Want a good idea of what the new premium themes for the NXE look like, then look no further. BenjaminBirdie has stated a thread on Neogaf, where you can find pics of pretty much every premium theme available right now. Last Updated: November 21, 2008

Very soon, the first set of Horse Armor, I mean... let me start again. As you all know, the NXE dashboard update has brought with it a whole lot of possibilities in terms of friends list backgrounds as well as avatar clothing options. Microsoft have now announced that they will be continually releasing theme packs that include avatar clothing over the next six months. Pretty soon, a Ninja Blade them is going to be released for Xbox Live that not only comes with a background image and friends list backdrops, but 5 pieces of themed clothing to wrap around your new Xbox Live Avatar. As much as I am enjoying the new dashboard, I am sorry to say that a new era has begun in terms of paid downloadable content. While I already thought it pretty ridiculous that so many people were spending tons of money on gamerpics and dashboard themes in the old dashboard, the new dashboard brings with it an entirely new way to draw gamers' money out of their wallets. The price has gone up as well. More after the jump. While the old dashboard themes had a price tag of 150 points, the new ones are coming in at 250 points and while they are significantly more interesting than before, I can see a whole lot of people throwing their money at Xbox Live just to get some interesting clothing and backdrops to look at. At the same time, I have to wonder... if one of you are on my friends list and you download and add new items to your avatar, doesn't that mean that I will have to download them automatically when I next see you in my friends list? I think so. So tell you what, do us all a favour. Save your money by not spending it on silly outfits because at the end of the day, you will be saving all of us a bunch of bandwidth as well.

In the run up to the release of the NXE I have often commented on how I think the avatars are just a silly idea and that I really don’t see the point to them. Well I now need to publically take that back, you see I was busy creating mine yesterday and half way through the process my daughter …

A rep from Microsoft has complained that Microsoft has completely screwed a lot of them over by releasing the NXE update, which was rumoured to start causing RROD's, right after the time that a lot of customers warranties had ended.... Apparently the update has been causing a lot of issues for users and caused the MS service lines to explode with calls of complaint. The rep from Microsoft had the following to say: "I hate what the company did this year," "They released the New Xbox Experience a few days after the extended warranty period ended for most users and it's tough to explain that to raging callers. How do you say that MS just screwed them all?" Ouch, not afraid to tell it like it is I see. More of this whole mess, after the jump. The rep also went on to say that: "our bosses really fed us to the lions this time. We're getting everything from crying kids to death threats from angry adults. It's an orgy, I tell ya." Now while I don't want to move the focus away from how incredibly bad the NXE experience has been for many people, I really had to laugh at this next bit. The rep also said that some callers were blaming the update for some of the most ludicrous things.... Well, someone actually phoned in to complain that the his power went out after updating to the new dashboard. Well angry caller, look on the bright side, at least that way you were safe from having a RROD burn your house down, just like in those other reported cases. I can't see the release date of the NXE being a coincidence, so this whole deal of releasing just after a lot of peoples warranties had expired was a pretty mean trick to pull. Any South African users experienced a RROD after the update?

Joystiq reported that Bungie engineers have said that installing Halo 3 to the harddrive using the NXE’s new install feature will actually result in less than optimal play. Installing games can result in slightly faster load times most of the time although from the games that I’ve tested – Gears 2, Fable 2 and Fallout 3 the sppeed increase in …

By now you are all very obviously aware that the NXE dashboard update has been released and is impressing a lot of 360 owners the world over. Lazygamer reported earlier today that there are some issues in the form of an error coming up when you try and view certain pages. It also now seems as though that isn't the only problem. Before the release of NXE, Microsoft promised that the old themes from the original dashboard (OXE?) would work seamlessly and also look great, but the truth is that they just don't. Although I found an article about this on OXM's website, it was one of the first things that I realised when I booted up into the new dashboard. Not only are the background images not suited to the new layout that has windows running through the centre of the screen, but the images seem to also be stretched wider and have a definite loss in quality as a result (see header image). Although I don't feel as though it is a major issue, I am not the type of gamer that spends a lot of Microsoft Points on themes and gamer pictures, so I can understand if those who do are not very impressed with the translation over to the NXE. I'm sure that more little issues are going to be popping up here and there, there are rumours flying around that the NXE is causing RROD's, but until we are sure that it is not just one or two random cases, we won't be saying anything about it just yet.

It’s arrived and has now been downloaded by millions of people all over the world and the servers have stood up to the initial strain and everything has kept on ticking over which must make the Engineers in Redmond ecstatic. However it’s not all perfect and along with some freezing issues a new nemesis has raised it’s ugly head. Last …

Capcom has announced that they will have a new branded company storefront coming to the New Xbox Experience today, and according to Joystiq they may have slipped up a bit when it comes to a certain screenshot they released that shows the release date for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix. The image in question shown above, clearly states …