MS will block NXE preview blaggers
Beta users can't upgrade mates' 360s.
Microsoft has now notified everyone who has been accepted into the New Xbox Experience preview programme ahead of the service launch on 19th November. Bad luck if you didn't make the cut.
However, if you know someone who did make the cut and are thinking about slyly upgrading your system using pulleys, levers and borrowed hard disks, think again: according to the email sent out to participants, you'll be frozen out for doing so.
That's according to the notification email, dug up by vg247, which states: "In participation with this programme, you should not move your storage device (hard drive, or memory unit if you do not have a hard drive) to any other console as it will also update that console.
"If an unregistered console is updated with the NXE update, that console will not be able to connect to Xbox LIVE until the NXE has been officially released on November 19th." Which would obviously be a bad thing, although presumably you would still be able to tool around offline.
Given that New Xbox Experience is built on a streaming content model, with images and other data fed to the various swishy menus via background downloads, though, the experience would be somewhat weaker for the disconnection. Plus of course you couldn't lord it over all your friends.
Look out for our thoughts on the New Xbox Experience, which we've been playing around with this week, sometime late tomorrow or over the weekend.