If you have been living under a rock for the last few months then you may not be aware that as of today your Xbox 360 dashboard will look completely different when you next fire it up.  Gone are the blades with their ‘swooshy’ noises, and in their place a very vista like series of preview windows for just about every option you can think of.

Having had the joy of using the NXE for the last 3 weeks I can honestly say that it is an improvement over the old dashboard, with a few minor niggles.  Firstly, one of the main reasons for this update was to aid in navigating the overcrowded XBox Live Marketplace, but sadly (in my experience) at times it actually seems harder to find what you are looking for with the NXE than the old dashboard as some things just do not appear where you expect them, example: Vigilante 8: Arcade was never listed in the ‘new releases’ section and involved a long winded trawl through the ‘All Arcade Games’ section of the marketplace.  Secondly, I really take offense to the massively increased volume of adverts that have now appeared on my dashboard for such things as Subway and Dr. Pepper, as at least the adverts for games are relevant to the console.

The other gripe I have with the NXE is MS once again treating the USA as no. 1,  with the free Netflix account for all XBL Gold subscribers and a free trial for all the silver users (once valid credit card data is entered), and the rest of the world just being asked to pay for the upkeep of features we don’t get, until MS finally announce the structure for IPTV deal with BT to bring BT Vision to the 360.

Of course it’s not all negative as there are plenty of excellent new features available with the NXE, and the most important (for me at least) being the ability to install and play full games to your hard drive which finally puts an end to the ‘jet plane taking off’ noise that some older boxes can kick out while the disc drive is spinning.  Of course at about 5gb per game it will pretty quickly consume all of the space on the standard 20gb hard disk, so unless you upgrade to the 60 or 120gb models then you’ll only ever get 1-2 games on your drive at any time.  The NXE also sees the release of the long awaited ‘Community Games’ feature which was trialed earlier this year.  Right now there are about 30 community games on the marketplace with prices ranging from 50 to 800 and just like any other XBLA game you can also download a free trial to try before you buy.

The new premium themes are a nice touch too, as unlike your old themes, they are designed to fit in the new style dashboard layout and not cut the pictures in half.  In addition to that the ‘premium’ themes also change the background behind your friends avatars on your new look friends list, for example the GoW2 themes change the backdrops to destroyed vehicles, bits of destroyed scenery, etc and just look a bit nicer than the standard backdrops you get if you use a theme from the old style dashboard.

Of course what article on the NXE would be complete without discussing Mii’s, I mean Avatars…  I’ll be the first to admit I was sceptical about the whole idea when it was first announced at Microsoft’s action packed E3 presentation, seeing it a just a cheap rip-off of the Nintendo Wii’s Mii’s, but Rare really have done a good job in separating them from the Mii’s with the level of customisation and animation available.  Of course your Avatar will now be able to be used in a plethora of upcoming games both retail and XBLA titles, and a few that are already available like Uno, the Hardwood games, Small Arms and this weeks XBLA release, A Kingdom for Keiflings.

All in all, the NXE has exceeded my expectations dispite not yet having had the opportunity to try out features like the party chat, XBox Primetime and the photo sharing app (those last 2 features will be added in a future update), and it’s certainly more than just a sexy face lift.  Will Microsoft’s attempt at grabbing a share of the casual market with this new interface work?  Probably not, but it has breathed a fresh lease of life into what was beginning to look like a dated system.

Other TTB Posts Like This One

• New Xbox Experience Release Date Revealed: Arriving Nov 19th
• MS Reveals New Xbox Experience Screenshots
• How Your Old Themes Will Work With the New Dashboard