quality users.
Xbox 360 is for people that enjoy paying for mediocre quality, no exclusives, for movie haters, no support, small high price peripherals, and for gay awful Xbox Live service.
Wii is for IDIOTS who enjoy dated graphics awful control scheme no movie support no hard drive mini crappy games no big exclusives cheap gamers. And again for IDIOTS.
November 20th, 2008
Oh Ivan it a good thing that everyone knows that you spew the most crap out of your mouth. I’ve seen the consensus time and time again.
November 20th, 2008
Hey Blorge,
Do me a favour and remove my vote from Gears of War to Gears of War 2. Infact I think you should just combine the whole thing because Gears of War 2 is now the most play game on 360.
November 20th, 2008
I do have to say that I am a little jealous of the downloading of the game to the hard drive. It would be nice if Sony implemented this to save on my disc drive. My disc drive gets a lot of use between the games and the blu rays.
November 20th, 2008
CAD:
I don’t care what idiotic fanboy losers like yourself have to say so go back to dick riding Microsoft i don’t give a shit. Everyone knows Gears of War 2 was just over hype and the only exclusive Xbox 360 had to sell FABLE II flop is garbage.
Wylie:
LMFAO yeah right…
November 20th, 2008
Ivan, if we go back to dick riding Microsoft, do you promise to go back to dick riding Sony and not bother anyone anymore?
November 21st, 2008
Playstation Home is an entirely different animal than the Xbot Experience. The Xbot thing is mainly an esthetic change to the OS. It also has Miis (like the Wii) and enables game installs (like the PS3). The old blade system looked nice, but it was an unorganized mess to navigate through. As far as I’m concerned they are catching up to the other console with this launch.
Home on the other hand is a massively ambitious idea. It will offer a whole new dimension to social gamming. Instead of looking at text names in a games lobby – you can actually meet up with people and have a graphical representation of them. Since the two projects are so drastically different, naturally the xbot thing did not take as long to create. Home will be here soon and it will be well worth the wait.
November 21st, 2008
I preferred the blades barnabe. Hate the new system, hate navigating it it. Bleh.
As for home, we’ll see
November 21st, 2008
SW: I haven’t tried it yet… I’ll probably get a chance to this weekend. It looks to me like the same concept as the blades – but the layout is different. It looks like it might make things easier to find… but I guess I’ll know for sure soon.
I’m not in the beta for Home, so I really have no idea yet. I think it has potential though.