Well, the NXE is downloaded and installed, our avatar is fully kitted out with the correct haircut and chin and we’ve spent a bit of time fiddling around with the new interface. So what do we think?
Well, our first impression is that the whole thing looks a lot slicker and moves a lot snappier than the old “blades” layout. Obviously the new menu screens are lovely and shiny, and the (Apple Coverflow-influenced) way you can flick through downloadable content and games/friends lists is very easy on the eye – but everything seems to move faster and less choppily than before.
Hitting the Xbox Guide button on your controller now brings up a nifty mini-interface which I really like – here you can quickly access everything on your Xbox 360 in double quick time, as it’s all in list form.
The media player is better now too – the way you can browse your music/movies/photos seems a lot more logical than previously.
Avatars are a nice enough idea but besides building mine I haven’t really done much with them. I’ve spotted a couple of downloadable games that use them, but nothing really grabs me about that – a personal thing I guess, but I suspect they’ll be more Live Arcade games that make use of avatars in the near future.
The part I like best at the moment is the option to install games to the hard disk. While I always felt this was a bit of a copout (this is a console after all, not a PC), it speeds up loading times and puts the kibosh on that infuriatingly loud DVD drive. The 360 is still too loud, mind you – but it’s better now. Sadly as an owner of a 20GB model there’s barely any room to install games – Gears of War 2 takes up well over 6GB of space.
We’ve only scratched the surface of the NXE, but please let us know what you think of it in the comments box below.
