When attempting to review the poorly named New XBOX Experience the easy thing would be to call it a blatant rip-off of the Wii. On first glance those accusations would be accurate, from the avatars to the “channel” system it certainly looks like a Wii rip-off. However after having played around with it for the past few days I can gladly say that there is far more substance to the NXE than one would think.

The first thing people are bound to notice is the inclusion of Avatars. Much like the Wii’s Mii’s, the Avatars serve virtually no purpose (there are a few games that support them) other than they look good on your dashboard and it gives the soccer moms of the world something to look at and relate to. Using the new dashboard is fairly intuitive and everything is pretty much picture based so a three year old can probably navigate it now. But while everything is nice and pretty and easy to use the real meat and potatoes of the NXE comes down to four things and they are more internal than anything else.

The first major adjustment is the party system. Before the NXE, you could start up a chat channel with three other people, now you can set one up with eight people. Teleconferencing anyone? The second major adjust ties somewhat indirectly into the first and that is the addition of the Netflix app. Downloading the app allows your 360 to become a set-top Netflix box. Using the app allows you, if you have a Netflix subscription, to stream movies instantly to your television. While you could stream them before to your Windows enabled PC, having them show on your television was somewhat of a hassle and generally not worth the effort. The Netflix app changes all that and makes it so easy that Curious George could probably do it. As I said earlier this somewhat ties into the party system as you will be able to watch Netflix with your pals in a Movie Party complete with voice chat, much like Mystery Science Theater, however this has yet to be implemented although Microsoft says it is coming soon.

The final two major adjustments are completely internal but at least one of them should help your gaming experience. The ability to install games to your hard drive will, at least in theory, speed up load times on your games. The only problem with this is that the games are generally between six and eight gigs, so most gamers will not be able to take full advantage of this feature but players, like me, who own a 360 Elite will be able to install a good amount of their most played games to the hard drive for a better experience. Load times in Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 both improved for me, meaning less standing around with a plastic guitar in my hand with nothing to do. One big game that doesn’t take advantage of the install feature though is Halo 3, developer Bungie has come out urging their players not to install the game to the hard drive as it may actually increase load times because the game was optimized to play from a disc. The final major adjustment is the fact that Microsoft has moved everything to Cloud based servers. This means that, as long as you have your 360 constantly connected to the internet, Microsoft can provide updates behind the scenes on the fly without bothering you the player with pesky downloads and installs twice a year.

All in all the NXE is nice. There have been some rumblings that it was not really needed but I disagree, the NXE adapts the 360 to what the system has become rather than what it was originally intended. Much like Sony with the PS3, Microsoft wants the 360 to be an all in one set top box and not just a game console, the NXE brings them closer to that goal. And it looks good too.