Crispy Gamer News

It’s official. After months of buildup, hype, pomp, and circumstance, Xbox owners are finally getting their hands on the “New Xbox Experience”. At 5:00a EST, Microsoft opened the flood gates and 360 owners were greeted to a mandatory system update when they started up their consoles. So, how smooth was the launch? We’ll see over the next few days and weeks, but in the meantime, I can at least share my own “New Xbox Experience”.

Well, like many of the gaming masses, this morning was my first solo run at the NXE. Sure, a number of people managed to get in some early access, courtesy of a consumer survey from Microsoft a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn’t one ‘em. So at 5am on the nose, I booted up my 360 and, sure enough, the update was ready for me. The download process was much faster than I expected, as apparently MS had already done a lot of the heavy lifting with earlier updates. From start to finish, the whole thing only took about two minutes.
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The New Xbox Experience, set for launch on Nov 19., will change a lot of the functionality on Xbox Live Marketplace and today Microsoft revealed how the Xbox Live Video Marketplace will represent these changes.

The most notable change will be the inclusion of Netflix subscriptions which users will be able to queue and watch at their leisure through Xbox Live. All Xbox LIVE Gold members with a Netflix Unlimited subscription will be able to instantly watch more than 12,000 movies from the Netflix library in the United States. But beyond that, the interface for accessing movies on Xbox Live Video Marketplace will get a major facelift: you’ll be able to view hi-res box art for all the movies and TV shows, and read all the information that would usually be on the back of the DVD box.

You can get a glimpse of what all that will look like after the jump with before and after screenshots.

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Now you will be able to stream STARZ movies from Netflix on Xbox Live. Are you excited? I’m not, but maybe i’m just an old, cynical bastard who wants to play games on his console and not watch movies. But hey, that’s just me. The new deal, announced today by the fine folks at Xbox, allows you to stream Starz Entertainment in the new Xbox Live Experience (you know, that new interface that they laid the ground work to on Monday and managed to screw Xbox Live up all week?).

The Starz Play library will be available in addition to the 12,000 choices available through Netflix and the 15,000 pieces of video content for purchase or rental through Xbox LIVE Video Store. Starz Play, included in all unlimited Netflix subscriptions, makes approximately 2,500 movies, TV shows and concerts available instantly by Netflix Members With the new Xbox Experience, this will allow you to share these entertainment offerings with your friends and family.

The Netflix unlimited membership starts at $8.99 a month. Netflix also said that as part of the deal it will offer a Starz Play-only subscription for $7.99 a month.