Hands-on with the New Xbox Experience

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Some games will actually incorporate your Avatar into the gameplay

The overriding philosophy behind the update is to make it much easier to find what you're after on your 360. While many don't experience too many problems with the current 'blades' dashboard, the feeling is that it's a clunky system that forces you to scroll through too many text-based lists to find what you want. Now, you'll be able to access everything you have and don't have that's related to a title just by selecting its image on the dashboard - screenshots, videos, box art, downloadable content, even basic game information from the back of the box will be viewable. After a brief play, we have to say it's much better, and should make accessing the content you have on your console a much quicker experience.

No more evident is the focus on improving things visually than in your Friends list (capped at 100). Here the Avatars of your friends will display horizontally across the screen, and you can scroll through them and check out what they're up to. You'll see what game they're playing, if any; if they're offline they're Avatar will be asleep. There will be objects behind the Avatars as well, which will be dependent on the theme you've got running. While you can keep all of your old themes and use them, only new ones will have objects that show up behind your friends' Avatars, like beach cabins and the like. We expect part of the attraction of new game-related themes made available post NXE launch will be in seeing not only the background images, but also the objects in your Friends list.

From your Friends list you'll be able to join a party or invite someone to a party of your own, of up to a maximum of eight people. It's here that one of Microsoft's most interesting innovations can be found. Parties can be formed from the dashboard and will remain as you jump into a game, or into photo sharing, for example. What this means is you'll no longer have to send out individual invites within a game, or break up a party to join a game. The new party system acts as an overarching and persistent lobby service, of sorts.

There's some stuff for the hardcore in there too

So far, so very casual. But there's one or two new features NXE will bring that will be of interest to the hardcore. You'll be able to log into Xbox.com on your PC, perhaps at work while your boss isn't looking, and shop from the web, so if your console is on at home (not very environmentally friendly) you can order content and it will start downloading. If it's off as soon as you get home and turn your console on it'll automatically start downloading your purchases, which should save you some time. Also launching on November 19 is the Community Games channel, which is where you'll find all of the games created with the XNA Creators Club. Of most interest to gamers however is being able to install all of your existing 360 games, and new ones, to your hard drive. Microsoft's testing showed that Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise took six minutes to install to the hard drive. It estimates that installing a game will decrease loading times by 30 to 50 per cent, too. Some games will benefit more from an install than others, of course. Indeed some titles, like Square Enix's upcoming JRPG The Last Remnant, will come with a recommendation that it will perform better if installed. Suddenly your 360 hard drive size has become a lot more important.

The New Xbox Experience, along with the recent price cut that makes the 360 cheaper than the Wii and the planned release of party games like Lips and You're in the Movies, forms part of Microsoft's assault on the lucrative casual gaming space Nintendo has so far proved so successful in targeting. As time goes on, however, the new Avatars system in particular will be of more interest to hardcore gamers, as Microsoft's planned Avatar Store takes shape. While it hasn't worked out a pricing model yet, expect to be able to buy new items with which you'll be able to customise your Avatar. And expect to be able to dress your Avatar in game-related goodies, too, like a Guitar Hero guitar, when you've unlocked a particular Achievement. Might we be dressing our Avatars in a Master Chief helmet when Halo 3: Recon comes out? We'll know soon enough.

New Xbox Experience will be a free Xbox 360 update to Gold and Silver members of Xbox LIVE on November 19.

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