Microsoft blessed the Xbox 360 faithful with a dashboard update this week. But this wasn’t just any old update – this was a complete rethinking of the interface from the ground up. Their moniker for it – New Xbox Experience (NXE) – is certainly apt, and I for one find it to be a welcome change. There was a lot to like about the old dashboard, but as time wore on, it started to suffer from feature creep to the point where the once-logical layout became cluttered and somewhat confusing. A big contributing factor to this was the Xbox Live Marketplace (XBLM), as it added a completely new section to the dashboard, and was never particularly well laid-out to begin with.

But after spending a couple of days with the new dash it’s safe to say that it’s a solid improvement over what was there before, both visually and functionally. They took a page from Sony in terms of an overall metaphor – both the NXE and Sony’s dash, the Xross Media Bar (XMB), use one axis for your main navigation and the other for sub navigation. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, as the PS3′s nav stretches horizontally across the screen while the 360′s scrolls vertically.

They both seem to operate in a reasonably snappy fashion – there was a bit of slowness (mostly in the marketplace) when the NXE launched, but now it performs at a speed that feels faster than the original. Even better, it doesn’t feel like an afterthought anymore. It’s clearly intended as part of the dashboard instead of feeling like an added application on the PS3. It matches everything around it and makes great use of the new interface.

But what about the other content? The NXE presents the information in big bold boxes, so there’s rarely any guesswork to be had as far as what exactly you’re getting into. The information is the hero, and it’s provided in easy-to-read type on a pretty blue gradient. It also just seems to relish the ability to give you that information. Sony opts to use small, monochromatic icons for most functions, which doesn’t really hinder anything, but it doesn’t really make things easier to find either; I sense that most either rely on labels or memorize the icons that they most frequently use. It’s kind of like comparing Web 2.0-style information delivery to that of a 1337 Flash Developer from the early 2000′s.

While that my sound like an insult, I think it’s just very indicative of Sony’s style of doing things. They’re giving you an icon and a title; consider it a bonus if you get more information than that as it would be an aesthetic sacrifice to do so. Microsoft clearly doesn’t think that way, and never has. Their information delivery has always been dictated by space on the 360, and now they’ve given themselves much more flexibility in that regard.

All in all, I think Microsoft hit it out of the park here, and has the best dashboard experience of any console.