On Wednesday 19th November, Microsoft finally released the New Xbox Experience Dashboard, aka, NXE, to the World. Several people had previously had it for a few days prior to this, others a couple of weeks but without any online connectivity, but the biggest, most anticipated console update ever arrived and surprisingly did so very well and without any drama or issues which have plagued prior updates to the old Blade Dashboard.

First impressions are that the new colour scheme is definitely more adult whilst still having the charm of an easy to use, inviting style. In comparison the Playstation 3′s Cross-Media Bar (XMB) is definitely more adult and ‘professional’, but definitely less inviting and presented, so the new NXE has definitely made its mark in that respect. NXE updates the old, drab, grey colour theme of the old blade interface with a much more appealling gun-metal grey/blue theme with lime green (much more appealling than it sounds) hover colour. Another important change is the much improved responsiveness of the dashboard as well as media button navigation menu rollouts, you seldom feel like you’re waiting constantly after a buttom press – certainly the case when you’re in-game and press the media button.

Gone are the old style ‘Blades’ when you boot your Xbox360, replaced my a mix of Windows Media Center and Apple navigation (similar to the flipping album art on the latest breed of iPods or iTunes). This gives a more natural style to the navigation through settings with much more in common ironically to the original Dashboard from 2005 before Microsoft really cocked up trying to make navigation more intuitive and in doing so making it much more awkward (anyone thinking back will immediately think of the whole “Games Blade > My Games > Waiting for the system to post games on HDD > Scrolling to Demo’s > Select Demo” system from the last update, which was much more complex than the “Games > Demos > Select Demo” system from 2005… but anyway, Microsoft have rectified that now in a massive update.

As part of this new update is a major change in the ‘My Games’ section whereby you can choose a game, Gears of War 2 for example, and it will give a rollout of 5 or so sections for this title, the first will be a ‘Play Gears of War 2′ screen, the second will be a list of your achievements for that game, third is the available downloads for that game on the Marketplace, fourth would be screenshots, 5 would be box-art and game features and the last would be what the game is about and some of the story meaning all your information for that game is in one place – definitely an advantage as it saves looking in one place for your achievements, a completely different place to see if there are any new downloads another different place for screenshots etc… And to top it off, you often get a theme change whilst you’re on that game, two I have seen this for are Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, and I’m hoping this becomes the norm. It feels very complete and very classy.

The overhaul also includes the much criticized Avatar system in which you, unsurprisingly, create an avatar, or for those not in the know, a visual identity to represent either yourself or your imagination, similar to what Nintendo did with the Wii system, and whilst there are definitely similarities, those featured in the NXE update are far more complex and have more about them that those who openly criticize them can only be unaware of (unsurprising as those who always cast doubt on stuff are often the most uninformed about that system), such as the ability to buy (ugh) or unlock (yay) clothing for your avatars through completion of games which is perhaps finally a reason to 1000/1000 games – I’d love an Alex Ferguson styled red-nose or some Arsene Wenger ‘I didn’t see it’ glasses for 1k’ing a Football Manager game. I’m hoping this gets pushed on developers in the same way MS have pushed so many other things which have improved this generation of games.

Your friends also create Avatars which now represent your friends list so rather than browsing a vertical list of players names when in the dashboard you see a visual representation created by them in front of a random background (many people will have the dashboard defaults, but along with the update came a few others and there is a Gears of War 2 one available that was free at the games launch which gives all the characters a Gears of War styled background – a nice touch and a massive improvement from the rather appalling themes from the first one that was possibly the weakest of all features from the original dashboard, especially as 90%+ of Themes weren’t free – now I might buy some more, or we could dream that Microsoft give many away for free a la Sony. When your friends are online they appear first in the lineup and will give you an acknowledging gesture such as a wave, wink or salute and will be standing next to the gamebox of whatever game they are playing. Definitely a nice improvement and adds a bit of character to the whole thing.

Another anticipated addition is game installation. Not particularly my bag, but it’s optional at least. The main advantage of this is that, unlike on PS3 for example, it installs the whole game and runs it off the HDD allowing for almost total silence, though you still need the disc in the drive as a check to stop piracy and rentals of games, installing and keeping. It’s also a useful way for Microsoft to sell 120gb HDD’s, no doubt about that. However, with all the complaints of Xbox360′s being loud I’m sure this is a welcome addition to many people. Games take around 10 minutes to install and range between 5gb and 8gb in size, meaning those of us with regular 20gb HDD’s can only really install 1 game, but Premium consoles now come with 60gb HDD’s, so those buying new have nothing to worry about.

There are many little changes too such as having the ability to delete those 0gp games from your previous games list, very handy for those who downloaded demo’s of Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games in the past. A change I wanted, the ability to have group chats as a 2 person private chat was silly, I wanted 4 friends, Microsoft have offered 8 friends. Bonus. Another is allowing the user to insert a disc into the console without it automatically booting, something I always have set on my Playstation 3. There’s nothing worse than browsing the Marketplace only for the game to boot. On the topic of Marketplace, you can now queue downloads from the Xbox.com website, handy for those who are at work who want to see what’s available.

Without a doubt the most important and arguably biggest change however is the interaction with NXE whilst in-game, pressing the media button now brings up all the options available in the dashboard for you to change meaning it’s now much more than a messaging and friend checking rollout, it’s now the central hub of your whole gaming experience giving you much more power to do things whilst in-game and all in a very clear, well laid out and responsive interface. Well done.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Microsoft still haven’t added a web browser, ridiculous considering they own the rights to Internet Explorer already and despite most users already having a PC you’d be surprised at how often you would us it, I often use the browser on PS3. Hell, if the Wii can do it then the Xbox360 definitely should. Another issue is a real irk of mine, I want a change to notifications. I want to receive friend messages, achievement notifications and game invites but I really don’t want to see ‘x signed on’ all the time, this is the reason I continually trim my frieds list down – it can ruin my enjoyment of a game seeing a pop up telling me a friend just turned their 360 on.. I really don’t care (and yes, I do turn this off on MSN too). Other than that however I would really be looking for something to blame.

Overall I’m bowled over by the update, it’s a major shock to the system after 3 years that everything is so different and it’s undoubtedly a bold move on Microsofts part but it’s something that needed to be done after they over-complecated it and flooded it when adding the movie download service. It’s rare that a largely anticipated update gets so much praise, but it did and for that Microsoft should be congratulated. Huzzah.

The official NXE homepage: Click Here

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