Hands on with the New Xbox Experience

On November 19, all Xbox 360 users will get a radical new home screen pushed to their consoles. The "New Xbox Experience," as it's known, has been in the blogs for months now. I finally got my hands on the code this morning, and I've been Experiencing my Xbox in a New way all day.

It's quite a shift from the cold and often confusing old dashboard, and the look is entirely different. Rather than offering a set of "blades" to switch among, the design is based around something more akin to flipping pages. You select from broad categories by moving the analog stick up and down, then choose options from moving the stick left or right. Your primary selection appears, larger than the rest, at the left side of the screen. Additional options flow back and to the right, as if fading into the distance. Flick the stick right and the current selection vanishes, replaced by the one behind it. It's a lot more intuitive than it sounds, and flipping around is very speedy. This comes into play throughout the interface: Browsing your achievements is much simpler, for example, with a browseable pane for each game.

The addition of avatars is another major new feature, and if you have a Wii you'll know what to expect... perhaps a little too closely, in fact. The primary difference between 360 avatars and Wii avatars is that the 360 guys have customizable bodies rather than fat little stumps. (That's me, at right. But Microsoft: What's up with no "soul patch" facial hair option!?)

Netflix streaming comes to the 360 with this update, and though I'd brushed it off in the past, it's a slightly better experience than what you get with the standalone Roku Netflix Player. Movies were slower to start than they were on my PC or my Roku box, but even standard-def movies looked better (especially since you can choose to preserve the proper aspect ratio). There are also 300 titles available in high-definition. If your net connection can handle it (it's said you need 8Mbps or better) you can get full HD resolution. My pipe is, alas, not quite fat enough.

Another feature that will have you itching for a bigger hard drive: You can finally install games to your 360's hard drive. I dropped Fallout 3 on the drive, and while it sucks up nearly 6GB of space (leaving me with just 2GB available), the optical drive no longer whines constantly while I'm playing. That uber-loud DVD drive that never stops spinning is my biggest complaint about the 360, and even though the game doesn't really play or load any faster via hard drive, the decline in noise is a godsend. Now how can I get a 500GB hard drive for my 360? Ping me, Redmond.

There are also some upgrades to the way multiplayer works now, too, but I won't be able to test these until more people have the new code installed.

Overall, this is a huge update that for the most part is worth the wait. Xboxers, make sure you check it out on the 19th!