For those who don’t know, the “Xbox 360” is a computer games console designed and manufactured by Microsoft. It has many features, including the ability to play computer games in high definition (1080p, which equals a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels with progressive scan) with full 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. I, fortunately, have all of the hardware required for the “ultimate” visual and aural experience, so this games console has become something of an addiction. I even have the official wireless racing wheel with force feedback and foot pedals. This console, in fact, occupies around 10 hours of my life per week!
While I’m on the topic of Xbox 360 addiction, I’d like to mention another blog – The O/C Gamer. This is the blog of a fellow Xbox 360 gamer, who is even more addicted than I am. It makes for great reading, anyway, so I feel as though I should post a link. 
The other major feature of the Xbox 360 is “Xbox Live“. This allows you to play games over the Internet with friends and to also talk via text, or speech (if you have a headset). It also allows you to download game demos, add-ons videos, films and trailers and is also a way to compare achievements and the ever-addictive “gamerscore” with your friends. Below, for example, is a representation of my “gamercard” as of Friday 21 November 2008:
NOTE: My current gamercard can be found here.
This particular gamercard representation shows the last 5 games I’ve played, with the most recent at the front, my “gamertag” at the bottom left, my current “gamerscore” at the bottom-right, and my avatar on the far right (which I’ll come to in a sec).
So anyway, onto the main reason for this post… the New Xbox Experience (NXE) is here, and I kinda like it!
For the entire life of the Xbox 360, it has had the same operating system (or “OS”). This may not seem like a big deal considering you don’t have any observable interaction with the operating system for the entire time you are playing games, but there are two reasons why the OS is important in my opinion.
- When you are using the non-gameplay features of the console (such as audio or video playing, photo viewing, reading the latest Xbox news etc…) it is important to have an interface that makes you want to turn on the console to start using it.
- When you are on Xbox Live playing games with friends, it must be easy to find them and to interact with them.
The original Xbox 360 OS did this job fine to be honest, but for several months now we have been given more and more information on the “New Xbox Experience” (or “NXE”) and us gamers have been getting rather excited about the new OS update!
The reason for this excitement? New features! We didn’t know we needed these features initially, but when we saw them, we couldn’t wait! Below, for example, is the dashboard we have been “coping” with for a year or two now:
Xbox 360 Classic Dashboard Screenshot
And here is the dashboard we have now:
Xbox 360 NXE Dashboard Screenshot
The first thing to notice is how different they look… you now scroll up and down instead of left to right to get to each section, and you now go right-to-left to browse the content within a section, whereas before it was just all over the screen.
The major changes though, are these:
- Avatars
- Install to HDD
- Xbox Live Party
- Netflix movie streaming (for US customers only)
Avatars
Let’s begin with avatars. As you can see, my avatar as of Friday 21 November 2008 is on the right. On the old system, we didn’t have avatars, we had “gamerpics” which were small square “logos”. These could theoretically be anything you like, but as far as I know, you could only choose from either a default selection on the Xbox 360 already, or by downloading extra gamerpics, some for free and others not. These were static pictures which didn’t really serve a purpose at all.
The new avatars, however, are highly customizable (some people make them look like themselves as accurately as possible, while others seem to fulfil their wildest fantasies and make their avatars look very unique indeed), they’re animated, and they can even take part in some games!
My avatar, as you can see, looks as much like me as possible… although highly customizable, there are limitations… there are perhaps 20-30 haircut styles to choose from, and maybe 15 t-shirts, for example. I hope this expands in the future anyway, otherwise my avatar is going to look like this forever! There are a couple of things that aren’t right at the moment (none of them important though) – the hair is too long and jeans are the wrong color (I don’t own any blue jeans) and the trousers of the right color are too tight! As I said though, these things don’t really matter in life, so they may or may not be changed as time goes on!
The O/C Gamer’s avatar (as mentioned above), to show another example, can be found here.
Install to HDD
With NXE, you now have the option to install your games to the hard disk. You still need the disc in the drive to play the game, but it has the advantage of loading faster and not spinning the disc continually throughout gameplay. The disc spinning contributes roughly two thirds of the noise from the Xbox 360 when you are playing games, so to have the disc stationary while playing games is a major advantage in my opinion.
The obvious disadvantage is that you need to own an Xbox hard drive that’s large enough to contain all of the data you wish to put on it. Each game seems to take up roughly 4GB, so those people who have the 20GB hard drive might suddenly need a new one if they are going to use that feature! Fortunately, I have a 120GB hard drive, so I should be OK for a while, at least!
Xbox Live Party
Xbox 360 Party Screenshot
As you can see from the screenshot above, there is another new concept in NXE – the Xbox Live Party.
The whole concept of the party is that a group of friends can use voice chat while they are each playing different, or the same, games, they can share photos in real time and stay together from game to game without having to leave a game, join a new game then spend ages trying to get everyone back together again in the new game!
Netflix
This is only for US customers, apparently, but nevertheless, it’s worth a quick mention! Microsoft has teamed up with Netflix (the online movie rental company) to provide a service where Netflix subscribers can instantly stream high definition movies directly to their TV! Being a UK-based, however, this is something that I sadly cannot take part in.
Anyway, to finish off, I’d like to say something I never believed I’d say – “Well done Microsoft!”. NXE has made the Xbox experience much, much better!
