During his last podcast, Xbox spokesperson/kind guidance counselor Major Nelson revealed that a "faster" dashboard update would be coming later this year with "a lot of very cool new features." (We're guessing those features include apps like Twitter and the capability to stream 1080p content—both shown off at E3—though some other unexpected goodies would be welcome.)

Of course, many have already forgotten that NXE promised to end these seasonal dashboard updates, allowing new features to unroll all year. Apparently that's just not happening. But hey, a faster dash in 2009! [Major Nelson via CVG via Kotaku]

That means the Xbox 360 will live twice as long as the original Xbox, which essentially had four years before the Xbox 360 arrived and Microsoft unceremoniously dumped it. That's 8 years. The original Xbox does still live in other ways, though—Schappert said that "hundreds of thousands" of people still play Xbox Live on it. Similarly, Live will obviously live on in whatever comes after the Xbox 360 he said. He reiterated again, though, that "there's still an awful lot left we can do with that piece of hardware, so we're going to continue to do that...I don't even think we're halfway through the life of the Xbox 360." He continued, "if we were not able to reinvent the interface, introduce avatars, introduce new services, we might be talking about new hardware right now." When "we need new hardware to deliver new experiences, that's when we'll start talking about new hardware."

One thing we obviously missed at E3, given how broadly Microsoft has expanded the Xbox 360's scope was the "game-changing" Zune integration promised in the Zune HD announcement. Schappert said that "game-changing" was "meant to refer less to games and more to our Zune video launch." Zune audio on the other hand, he had nothing to say about: "We're not announcing anything else right now, but obviously we're gonna continue to partner with our Zune friends. What you see today is a lot different that last year, so you're going to continue to see us innovate, bring new things, bring new experiences."

So that deeper Zune integration, it's coming. Eventually. One day. Hopefully. Maybe. [Giz@E3]

Starting with HAWX and MLB2K9, Xbox 360 titles will ship with NXE on their discs. And as soon as you load the game, THWACK, NXE clamps your leg like a bear trap. It then slowly drags youfrom your cave of obsolescence and makes you dress in cute clothing, stream Netflix movies, install full games, and sure, see a few more ads than before. [Darkzero via Kotaku]

To review, when the NXE hit late last year, some Xbox 360 owners who had connected the console to their HDTV using an HDMI cable were greeted with silence. The response from Microsoft at the time was something along the lines of "we're looking into it," while others reported tech support indicated it was an older TV- or hardware-related issue.

Since then, 23 pages of discussion over the issue have sprouted up at the official Xbox forums, and still there has allegedly been no response from customer support. A rumored—a completely unconfirmed rumor—indicates this may be addressed with a February update.

We'd say HDMI and HD gaming are *somewhat* important parts of the Xbox 360 user experience, so we hope that's true, at least for the hundreds of users allegedly without sound for their Xbox 360 games and movies. [Xbox Forums via Boy Genius Report] Update: A fix is coming February 3.

Many screens look like little more than an enlarged, green-filtered version of the original 360 dashboard, but the company developed an "immersive 3D environment" (probably seen in that first shot) to navigate much of the system. My favorite screen is actually the simplest—where all of your games span your television. Screw the folks with tiny displays who'd have to squint. I have a big TV. [Gridplane via Kotaku]

The New Xbox Experience, a.k.a. the new Xbox 360 Dashboard, hits tomorrow. If you've got an Xbox 360 that's connected to the internet, you're going to be prompted to update your console as soon as you turn it on. No exceptions; this is what your machine will look like until either it dies, you die, or Microsoft decides to make ANOTHER Xbox Experience. Unfortunately, unlike Batman, you didn't have time to prepare. Here are the ten things you should know about the new Xbox experience so you can be set for tomorrow.

