Major Nelson, the official mouthpiece of all things Xbox, has some numbers about the New Xbox Experience that might interest, like, 11 of you. There’s a tremendous amount of spin (“If LIVE were a U.S. city, it would be the largest city with over 14-million members. The equivalent of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined.” Only it’s not a city, so…) being done to the numbers, but one or two look solid: Xbox Live Arcade sales have tripled in the first week since the NXE launched, and movie downloads increased 49 percent and TV downloads increased 30 percent after the launch.

Yeah, neat, but let’s not forgot that two big XBLA games launched in the days after the NXE in Street Fighter and Banjo-Kazooie. Those may have had something to do with the increase in sales, no?

I’m not at home to provide a screenshot of the first batch of DLC for your avatars, but I doubt anyone is thrilled over this announcement anyway. New items in the avatar editor are denoted by a gold star. Enjoy!

Now that the NXE lets users install games onto the hard drive, space is premium cause these games aren’t small. Plus, the Xbox’s standard hard drive space for the majority of the past three years was a measly 20GB so you really should know how much space these games are going to take up. Full list after the jump.

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Quick Version: Do not, I repeat, do not rip Halo 3 to your hard drive because it will load much slower than if you played it straight off the DVD drive. Halo 3 was also shipped before Microsoft gave the green light for this added feature in NXE, so Bungie was unable to implement it into the game.

Long, extended technical answer: If you really, really want to know then hit the jump for an explanation from Bungie’s “uber engineer and Chief Caching Officer, Mat Noguchi.”
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Running into any problems or is everything smooth as butter? What are your overall thoughts on the UI redesign?

NXE coverage on CrunchGear

Well what do we have here? Now that NXE is live for everyone, it seems that Columbia Pictures movies are not available for XBox Netflix streaming. Unfortunately there is no way to tell if the movie is going to be watchable on the Xbox streaming until it’s added to the queue which can be a royal pain in the ass. Quite frankly, this is lame and childish that these Sony-owned flicks are not available on the PS3-rival system. MTV Multiplayer blog has nailed down a few details and the distracting smokescreen is licensing. Bull.

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The New Xbox Experience is currently being pushed to all Xbox 360s. To celebrate (?) its launch, Major Nelson, the Xbox division’s chief of propaganda, has put together a snappy list of 10 things you need to “check out.” You know, create an Avatar (I shan’t be doing that), start a party (I shan’t be doing that), install some games to the hard drive (not worth my time) and just plain ol’ look around (nope).

Fun for all.

The most significant addition, obviously, is Netflix support. The rest is largely “oh, neat,” then you go about your business.

Looks like the NXE is out for those who signed up for a preview account and Netflix has confirmed that there will be 300 HD titles in the new streaming system. Looks like Christmas came early!

Instead of adding another 10,000 people to the preview program like we did last week, we’ve decided to do something a little different: everyone who successfully applied to the preview program (and submitted a valid console ID) will be getting the New Xbox Experience sometime within the next few hours. That’s right…we’re hooking everyone else up with NXE a bit early. If you signed up and are not prompted, that means you did not enter your console ID properly and you’ll have to wait until Wednesday.

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A round of applause for Eurogamer, which did the thankless task of testing out the NXE’s HDD Install option and comparing it to normal method of playing games off the DVD. Several games of all shapes and sizes were checked, including Gears of War 2 (or should I say Gears of Bore, yuck), GTA IV and Halo 3, and found that, on average, you’re likely to shave a few seconds off your loading time by installing a game to the hard drive.

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Flickr’d

You know the upcoming New Xbox Experience that has so many people excited for some reason? Turns out that Microsoft call centers are bracing themselves for NXE-induced red rings of death. So while you’re gaining a [fancy?] new user interface you may also be losing an Xbox 360. Fun!

