Yippee…! Last night I booted up my Xbox 360 to play a little Far Cry 2 and was pleasantly surprised to see my old 360 dashboard morph into the much touted New Xbox Experience, 1full day before the expected launch date. As it turns out - everyone who signed up for the beta program, and not previously accepted, was granted access as of last night.

After creating a reasonable facsimile of myself in the new Avatar creation tool (much to the dismay of my wife who was a little creeped out by my anime-styled clone) I headed straight for the goods: the new Netflix integration. In case you hadn’t heard, Netflix has joined up with Microsoft to stream all of their on-demand titles directly to subscribers’ Xbox consoles. At their second-to-lowest subscription package, this means near-instant - and unlimited - access to streaming content straight from Netflix vaults.

While the selection of goods is a little on the pale side, at least compared to their full library, it’s an absolute steal at the price. Of course, you still get access to their DVD-rental service and can stream the content to your PC as well.

I don’t mean to make this sound like a damn infomercial, but Netflix support is without a doubt the coolest feature the Xbox 360 has going for it right now (I mean, aside from all the game-playing and whatnot). I can’t wait for less mainstream fare to become available - although Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God and The Short Films of David Lynch are nothing to sneeze at. And more HD programming would be welcome. But, other than that, nicely played, Microsoft!

And buh-bye pay-per-view!

I spent the better part of the weekend playing Fallout 3 (which is predictably excellent - though not as excellent as Far Cry 2 IMHO - I’ll be happy to provide reasons, if anyone asks) and I came across this funny video on YouTube.

It probably bears explaining that the beginning tutorial of Fallout 3 takes you from birth though your 18th year, at which point you exit the vault and venture out into the postapocalyptic ruins of Washington D.C. Seems some crafty bloke found a way out of the vault while you’re fiddling with the controls as a baby.

Wonder how long an un-chaperoned baby would last in the Wasteland? I bet he’d be radscorpion chow in minutes seconds.

Frustratingly, though - the video doesn’t show what actually happens when you try and actually leave…it stops just short of the final door. C’mon!

Kotaku reports that Final Fantasy XIII will appear on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, on the same day as it hits the PS3.

Sony - you have been kicked in the nuts.

I don’t really care much for Dragonball-Z. I don’t dislike it, but it’s really never done much for me either. So it was curiosity of the merest kind that made me download the Xbox 360 demo for the new Dragonball-Z game Burst Limit. There was a tinge of double-trepidation here - in addition to not caring much for the license, Bandai Games has a pretty well-deserved reputation for creating bucketloads of licensed game crap (although their merger with Namco seems to be moving the company in the right direction).

Man - this game is all kinds of awesome. From the 1 or 2 episodes of the show that I’ve seen, I can say the gameplay mirrors the show perfectly. The graphics look like hand-drawn animation and the battles are interrupted by anime-style cutscenes depending on what you do during the battle. It’s exceptionally cool. So cool, in fact, that when I stopped by Gamestop the other day I promptly pre-ordered a copy of the game. It doesn’t hurt that Gamestop is offering a free DBZ t-shirt and Season 1 dvd with the pre-order.