I finally had some time to play around with the “New Xbox Experience” (NXE) update and I must say, I like what I see. The download only took about 30 seconds, and installed in 5 minutes. It was very quick and painless. The avatar setup was pretty simple and was more sparse on options then I thought it would be, though. That was the only disappointment so far, but a very minor one as that was never a big selling point for me. What I do like, however, is how quick and easy it is to navigate through the menus. The guide button brings up the good old blades system, and does so much faster than the old menu popped up before.
Interacting with friends has been made better as well. When you start a game now, a prompt appears that shows you how many friends of yours are online playing the same game. If someone is playing online with other people in their party you will see that, too. An option appears to join their party as well.
The Netflix addition streams very well and at a good quality. It takes about 30 seconds to buffer at first, then its smooth sailing from there without so much as a hiccup. My only complaint is that it isn’t as intuitive as it should be. You have to sign up via a pc, and can only add movies to your queue on their website, too. Hopefully that will be rectified in the future, and I don’t doubt it will. That kind of integration seems to make the most sense. Otherwise, it works well and streams great.
The marketplace does a better job of showcasing games and providing more information. Now game box art is displayed along with screenshots and information. The info was always there in the past, but it used to scroll very slowly, which was aggravating. I’m glad to see that was fixed.
Another very welcome change is the ability to finally delete those pesky Live Arcade demos of games I don’t own on my achievement list! Just hit the guide button and go over to your Achievements section and press X over a game you wish to delete. This only works for games with a 0 score, though. Now I was finally able to get rid of that pesky Wik Fable of Souls game from showing up on my list, along with some other unwelcome games.
So far so good. Only time will tell how well this keeps up, but things are definitely looking up.
