New Xbox Experience Added to 360 Discs

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly four months since Microsoft first launched the New Xbox Experience. Of course, not everyone who’s got a 360 has got it set up online, meaning that there’s a whole lot of people out there still cuddling up with the blades of the “Old” Xbox Experience. Well, Microsoft can’t have any of that. After all, if you’re going to show off the new hotness the NXE, you don’t want people running around with the old and busted of the original Xbox dashboard.

To that end, it looks like Microsoft is taking a cue from Sony’s PSP games, including the latest update as a mandatory install on upcoming games. This week alone, fans of Tom Clancy’s HAWX and MLB 2k9 who hadn’t yet installed the NXE update were greeted not with shots of fighter jets or juiced up baseball players. Instead, all they got was a grey screen with a message asking them to install the required update included on the disc.

These are just the first two games to come with the NXE update included on the disc, but they won’t be the last. The plan is for Microsoft to have publishers include the update on most, if not all, future releases for the 360. So, if you’re a fan of the “old school” 360 dashboard, it looks like your days are numbered.

Netflix Posts Huge Q4 Profit Spike

So, just how big of a different can the Xbox 360 make? You’ve got to wonder based on the news yesterday that online DVD service Netflix has seen a jump in its fourth quarter profits of roughly 45 percent. This coincides nicely with Microsoft’s release of the New Xbox Experience, which incorporated the Netflix service, allowing Xbox LIVE Gold members with a subscription to the Netflix service to stream movies and TV shows to their televisions straight from the 360.

According to the numbers released yesterday, Netflix’s subscriber base grew by 27 percent last year to about 9.4 million subscriber total. Nearly three-quarters of a million of those subscriptions have been added since September, and the company expects to break the 10 million subscriber mark before the end of the first quarter of this year.

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The Top 21 News Stories of 2008: 14 - 8

(Contributors: Tom Ohle - CD Projekt RED, Rich Carlson - Digital Eel, Eric Holmes - Radical Entertainment, and Game Trust members Evan Narcisse, Gus Mastrapa, David Chapman and James Fudge)

We continue our countdown of the Top 21 News Stories of 2008, with #14 - #7, starting now. If you missed the first part of our countdown featuring David Chapman, James Fudge and ECA President Hal Halpin, you can check it out right here.

Next: #14 –>

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

MS Dishes on Post-NXE Xbox LIVE Stats

While I’m not sure the proper etiquette regarding just how long we’re supposed to keep the word “New” in Microsoft’s “New Xbox Experience”, it’s still got plenty of new and shiny left on it after less than a month since its launch. So, just how much of an effect HAS the NXE had on the overall Xbox LIVE numbers? Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb has the answers. Posting on his official blog, Hryb tossed out a few interesting XBL stats to wrap up the year and the post-NXE Xbox LIVE era:

From the blog:

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Breaking in the New Xbox Experience

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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Xbox LIVE Gets a Case of Weekend Hiccups

Ah yes. The weekend. That special time away from the daily grind of the work week where you can get away from the ol’ 9 to 5 job and hang out online with friends for a good game of Gears of War 2. At least that’s the way it should have been for Xbox 360 owners this weekend. Unfortunately, the service had other ideas.

Starting late Thursday night and lasting through last night, the Xbox LIVE service started suffering from sporadic shutdowns, disconnecting thousands of gamers at random intervals. And while the Microsoft engineers were hard at work to get everything up and running again, every time things seemed fixed, the disconnects started back up again.

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NXE Leaked, Baby Jesus Doesn’t Cry

Poor, poor pitiful Microsoft. The “New Xbox Experience” has been leaked and is now being offered via torrent downloads all across the seedier neighborhoods of the Internet. Microsoft really needs a plumber because the company consistently suffers from severe leakage. The torrents reportedly offer a download that can be used to update the dashboard’s new features via a USB storage device.

But before you jump onto Pirate’s Bay or wherever people download their favorite ill-gotten gains, be warned - Microsoft may very well ban you in the short term (until the update officially goes live later this month) or in the long-term to make an example of you and teach you a life lesson.

Personally, having an avatar and being able to cycle through 3D menus isn’t worth getting banned from Xbox Live, so why not just wait? As for Microsoft, they should probably do something about these leaks… just  saying.. Look for NXE on November 19th.