NXE, or The New Xbox Experience, is Microsoft’s system refresh for the Xbox 360. With NXE, Microsoft hopes to reinvigorate its 3-year old console system and make it more approachable to casual gamers. While it’s true the original blade interface is long in the tooth, it’s unclear that NXE will be exactly what core and casual users alike require from a console user experience. Regardless, at least what Microsoft is giving Xbox owners is something new and exciting.

Anyone who has owned an Xbox 360 for the last year or two has likely been frustrated by an interface that was slow and cumbersome. Not only could it take an inordinate amount of time to navigate the system’s many blades, but they were often unorganized or redundant. And once you found, let’s say, arcade games, you could only view them in a few different ways, or you could scroll through a list of every single XBLA game available. You couldn’t search for a specific piece of content or even narrow it down very much.

NXE has a long list of improvements, but as far as Microsoft is concerned, Avatars top the list. After updating your Xbox 360, the first thing you will be forced to do is choose an avatar. There appears to be hundreds of prebuilt ones, both male and female, and once you’ve selected one you can then alter it to reflect how you want others to see you. While the customization options available are not infinite, you are given a variety of elements, from various chins, ears, hair-dos, noses, and beards, to several different lengths and girths of body, as well as a selection of clothing and make-up.

Avatars are cute and expressive and look similar to LEGO or PLAYMOBIL characters. Those who love character creators with lots of sliders and dozens of options will probably be disappointed by the paltry selection available in the NXE, but most will likely just want to quickly create an avatar and then move on to more important things, like playing games or watching movies. Microsoft has fortunately added features in both of these categories, including copying game discs to the system’s hard drive and Netflix movie integration.

While inserting a game disc in the Xbox 360’s DVD drive still launches the game as usual, you can also jump to the Dashboard, switch to the new My Xbox Channel, and copy the game disc to the system’s hard drive. If your hard drive has insufficient space, it can immediately tell you what is filling the drive and you can delete existing games, demos, videos, or other content without leaving this My Xbox. While copying your game disc to the hard drive won’t necessarily speed up load times substantially, it will provide a quieter experience since your DVD drive won’t need to spin as you play the game.

An even bigger new feature is Microsoft’s integration of Netflix into NXE. If you have a subscription to Netflix and are an Xbox Live Gold member, you can stream normal and high definition content to your Xbox 360. So not only can you watch DVD movies using the system’s optical drive, or download videos, TV shows, and movies from the Xbox Live Video Marketplace, but you can also associate your Netflix membership with your console and then view any Watch Instantly movie on the system.

Getting to these new features is greatly simplified by a streamlined user interface. Gone are the blades, which have been replaced by a cross-bar style browser. While this is definitely similar to what the Sony PS3 and PSP offer, it’s also very similar to Microsoft’s own Media Center and Zune interfaces. Regardless of the inspiration, navigation is now quick and intuitive. When searching for content you can still look in familiar categories but you can also search alphabetically. Viewing item descriptions has also been greatly improved so it no longer feels anywhere as claustrophobic as it used to.

Other new features include access to Community Games, which are written by developers using Microsoft’s free XNA development tools. These games are community moderated, which means they are not reviewed by Microsoft or the ESRB. They are priced at $2.50, $5.00, or $10.00 a piece. There’s also photo and Xbox Live game parties, new themes, a new Guide, and an enhanced Xbox.com, which allows you to easily see what’s new in the Xbox Live Marketplace and queue up downloads remotely. While there are other enhancements not mentioned here, it’s important to note the NXE has been created in a way that should make it far easier for Microsoft to customize it further when it’s time to roll out new features.

All told NXE presents a major upgrade to the Xbox 360 experience, one that both evolves and extends the console's capabilities quite well. User interface improvements have been made in every facet of the system, and though some will undoubtedly upset existing users, the upgrade appears to be a winner. Microsoft has created an experience that definitely feels new and exciting, and while only time will tell us how well this translates into new customers, or customers who feel more satisfied with the Xbox 360.  The full update hits consoles on November 19th, 2008, and anyone who turns on their system and is connected to the Internet will be able to experience it for themselves - whether they want to or not.