It’s like this: Microsoft is afraid that its Frankenstein of a machine may have trouble “taking,” in a sense, the NXE update. The result of such a rejection could be (emphasis on the “could” as none of this is guaranteed to happen) mass RRODs. And when the system breaks down…

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The New Xbox Experience comes out in just a few days (or you can illegally download the leak, doesn’t bother me one bit), but did you know that Microsoft “pulled a Longhorn” with it? That is to say, lots of things that were initially promised have not made the cut, primarily due to time restraints. Speaking to CVG, the head of Xbox Live in Europe, Jerry Johnson, said:

Half the things we wanted to do we cut out of the service.

No, that was not worth quoting, never mind block quoting. No fourth wall here.

If you watch Peter’s well-directed review of the NXE, you can see just how great it is.

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Lost in a flurry of caramel and processed sugar this weekend was news that the New Xbox Experience, also known as a user interface, has leaked online.

The fancy, I guess, UI for the Xbox 360 can be found at the usual places—you know what they are. Keep in mind that it’s merely a beta, the same one that was handed out to a lucky few in recent days. Gee, I wonder where the leak came from?

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A lot of things are riding on this UI redesign for Microsoft and the Xbox team, but more importantly it’s quelling the frustrations that many of us have had to deal with since the beginning of time. The blade interface was a good start, but it was frustrating at times and it certainly deterred me from perusing the Marketplace. Streaming via Netflix has been rumored for almost a year and that feature will finally be unlocked come November 19th. I still think the whole avatar feature is childish, but I was once asked whether or not I made characters in my own image (like in Madden or whatever), which promptly made me shut my mouth.

The Xbox and Microsoft teams began working on NXE this past spring and seeing what they’ve accomplished in such a short time is pretty amazing. Most will be content with the addition of Netflix, virtual parties and creating their own avatars, but I’m most excited by the fact that we no longer have to wait for the spring or fall updates to unlock new features.

Video after the jump. I’m no Doug Aamoth and I apologize in advance. Read More

Announced at E3 along with the rest of NXE, Xbox Live Primetime sounded pretty gimmicky with “live” game shows, but it’s being held up to ensure that the rest of NXE rolls out smoothly. I’d be more inclined to believe such a statement, but it’s being delayed until the spring of ’09, which leads me to believe that it’s nowhere near ready for primetime. So, will NXE be ready by November 19?

via Forbes

Major Nelson, doesn’t he look cool, is hinting that NXE may be coming as early as next week or this week (not sure), but it won’t be the full fledged update. It’s more than likely going to be a beta release or he’s just looking for page hits like Destructoid hints at. Either way, be sure to check out his blog for deets! Lame.

via Destructoid

Fret not Xbox 360 owners for we will all be privy to NXE with nary a problem. Those nasty ‘facts’ from earlier in the week about you needing 256MB of free space weren’t exactly true. However, you may want to have more than 128MB to enjoy everything that NXE will offer.

The New Xbox Experience will require 128MB of free space. A hard drive is recommended for the optimal experience, to take advantage of some new features, and to be able to enjoy the great movies, TV shows and games available on Xbox LIVE. While we expect the majority of consumers to download the New Xbox Experience without a problem, a small percentage of Xbox 360 owners do not have enough memory to accommodate the update. To help ensure all Xbox LIVE members are able to download the New Xbox Experience and enjoy its new features, Microsoft will be offering storage solutions to the Xbox LIVE community. We are not sharing details of this offering yet. Be sure to check xbox.com for more details in the coming weeks.

I bet MS will offer online storage solutions. Yeah, that’s what I think MS will offer.

The upcoming NXE update will feature the controversial avatar feature (you know, the one that makes me barf), but you’ve got to have either a HDD or 256MB card installed to take advantage of it. If you’ve got one of those pansy 64MB cards or (shudder) a naked Core system, you’ll be SOL, my friends.

Of course, if you’ve just got a Core, how likely is it that you’re the type of gamer that wants to spend hours creating a super-deformed, weird-ass version of yourself to show your friends? After all, you’ve already got a Mii — not that these two things are related!

NXE is launching in 24 countries on November 19th. Read about NXE here.