Yesterday, November 19th, 2008, was the long-awaited launch-date of the New XBOX Experience, or NXE.
The Update Process
On power-up and login to my Live account I was asked if I wanted to apply an update, to which I answered “Yes.”
About 3 minutes later the download was complete and the XBOX was restarting, same startup splash screen that I’ve been used to, then another “please wait while we update.” Another two minutes passed and another reboot. After that I got the “welcome to the NXE” video and was whisked away into the “pick or build your avatar” process.
Avatars
The “pick or build your avatar” process is the most time consuming part of this upgrade. I spent well over 30 minutes with my kids and I tweaking every last detail so the little dude looks just like me (I even added a few pounds to give him that “developer physique”).
This morning my wife started dropping questions about how she could “get her own little person.” I missed the whole XBOX tie and though she was talking about wanting another baby, luckily she meant her own avatar. 😉
Fast UI
The new User Interface (UI) is beautiful and FAST, and did I mention FAST? Oh yeah, and it’s fast, too. Very fast. The old UI’s “blades” just felt so slow and clunky, and a bit laggy, but this new UI is FAST!
Netflix Streaming
The most eagerly awaited addition to the NXE in my family was Netflix Streaming (including HD) direct to the XBOX. Another quick download and I was asked to “complete the activation” with my Netflix account by going to the provided URI on a computer. This is lame. Easy, but lame. I’m on my XBOX, don’t make me pull out my laptop, boot up, navigate to Netflix, then do something just so I can watch my rentals on my XBOX.
They make you go back and add movies to your “live queue” from the website to be able to actually watch anything. You cannot navigate their categories or catalog from the XBOX interface. Lame.
Also, not all “watch now” content is available for the XBOX. Why this is, I don’t know for certain. Mike Dopp has heard rumors that Sony is getting all torqued off about Netflix putting Sony’s HD movies on a rival’s game console, after all, they won the High-Def HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war, so the only way you should watch a high-def movie is from a Blu-Ray disc… oh, and Blu-Ray belongs to Sony – they get a cut of every High-Def movie you watch on Blu-Ray… but not if you stream it to your XBOX. Is this Sony trying desperately to hold on to the high-definition delivery form-factor? Is Blu-Ray Sony’s latest BetaMax Cassette? Maybe I’ll cover that in another article, meantime, back on topic.
Netflix’ streaming is awesome. It takes about 30 seconds to determine your video quality and begin streaming the movie, but once it does it’s flawless. We watched James and the Giant Peach last night, the kids loved it. The wife loved not having to wait for it to arrive by mail. We then watched the pilot episode of seaQuest and were again impressed by the breadth of videos that were available.
I’d really like to see television episodes available as a subscription, where I can have current episodes available shortly after they’re aired automatically placed in my “Instant Queue” for me. That’s really two requests: first, automatic adding of content (like Media Center’s “subscribe to series” function) when it becomes available; and second, having current content available, not just after it’s “gone to DVD.”
Conclusion
All in all, I’m a VERY happy camper! As an interesting aside, everything I just mentioned here had little (if anything) to do with gaming on the XBOX. Perhaps we’re seeing the future evolve right before our eyes…
