New Xbox Experience, this has been the discussion amongst many Xbox Live gamers as of late. Many are anxiously anticipating its release, while others are worried this will take away from what Xbox Live has always been. As someone who has been using Xbox Live since 2003, I had mixed reactions to the upcoming NXE update. After receiving an invite from Microsoft to try it out five days prior to the official release, I can say all worries have been squashed. The initial update and install of NXE is quick and seamless, and I faced no problems at all. Once the update finished installing, you are presented with a very stylish video to get you ready for what to expect.

After the video is finished, you are brought into the new Avatar creator. You will then choose from a numerous amount of avatar models, to start your customization from. For all that know me; I obviously started with a female base model.  You then have the options to change hairstyles, facial features, and skin color and body shape. There are numerous options for hair and facial features, and a various number of colors as well. After you create your Avatar, you can now start to choose your clothes. The basic clothing to choose from is varied and not a bad selection at all.  I just wish you had the option to change the color of each piece of clothing, to add a little of your own touch to it. Finally, you can take a Gamer Picture of your avatar, where you can move the character around, zoom in and out, and have them do various expressions.

Once you have created your avatar, you are ready to enter the redone layout of Xbox Live. Immediately you realize how much nicer the whole experience is. No longer do you have the bland and boring blade system, but instead you have a vertical menu to scroll through and each section is broken down in a very slick image menu. While I won’t go through every single item, I’m going to point out my favorites. I really liked how you saw your avatar standing around in My Xbox, but did wish it was standing in the lower right hand corner at all times. It would be nice to see it no matter where you are in the menus, and possibly have it interact with certain actions you take, or even the menu you are in. The new look of your friends list is also nicer, with each friend’s avatar showing up with varying backgrounds directly behind them. You will also see the cover of what game they are currently playing.

I also got to test out the new partnership with Netflix to provide thousands of movies streaming directly to your Xbox 360. You first need to sync up your Xbox 360 with your Netflix account, and this takes less than a minute. Once everything is connected, you will see your Netflix Instant Watch queue with full covers of each movie. One thing I really enjoyed about the queue is that it is real time. If you have your queue open on the 360 and add something on Netflix to Instant Watch, your queue updates almost immediately. This was one of the things I liked most. So I started off watching a Standard Definition film, and in this case I chose the old school anime of Project A-Ko. Due to the quality of the original film and its age, I couldn’t tell I was watching a streaming movie. I never had any moments of buffering or lag while watching the anime. I then decided to check out the HD streaming, and decided upon watching the pilot episode of 30 Rock. I did notice some slight tearing as the video started streaming, but it cleared up in a matter of seconds. The picture looked very good and once again, I never experienced any type of lag or buffering of the video stream. This is definitely going to be one of my favorite options of NXE. No real downfalls to the service, except Netflix doesn’t have as many current and new releases up for stream as I would have liked. Hopefully they will get more online in the near future.

I also really like the new Mini-Blade setup for when you hit the Xbox button on the controller. It’s a very smooth setup for quickly navigating through your friends list, messages, media library, settings and more. When looking at recent players you’ve played with online, you can now easily hit the Y button to add them as your friend, instead of having to look at their profile.

The only thing that was not accessible at this time was the party system, which I full expect to be functional by the time it releases on November 19th. It’s going to be a lot of fun bringing people into an 8 person party to go play a game together, or watch a movie streaming from Netflix (everyone will require a Netflix account). If it works as well as they claim, be sure to look out for Pwned Movie Nights.

Overall, I loved the New Xbox Experience, and I could find very few things to complain about. I think nearly everyone will be truly pleased by the significant upgrades that Microsoft is rolling our for Xbox Live. I can’t wait to see everyone’s avatars this Wednesday, and look forward to truly partying it up on the New Xbox Experience.