When I booted up my Xbox 360 on yesterday morning, on the launch day of the much-hyped New Xbox Experience, I did feel a little anxious. Having already suffered with two instances of the much maligned "red rings of death" issue, I can't say I have much faith when it comes to Microsoft's hardware and its dashboard updates.

After installing NXE and choosing a suitably groovy avatar, I flicked through the funky new dashboard smoothly enough until I tried to access the section, 'Games with Avatars.' Much to my annoyance, my console froze. Thinking this was going to be the start of my third RRoD experience, I called Microsoft every "mutha 'uckin" name under the sun and hastily switched the console off in the hope that I'd limit any damage.

Luckily, I've been able to turn the console back on and get back onto the dash, but I certainly won't be accessing the same section for fear that it will cause further problems. Since the freezing issue, I've only spent 10 minutes or so on Xbox live, but I'm still nervous that if I go rooting around the new dash I'll see a repeat performance, or even worse. I immediately went online to see if others were experiencing similar issues.

Lo and behold, reports are gathering pace around the net of various problems caused by the New Xbox Experience update with complaints of slow downs, lock ups, display issues and connection freezes.

At this stage, only 24 hours since the NXE launched, we're not sure of the scale of the problem, but it's obviously significant enough for Xbox live's Major Nelson to respond.

"We are aware some of you may be experiencing a few hiccups along the way. The LIVE team is closely monitoring the LIVE service and Xbox.com and are aware of a few issues including what's happening with Marketplace. The team is actively working on the issues, so thanks for bearing with us."

Hiccups we can deal with.

There are also reports that modded consoles have been suffering the RRoD since the update, suggesting that Microsoft has put some security in place to detect such hardware. Maybe this could be the root of the problem?

Anyone else suffered any issues?

Source :: Xbox 360 QJ