New Xbox Experience
Consoles are no longer simply machines on which we play games. In recent years those beloved boxes that sit blinking under our televisions have grown new features, acting as hubs for viewing movies and photographs, as internet-phones and as score charts tracking our in-game achievements. So the news that the Xbox 360 is to receive a new dashboard to coincide with its third birthday is big indeed. An overhaul of the console’s firmware is akin to a home computer getting a new operating system and with a whole new graphical look, new avatars, features and software possibilities the New Xbox Experience (or NXE) is a whole new OS for Xbox 360.
Released next Wednesday on November 19th, the NXE is slick, stylish, unexpectedly fast and, of course, free. Gone is the slowdown that so often interrupts the smooth browsing of blades in the current Xbox 360 interface. Now, in the top left of the screen is a list of menu options that act as the gateway to your NXE experience. The first option, 'My Xbox', is your home base and leads to your games, profiles, media libraries and settings. Underneath this is the ‘Friends’ option, which allows you to view your friends, their avatars (more on that later), their Achievements and games.
Beyond that there’s ‘Inside Xbox’, which links to Microsoft-sponsored videos, games and previews, ‘Events’, which lists all of the scheduled 360 online events, ‘Welcome’ which gives you a tour of NXE (and can be removed once you’re familiar with everything) as well as a marketplace for both games and videos. Helpfully, when looking to purchase an XBLA game or browsing for a movie to watch, the interface now shows a three-sheet page layout, allowing you to access and move between the large amount of information and options easily.
The most obvious addition to the new dashboard is that of the avatars. Like Nintendo’s Miis this system allows you to create a cute character to represent yourself, someone who is visible to all of your friends. Speaking of friends, there’s now the option to create Multiplayer Parties allowing you and your friends to move from game to game together as a group conveniently. Speaking of convenience there’s also the option to install your full games on to the hard drive, allowing for faster load times and instant access to your games library (providing you have a large enough hard drive, that is).
There’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter what you think of the NXE, as, for any Xbox 360 owner connected to the Internet, it’s a mandatory download. However, there’s no denying that the new firmware, from the smart visuals through to the exciting new functionality is a marked improvement over what we currently have, a birthday present that extends both the appeal and power of Microsoft’s three-year-old console.
