With the launch of the 360's new update yesterday, the resulsts have have ranged from good to full on Fanboy Flaming. While I managed to download the update yesterday, and so far neither me nor my brother have encountered any problem with the update, I've been trying to formulate my review for the update, here's what I came up with.

Over all the update is a vast improvement in terms of orginaztation over the previous dashboard. While Netflix is a nice feature, I'm more interested in the gaming aspect of the Update then the movies. My biggest complaint so far has been MS's scaling down of the Update which was suppose to include an Avatar Store and a Prime Time channel featuring games that would make use of the Avatars, and the fact that many older back ground pictures get hidden behind the various windows. The best features though of NXE are the ability to instal a game directlly to the hard drive, and to host parties with some of your online friends. 

My feelings on the Avatars though are mixed at the moment.

Many compare them to the Miis, often times saying they're blatent copies. However a lot of people who are doing the comparing probably don't even own a Wii. When compared to the Miis, the Avatars are a vast improvement, and look more like something you would find in a Manga or Anime and at least look human, but unlike the Miis, which at a distance look more like two painted blobs moving around, and when you see them upclose, the only Human features are their faces, while their bodies are basically bland, single colored blobs.

My biggest complaint about the Avatars though is the lack of items and games for them. However the Avatars were designed to make the 360 appeal to more casual gamers. 

In the end NXE in it's current form is a mixed bag, but the dashboard to me isn't what matters the most with the 360, what ultimatly defines a Console is it's game library, not it's dashboard, and as long as Microsoft continues to keep a balanced library, and continues to release decent hard core games I will gladly overlook the more casual aspects of the NXE.