Get Experienced: The New Xbox 360 Dashboard

On November 19, the great Wii-ification of the Xbox 360 will take place when Microsoft releases the “New Xbox Experience.” More than just a graphical update for the 360’s dashboard, the NXE is meant to simplify the selection process for people not accustomed to leafing through potentially confusing menus. But it doesn’t stop there, boys and girls! This update brings all sorts of new bells and whistles to your Xbox, potentially lengthening the system’s lifespan by years—and multiplying Microsoft’s profit even more. Everyone’s happy, right? If not, here’s why you should be…

• Navigation

Taking a hint from Nintendo’s all-age friendly interface and more than a little inspiration from Sony’s XrossMediaBar, the 360’s “blade” dashboard will be replaced by a simple two-axis system. Scrolling up and down will highlight the main menu categories, such as Video Marketplace and My Xbox, while left and right will select individual sections within each category. All of this is represented by large graphics showing exactly what to expect when you press the button. Simple and stylish, much like your mom.

• Burn Games To Your Hard Drive

Load times getting you down? The NXE solves this problem by letting you burn entire games onto your hard drive, allowing them to be accessed much more quickly. Just pop in any Xbox 360 game, old or new, and you will have the option of making a digital copy. Details on this feature have not yet been expanded upon by Microsoft, so it’s still unclear whether or not you will need to have the game in the disc tray in order to access it—or how they plan to prevent piracy if they do not require the disc. But one thing’s for sure: it’s hard to argue with a feature that makes your games run even faster than when you bought them.

• Avatars

While these digitized characters are obvious rip-offs of Nintendo’s Mii Channel, who would turn down a tiny, cartoon version of themselves to groom, dress and accessorize as you like? A slightly more realistic Barbie simulator than the Mii Channel, the avatar will soon replace you gamertag pic as the way you are recognized by the rest of the Xbox community (though you can keep your old pic if you want to and all of your old themes will continue to work). Your friends’ avatars will also appear on your menu, behaving in certain ways depending on whether or not your friend is online. For instance, if your friend is away, his/her avatar will be taking a snooze.

• Party System

Friends that play together, stay together. The party system allows up to eight people to remain in the same group as they move from game to game. On top of that, players can chat with party members at any time, regardless if every player is playing a different game. The only way Microsoft could further enhance this system would be to implement a 12-digit friend code that must be typed in for each of your friends. Good idea, huh?

• Netflix Streaming Movies

Who needs to wait for a stupid DVD to watch what they want? Xbox has teamed with Netflix to provide streaming movies for their less-patient users, so a new movie is no more than a few clicks away. Of course, you must have both Netflix and Xbox LIVE Gold memberships to take advantage of this feature. And Netflix currently offers only an approximate 14,500 movies on its streaming service, though this is destined to grow larger as the user install base expands.

• Easy Updates

Don’t see a feature here that you wanted? Don’t count Microsoft out yet, as the NXE is reportedly much easier to update than before. This is because the entire experience is server-based, which means developers can build an application and simply drop it on the server; your Xbox will automatically load the update when the system is turned on. One feature already hinted at being available in the future is video and photo sharing. On top of that, this could potentially prevent any more 24-hour Xbox LIVE maintenance periods.

With all of these features, the NXE’s November 19th launch should be a success with gamers. But for those of you who might prefer the old blade system, I have some bad news: the NXE update is mandatory. Furthermore, the update will take up 128MB of space, meaning that those without a hard drive or 256MB memory card will have to upgrade their memory. Fortunately, Microsoft recently announced that they would be “offering storage solutions” for these gamers, but no further details have been released as of yet. But these quibbles should be resolved fairly quickly, allowing us to focus on the most important aspect of this update: this just might make the Xbox 360 feel new again.

For a hands-on look at how the new dashboard will work, visit Microsoft’s NXE page.