Honestly, I was not all that thrilled about NXE when I first heard about it, because it really sounds like Microsoft is trying to rip off the best parts of the competitors' interfaces and mold them together into some weird Frankenstein-Monster hybrid.  As we all know, ripping off other consoles is Sony's job (please dont kill me PS3 fanboys), and I thought NXE would be needlessly complicated, pointless, and overall bad.  However, I downloaded it yesterday, spent half an hour tinkering with it, and I can say... it's okay.

Call me nostalgic, but I liked the Blades, and I still do.  I don't mind NXE, but I do wish having the option to return to the Blades format was in there somewhere.  Once I tinkered around with the interface, bought a "premium" theme, tried it out, promptly removed it in disgust, and pimped out my avatar with a neat hat, monocle, and handlebar mustache, I was getting the hang of the new format.  It's fairly intelligently laid out, is basically the Blades in 3D, and I'm sure I will live.

Miis, sorry, Avatars aren't bad, but they're kind of pointless.  I understand some games will use them in the future, but right now it's only a couple crappy arcade games, none of which I bought, so right now my avatar kind of just hangs out on my dashboard and looks cool.  The clothes options are extremely limited, and the lack of a black suit or a top hat for my avatar is very annoying, hopefully they'll come out with new clothing options soon (if we're lucky they won't charge for them, but knowing MS, it's kind of hope against hope).  Really though, the avatars... tell me why we need Miis in an Xbox.  Miis work on the Wii because you use your Mii a lot in Wii games (Wii Sports, Mario Kart, etc.)  The avatars feel too cutesy and weird, and they should have been optional.

The new store is definitely an upgrade, and I can't really find a reason to fault it at all.  I was not able to check out Netflix (I don't have an account), but from what I've heard it works fine.  Boo to Sony for pulling their movies from Xbox Live though.  That ain't cool.

"Premium" Themes are a complete joke.  Don't buy them, they're totally pointless.  I compared my old Portal theme to the new Gears 2 "Premium" theme I bought, and the only difference is the changing of the Friend background icon thingies.  They're kind of a downgrade, to be honest, since instead of five static background images, we get one static background image.  Hooray?

Overall... Meh.  It's not necessarily bad, it just feels a lot less like an Xbox and more like Microsoft pandering to the legions of people that surely want to be Xbox fans but can't because the Blades are just so ugly, man.  Right.  Maybe I'm too hardcore, but I want a game console to look like... well, a game console, not some weird cutesy "friendly to everyone" thing that also happens to play games.  At the very least, Microsoft should have left us the option to switch back to the Blades, rather than forcing us to use a pointless, overhyped and annoying dashboard update.

Honestly, I was not all that thrilled about NXE when I first heard about it, because it really sounds like Microsoft is trying to rip off the best parts of the competitors' interfaces and mold them together into some weird Frankenstein-Monster hybrid.  As we all know, ripping off other consoles is Sony's job (please dont kill me PS3 fanboys), and I thought NXE would be needlessly complicated, pointless, and overall bad.  However, I downloaded it yesterday, spent half an hour tinkering with it, and I can say... it's okay.

Call me nostalgic, but I liked the Blades, and I still do.  I don't mind NXE, but I do wish having the option to return to the Blades format was in there somewhere.  Once I tinkered around with the interface, bought a "premium" theme, tried it out, promptly removed it in disgust, and pimped out my avatar with a neat hat, monocle, and handlebar mustache, I was getting the hang of the new format.  It's fairly intelligently laid out, is basically the Blades in 3D, and I'm sure I will live.

Miis, sorry, Avatars aren't bad, but they're kind of pointless.  I understand some games will use them in the future, but right now it's only a couple crappy arcade games, none of which I bought, so right now my avatar kind of just hangs out on my dashboard and looks cool.  The clothes options are extremely limited, and the lack of a black suit or a top hat for my avatar is very annoying, hopefully they'll come out with new clothing options soon (if we're lucky they won't charge for them, but knowing MS, it's kind of hope against hope).  Really though, the avatars... tell me why we need Miis in an Xbox.  Miis work on the Wii because you use your Mii a lot in Wii games (Wii Sports, Mario Kart, etc.)  The avatars feel too cutesy and weird, and they should have been optional.

The new store is definitely an upgrade, and I can't really find a reason to fault it at all.  I was not able to check out Netflix (I don't have an account), but from what I've heard it works fine.  Boo to Sony for pulling their movies from Xbox Live though.  That ain't cool.

"Premium" Themes are a complete joke.  Don't buy them, they're totally pointless.  I compared my old Portal theme to the new Gears 2 "Premium" theme I bought, and the only difference is the changing of the Friend background icon thingies.  They're kind of a downgrade, to be honest, since instead of five static background images, we get one static background image.  Hooray?

Overall... Meh.  It's not necessarily bad, it just feels a lot less like an Xbox and more like Microsoft pandering to the legions of people that surely want to be Xbox fans but can't because the Blades are just so ugly, man.  Right.  Maybe I'm too hardcore, but I want a game console to look like... well, a game console, not some weird cutesy "friendly to everyone" thing that also happens to play games.  At the very least, Microsoft should have left us the option to switch back to the Blades, rather than forcing us to use a pointless, overhyped and annoying dashboard update.