New Xbox Experience goes live today

Posted by Al Warmington on Wed 19 Nov 2008

Are you experienced?

In case you’ve missed us banging on about it already, the New Xbox Experience (NXE) launches today.

While console updates are usually bland affairs, fixing the odd bug, tightening a security loophole or two and chucking in a new feature for good measure, NXE really is a big change for the Xbox 360.

Out goes the tired old blade menu and in comes a new channel system. This streamlines the menu to make the layout a bit more logical. On top of that, you’ll be getting customisable avatars to use to interact with your friends on Xbox LIVE and the option to install game content to your hard drive.

Microsoft is also debuting its new Community Games channel, which opens up the Xbox LIVE marketplace to amateur developers and hobbyists. We’ve yet to see the results of this new initiative, but it’s one that we’ll be keeping a close eye on in the coming months as it’s the most likely to yield truly interesting results once the avatar novelty inevitably wears off.

At the same time, Microsoft is in a celebratory mood as it nears its 25 millionth Xbox 360 sale. That means that in under three years it will have surpassed the total sales of the original Xbox. It expects to pass this milestone by the end of November.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about NXE is how it has stolen the thunder from Sony’s PlayStation Home. Arguably, these two systems are completely different – Home is a whole virtual world, while NXE is merely a menu overhaul. However, they each share some common ground, such as tailoring their respective console interfaces to enhance community features and making it easier to organise multiplayer games.

While Home has proved to be such an ambitious idea that even 18 months after it was officially announced, there has been little concrete indication of when it will actually be finished. PS3 owners are hoping for a large scale open beta to commence before Xmas, but sadly for Sony, public interest has well and truly waned.

NXE meanwhile, has come along with far more conservative promises, a set of practical upgrades that you can plainly see the benefit of (most notably the new install option) and a far shorter announcement-to-release timeframe. The excitement might not be enough to sell consoles in its own right, and certainly not topple the mighty Wii, but it makes Xbox 360 players feel like Microsoft is doing something for them, instead of making baseless promises.

NXE is out today and when it’s ready an update notification will pop up automatically on your console once you sign into LIVE. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what time it will be arriving, but with midnight now passed on America’s west coast, we expect it anywhere from now.

Link: Xbox