Class-based generic view is a nice addition. I remember when I was learning Django and going through the official tutorial, that was one part that took me a while to understand. Kudos guys!
People have been using the term 'class-based views' to describe the new feature but am I right in thinking this only affects generic views?
Well, it affects generic views, yes. They also have several mixins that you can use in other views.
No, you can make your own class based views with the 1.3 codebase. The docs describe them as replacing Generic Views, but nothing stops you from creating your own class hierarchy that inherits from the base TemplateView (http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/ref/class-based-views/#...)