1) Installation is quick. Owners with hard drives that aren't 100% full will be able to update with no problem, but Xbox 360 Arcade fans that rely on memory cards can get in on the free 512MB card deal from Microsoft. We'd recommend you go for the 20GB hard drive for $20 if anything. The update won't be as fast as the 10-second patches you're used to for standard Xbox Dashboard upgrades, but clocking in at somewhere between five to ten minutes, it's still faster than standard PS3 firmware refreshes. And this changes the entire UI!

2) Avatars are neat, but need some work. They're not necessary in the sense that you've still got the option of using your old gamerpics to represent your gamertag to the rest of Xbox Live, but everyone can create a Nintendo Mii-like avatar. Because there are only a handful of clothing options and customizability selections, your Mii will only kinda look like you. They're neat, though, and can be used in future games so you can control a virtual you instead of, say, Venus Williams or Marcus Fenix—the second being extremely unlikely.

3) Performance gains are found everywhere. One of the things Microsoft with the new Dashboard was lift restrictions about how much resources it could use, resulting in a much speedier and more fluid browsing experience. For example, your Xbox Live Arcade game list loads instantly, instead of one at a time in the order you downloaded them. Other time savers are the ability to bring up the Xbox guide from wherever you are and jump into another game, bypassing the need to reroute from back in the Dashboard.

4) Everything is much more usable because it's organized better. By putting in a game and going to its info screen, you can look at its achievements, all its possible downloads and access game details like whether or not it supports 1080p and co-op. In fact, you can do this for all the games in the marketplace, giving you an easy way to browse around and learn whether or not Fable 2 supports online multiplayer (it does).

5) Blades are still there if you want them. Although you're "stuck" with the new interface in the actual Dashboard, you can hit the Xbox guide button on your controller and hop around the console that way. There really isn't a reason to dislike the new interface, but if you're one of those weirdos that hates things because they're new (why are you on THIS website again?), you've got an option.

6) Netflix movie and TV streaming look great. As Mark covered in his impressions, Netflix streaming to your Xbox works fantastically as long as your connection is fast enough. HD streaming requires 8Mbps for their highest tier quality, but Mark was fine with 5Mbps in their second tier. This all requires you to have an actual Netflix account to be able to access the feature, but the convenience of movies on demand, directly to your TV should make you at least sign up for a trial.

7) Hard disk game installs save time, save wear-and-tear on your DVD drive. As bingegamer details, installing a game on a hard drive usually cuts down load times and improves streaming from the disk in sandbox games. It's very rare that installing actually makes games slower, but it's been known to happen in Halo 3 and a couple other titles. The other benefit, besides speeding up gaming sessions, is that you eliminate DVD noise. You still need to have the disc in the drive when you play, so you can't go rent games, install them and return them.

8) Media Center and media playback still work. No change in Media Center or DivX/XviD playback functionality in case you were worried about compatibility issues before upgrading.

9) Ads are basically everywhere. You know how there's space set aside in the current Dashboard for ads and promo content? Well, in NXE, promo content can be mixed into the regular menu system, which makes it more difficult to tell at a glance whether you're firing up your own copy of Gears of War 2 or clicking to the Gears of War download page where they want you to download themes. It's not too horrible, on the whole.

10) The future looks good for NXE. Instead of sticking to the Spring/Fall update cycle, NXE allows Microsoft to roll out incremental updates for your Xbox whenever they're ready. This means more timely feature bumps (stuff like Netflix, for example), and special one-off changes that can skin your interface based on whatever hot game is due out soon. And hell, who wouldn't want to be able to download a Gears of War suit for your avatar?

Our final verdict is that NXE is a good thing. It's great of Microsoft to be devoting precious resources to revamping a usable interface (you won't see a new Wii Experience anytime soon) three years into a console's lifetime because they think they can do a better job the second time around. Get ready to install a whole new Xbox tomorrow. [Xbox Coverage on Gizmodo]

"In fact, if you want to get your hands on it, let me just say this: keep an eye on my blog next week. If you want to get your hands on it early, that's all I'm going to say." If we're really lucky that means getting our New Xbox Experience (beta) on later that week, though it might be the week or two after that (since three weeks would be a little late for an early taste).

