Microsoft just has just unlocked the first clothing pack for our NXE avatars; a winter themed collection of hat, gloves and the sort, to keep your virtual avatar warm in his/her virtual winter.

Each gender has four new items of clothing to pick from. And best of all? They’re free!

To access them, all you need to do is going to the avatar customisation page. Yup, it really is that simple.

It looks like this is going to be the way avatar clothing is unlocked for the near future, at least until the Avatar Store launches in April next year. What kind of clothing would you like to see?

With the launch of the new NXE and the “avatars” system, some gamers have been frustrated with the system’s limited selection of virtual clothing. We can relax those concerns for now at least; most of it will be free for the foreseeable future.

Talking to German website Dreisechzig, Xbox German product manager Boris Schneider-Johne confirmed that the first few weeks of new Avatar clothes will be available for free, but future ones may come at a price, depending on consumer reaction.

“More costumes will be made available for free in the next weeks” says Schneider-Johne, adding “what’s going to happen as of spring is yet to be announced.”

Real money for virtual clothing? Well, crazier things have happened…

The time is finally here; the NXE is finally live, and ready to download. Simply log into your Xbox Live account, and you will be prompted to update your console.

“It has begun”

You can find some information on what the New Xbox Experience brings to the table here

Once you’ve finally updated, come back here and let us know exactly what you think of the new (and hopefully improved) Xbox experience.

After a day of maintenance, the Xbox.com website has come back online, and has added a number of additions to its functionality in the process; avatars in profiles, and the web-based Marketplace, which is almost complete.

The new web-based Marketplace will allow people logged into their Gamertags to buy stuff directly from the Live Store on their computer, and then download it free of charge to their Xbox 360 whenever they want.

Also, those who already have the NXE installed on their computer and have created an avatar will now see them included on their profile pages on the website.

The New Xbox Experience launched tomorrow, worldwide.

You’d better be, because it’s just around the corner; the New Xbox Experience (NXE) will be a compulsory download for anyone hoping to access Xbox Live after it finally hits down on November 19th.

It’s definately been worth the wait though.

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