New Xbox Experience Impressions: Easy Slick

Getting the New Xbox Experience early, I figured I’d throw in some of my thoughts on it for the readers. The installation was really fast. Probably just under three minutes for me, not sure about you guys though, it all depends on your internet connection speed. Once the installation was done, I was welcomed with a short video and then after I signed in, a few avatars ran on screen.

I picked my starting avatar and got down to customization. There are many different options to make your avatar unique. I made him look like me as much as possible, but then threw in a scar across the face just to look bad ass. My final result came out to the below.

I think he looks pretty cool. I would like to show him off to my friends, but sadly, none of my friends have the NXE update yet. I guess I’ll have to wait until November 19th.

I jumped straight into Netflix after my avatar creation. I signed up for the 30-day trial and got to adding movies to my Instant Queue. The thing about this is that the movies you can watch instantly is a limited library of titles from 2007 and below. As of now, I’ve yet to see 2008 movies besides TV series. That didn’t stop me from adding all three seasons of Heroes and some of my favorite movies such as Ali G Indahouse, Billy Madison, Eddie Murphy Raw, Scarface and Superbad.

I watched two movies last night, Wedding Daze and Don’t Be A Menace To South Central. I’m a sucker for comedies you can easily tell. The streaming quality looked fantastic and it streamed pretty fast. Fast-forwarding and rewinding didn’t slow down anything much either. Overall, I was pretty impressed.

After my share of Netflix movies, I head over to the Events channel. This is one of the cool new channels that I think all competitive gamers will love. There is basically a list of gaming events that will be happening over Xbox LIVE telling us who’s hosting the event, when and what game it will go down on, how to participate, and who’s hosting. There is even an option to learn more information on the game. I’m thinking about hosting an event over LIVE, as soon as we get more writers. How does a Gears 2 event sound to you guys?

The Spotlight channel is the main channel next to My Xbox. It shows us what’s hot on Xbox LIVE. Currently, the first image it displays is that Gears of War 2 is now in stores. Clicking this will bring you to the information page on the game. Then we see an ad for Transporter 3, a Gold upgrade ad, Top Arcade Games, Iron Man in Video Marketplace ad, the latest Inside Xbox, a featured event, and an All About Avatars ad that explains what avatars do and such. Speaking of the ad, it reveals that new avatar clothes and items will be added every two weeks. This is mainly the place to check if you’re looking for what’s new.

The My Xbox channel lets you play whatever game you currently have in the console, update your gamercard, play anything in your game library (such as demos, arcade games, etc.), check out your videos, pictures, music, and finally check your system settings.

If you click Y over the game in tray, you’ll be given the option to install the game. I’ve tried this with my copy of Gears 2 and I noticed exceptionally faster loading times. This is probably one of the best new features in the update.

Changing your theme isn’t done from the settings menu any more. It is done by clicking your gamercard and going to Change Theme. Your old themes will work in the NXE update, but that doesn’t mean you’d want to use them. To tell the truth, they look downright bad. You may want to download themes released specifically for the NXE update.

The Games and Video Marketplaces both look superb. You can easily browse through any titles including the latest or most popular, or find what you’re looking for alphabetically. What I’d like to talk about is the Community Games. I’ve only downloaded the trial for one so far, that being Weapon of Choice, and it was okay. The trial ran on a timer, though, ending with an Xbox pop-up notice with the community games logo saying if you would like to continue, you’ll have to buy it. It’s not like the games are costly though. They go in the 200-400 MS Points range from what I’ve seen. I believe two new games were just added today. That, or I just didn’t see them yesterday.

There’s been some major improvements to the Inside Xbox channel. Ever tell yourself you were going to watch that IGN Strategize but then when you finally go back to watch it, it’s gone? Well now there is an Inside Xbox archive at the end of the previews that lets you categorize the archive by if it’s Insider Moves, Majors Minute, etc. and lets you view the archived videos that you may have missed.

Finally, we have the friends channel. I’m not so keen on scrolling through all of your friends, I usually use the in-game dashboard for that. If you set-up a party, that’ll be displayed first on the friends list. I set up a party, but only I was in it, so only my avatar was shown. Then you can go to other friends and view their avatars (currently my friends all have a blank avatar), invite them to your party, compare games, you know the usual.

I wish I could get some videos up, but I don’t have a damn capture card. You’ll get the NXE soon enough come this November 19th.