Major Nelson, who is currently chilling out and live-blogging in Japan at the Tokyo Game Show, just confirmed that the New Xbox Experience will officially launch on November 19th.  Additionally, he went over some of the new features, such as taking a picture of your Mii Avatar to use as your GamerPic, as well as the ability to surf the Marketplace on the web and buy stuff to be downloaded to your 360 later.

If it weren’t for the stupid new interface, I would be much more excited about this update.  Lots of good features but at the cost of looking totally “casual”.  The gods shall damn thee, Microsoft…

Source: Major Nelson

Electronic Arts has released a demo of NBA Live 09 today. New features like the Pick and Roll Control, Defensive Lockdown Control, Signature Playcalling, and Quickstrike Ankle-Breakers will make the NBA Live experience so much more fun.

The demo, which weighs in at about 694 MB, gives players the first chance to check out NBA Live 09 as you recreate the 2008 NBA Finals matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. You can choose to play with their current rosters or take it to another level by stepping back in time and playing two different games based on the player’s performance in two of their classic matchups with the all new feature called NBA Rewind.

If I’ve got anything to do with it, I’ll make sure this year’s Finals matchup is entirely different and have the Lakers end up winning — the way it should have been back in June.

I actually already had a chance to get my hands on NBA Live 09 when I went to E3 back in July. Check out my hands-on preview of NBA Live 09 and then hop onto Xbox Live and download the demo now!

Source: Major Nelson

More Halo 3 stuff… yay. In addition to the new gamer pics and theme, check out what else is new on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Full details after these commercial messages.

Themes

Samsung Halo 3 – Theme
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Canada, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, United States

Gamer Pictures

Samsung Halo 3 – Gamer Pictures
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Canada, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, United States

Trailers

Frontlines: Fuel of War – Kulkuneuvotaistelun opetusvideo – Traileri (HD)
Price: Free
Availability: Finland

Frontlines: Fuel of War – Vídeo de instrucción para soporte aéreo – Tráiler (HD)
Price: Free
Availability: Spain

Bully: Scholarship Edition Trailer
Price: Free
Availability: Not available in Asia

Lost Via Domus – The Game Trailer (HD)
Price: Free
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions

Videos

Gears of War 2 GDC 2008
Price: Free
Availability: Japan

consol.at LIVE, Episode 2 – Video (HD)
Price: Free
Availability: Austria

In Game Content

Lost Odyssey – Double Bonus Pack
Price: Free
Availability: Asia

In an attempt to get you more excited about Fable 2’s release, Peter Molyneux and the studly geniuses at Lionhead are giving you an early taste in the form of an Xbox Live Arcade game.

Keystone is a downloadable XBLA game that will release prior to Fable 2. It’s just one of the many mini-games found in Fable 2, but Keystone will let you gamble and win gold that you can then transfer into your Fable 2 saved game. You can be a rich bitch before you even enter the world of Albion!

No release date has been given for either Fable 2 or Keystone, but the stars are aligning for a Summer delivery. Keystone already looks ready to go, so it can up and surprise us at any time. Be on the lookout for that crafty bastard on the marketplace, or just stay tuned to Ripten and we’ll let you know when it’s coming out.

A fan of Stranglehold? Well then I have some good news for you. Today Midway have released 10 new Stranglehold maps onto the North American Xbox Live marketplace.

You can now go guns a-blazing from Kowloon Market to the Rooftops of Chicago. Accompanying the new maps, come 21 new online character skins and 10 new achievements stacking up to 250 points.

The bad news?  Even though you get a lot of bang for your buck, it’s $15.  Are Midway going to do well with this pack?  Only time will tell.

As for the PS3 version, these maps are “Coming Soon”, which is understandable since the game released later on this platform.

As we previously reported, Xbox Live has not been having a good time, what with all the disconnects and general wonkiness. All this was meant to be fixed by the end of the weekend.

Well, the weekend is officially over and the service is officially “getting better” – so says Major Nelson.

Given that my beloved Live is now working again, I “jumped in” to reminisce about all of the things that made me enjoy Xbox Live in the first place.

So, without further ado, I present to you the Top 5 Reasons to Love Xbox Live!

5. Universal Gamertag – No matter what game I play, my Gamertag is the same. People that meet me on Call of Duty 4 can see my tag again later in any other game, and they know I’m the same guy.

The last people you played with show up in a “players list”, which if I look at now… wait… oh, I guess I haven’t played with anybody, EVER, because my players list is empty. Weird…

4. Friends List – Unlike other services, which I refuse to mention, my friends list is tied to my Gamertag, so I can always see what my friends are doing – watching a movie, playing any game, etc.

For example, right now all of my friends are… uh… I guess they are all offline. Either that, or I’m not really online. Hmmm…..

No you won’t Robbie, nobody will be

3. Marketplace - The Marketplace is awesome, offering movies, television shows, original Xbox games, Live Arcade games, demos and trailers for upcoming 360 games.

They just released a demo for Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom that I really want to check out, but I’m unable to retrieve content from the Marketplace.

2. Media Center – If you have a Media Center PC, you can easily stream movies, pictures, and music from your computer to your TV through your 360. Even non-Media Center PCs can do most of this without any problems.

Right now a friend of mine “found” I Am Legend on his PC, so we’re going to watch it on his big-screen. What? You must sign in to view this content? I thought I was signed in? And why would I need to sign in to look at crap on my PC, er, his PC anyways? Well, never mind. I guess we’ll actually go pay for it and watch it in the theater like suckers.

1. You’re Always Connected – From the moment I turn my 360 on, my Gamertag auto-signs me in, and I am connected to everything – Marketplace, Friends, my PC. I can launch a game and immediately get into multiplayer, or I can join a friend’s game in progress.

This is something I would love to do right now, but whenever I attempt to do so my dashboard screams obscenities at me (not that I could see or connect to any of my friends anyways). This is the best feature Xbox Live offers, and it’s the one thing that gets people to pay to upgrade to a Gold membership. So that begs the question: What exactly am I paying Microsoft for again?

So as you can see, there is plenty to love about Xbox Live. I wish I could love those things right now, but I can’t.

For me, Xbox Live is the worst it’s ever been, so I’m not quite sure what language Major Nelson was speaking when he said the service is “getting better”.

Major Nelson and his bottle of lies

Hopefully Microsoft realizes that they need to apologize to all the Live subscribers if they wish to keep us as just that – paying subscribers. And by apologize, I mean I want some free shit… or some cake.