Even if you do wait until Nov. 19, you probably won't be disappointed, unless you know, you're a miserable person and just hate everything. [Destructoid]

All Microsoft has to do is "build that app, drop it in, party enable it and we’re good to go" says Xbox senior strategist Rob Gruhl. So while the movie party feature isn't specifically planned on, since "those types of things are certainly the aspiration," according to Xbox marketing head Albert Penello and they've discussed photo sharing, it looks like we can definitely expect to see some social app action like that in the future. [MTV Multiplayer]

The first thing you notice while using the new UI is how fluid and dynamic it is. Microsoft wasn't content to just create some static screens and call it a day. Many of the menus have multiple animations and 3D elements at work, which give the software life. Your avatar sits on the menu, fully rendered, loafing around on your screen. Moving from section to section is so fluid that you stop thinking about what you're doing with the controller. There's also the Spotlight menu subset, which highlights the games and features of the Xbox you use the most, so that you don't have to waste time surfing menus. And this efficient mindset extends thoughout the entire Xbox UI.

A new change is that when you hit the home button, a medium-sized box pops up in the middle of your screen with multiple blades that can be shuffled by moving the analog stick left and right. This is a quick menu of sorts that streamlines the entire menu into a no nonsense, text based interface that lets you browse and navigate whatever information you need with a swiftness. You can look up friends, change games, adjust settings, go to your gamer profile, or launch the full dashboard. This was designed around the original Xbox UI, with the seasoned gamer in mind who just wants to carry out a specific task with no fuss. What's nice it is that it doesn't overwhelm the screen like the original UI did in terms of size and layout.

We've touched on it before, but the level of customization you can put into your avatar is nuts. Clothes, Face, Body and Hair are all heavily modifiable within the avatar creator. And they not only feature prominently in menu system and Xbox Live's social features, but they will also be integrated into more games down the road.

The ability to rip games to your HDD is a neat feature that can not only cut down on load times, but the sound that comes with using the DVD drive. It's not intended to archive your entire games library, but rather the few games you play ALOT. In this context, I see it being very handy. It still requires you insert the game disc when you start a game each time, just so it can verify it's not a pirated copy, but after that, the disc drive lies dormant.

I didn't get a look at the Netflix software in this version of the UI, but based on the performance of the Roku and the screens of the Xbox Netflix interface, you can pretty much guess what that experience will be like.

Theme junkies will be glad to know that Themes 2.0 for NXE are far more integrated into the UI than before. Instead of a background and matching color scheme, Themes 2.0 now has features like 3D renderings instead of tiles behind each menu object, that relate to the theme in some way.

Party-style gaming is another new feature Xbox put a lot of effort into and are touting as a main feature in this new UI. I didn't get to see a ton of this mode in action, but I got the sense it will be popular amongst groups of friends who don't always want to play the same game the entire time they're on Live, but want to stay in touch just in case. The menus for creating parties are pretty simple, as you only need to select create party or invite friends and add friends from a list.

Lastly, the Video and Game Marketplaces has been revamped and are pretty well thought out. There are multiple ways to search for content, whether it be XBLA games, XNA games, additional game content, or video, you can search by name, genre or category, and the list continuously repopulates itself as you refine your search string letter by letter. Featured titles appear in the front menu.

Overall, the New Xbox Experience seems to be focused around an polished and efficient experience. We'll be getting our hands on the final version soon, so keep your eyes peeled for a full review. [New Xbox Experience on Giz]

In about six weeks, you'll get the ability to create your Xbox mini-you, as well as get access to themes and a new games channel that lets you browse visually and includes new games details pages. Also up, a Spotlight channel that'll focus on popular and new content—games, movies, demos etc. [Kotaku]