Crispy Gamer News

(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 –>

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:

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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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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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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.

The official GamerScore Blog has a nice rundown of what the NXE (or New Xbox Experience, if you prefer), detailing what gamers can expect this fall. the focus of today’s update is on presentation and style. Get a rundown of it after the jump, complete with visuals to drive the point home.

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