Microsoft has proved the internet rumour-mill correct and officially announced that the New Xbox Experience (NXE) will go live on November 19th.
NXE is the latest Xbox 360 Dashboard overhaul and the most ambitious so far. Apart from a major visual overhaul, the update will add new player Avatars, a Friends channel and an option to install games to the hard drive for faster load times.
All these changes tackle two key issues that Xbox 360 faces going into its third year of life: 1) it’s not a Wii, and 2) it’s not a PS3.
While Microsoft hasn’t gone all the way and just pinched the motion-controlling idea, it has worked out that the cute, customisable Mii characters are a major part of the Wii’s appeal. Sony has its own PlayStation Home virtual world thingy on the way, so Microsoft brings you Avatars: cute, customisable Xbox 360 characters that have a greater variety emoticons, animations and costumes than Miis. You can find a nauseating video explaining it all here.
These will work with the Friends channel, where you can use your new Avatar to interact with other player’s Avatars. You can even hold a LIVE Party with up to seven people. This presumably will involve standing around spamming the emoticon buttons and shouting ‘LOL!’ at each other while someone finds something worthwhile to do.
As for the PS3, well, it has been putting its built-in hard drive to very good effect recently, making outrageous claims about why this makes it better than the Xbox 360. The truth is Microsoft’s decision to include hard drive-less SKUs has held it back far more than the decision to use old school DVD optical formats. NXE will give you the option to install games to your console hard drive. This won’t actually affect their overall performance, but it will shorten load times, and the console won’t need its disc drive spinning the whole time.
That should finally stop the console shrieking at you like a Luftwaffe Stuka attacking an Allied bunker whenever you try and play a game.
The update will land on November 19th. You won’t need to do anything to set it off – it’s just like any other automatic update.
Out Nov 19| Free| New Xbox Experience
