Like it, love it, or hate it, we've all pretty much seen what the New Xbox Experience is all about. Early on, however, it carried a rather different aesthetic, as design/animation studio Gridplane has revealed.

Gridplane spent a few months working with Microsoft's XBOX 360 group developing concepts for the latest graphical user interface for the XBOX 360 console.

The time was spent exploring many ways that a new menu system could allow users to browse and navigate game libraries, music, movies and TV shows. Oh, and play games too. In addition to the menu systems, we dreamt up an immersive 3D environment for users to explore the latest games, events and online activity within the XBOX Live community. -- Gridplane

You can find more screens of the prototype NXE in the link above. Joystiq comments:

While the mock-up is stylistically impressive, it all looks a little too much like we forgot our glasses somewhere. Luckily, the final NXE nabbed some of the best ideas and ditched the whole "ethereal plane" look this version seems to evoke.

So, which version do you like better?