XBox Live is preparing a dashboard redesign for release this fall.
This article has all the details. Release date is set for 25 October. Update : More recent info has release set for 15 November.
I agree with the above article, the present dashboard is cluttered and is due for a redesign. There have been a number of additions (Netflix, facebook) that have contributed to this clutter.
This update is to focus on performance, discoverability and voice.
For me, increased functionality to voice will be welcome. Last month our old, white 360 finally gave up the ghost after a few weeks of the occasional 3 red rings. So we went whole hog with a new black 360 with Kinect. I thought my five year old daughter would get some use out of the motion games (she is not very good with a controller) and I was curious as to how it worked. We also signed up for netflix. My wife had signed us up for several different video delivery services, so going with instant delivery over the internet seemed a no brainer, compared with waiting for them to send you the disk of their choosing through the mail.
One thing that disappointed me about voice functionality was that it did not seem to work for certain functions. Being able to pick or play a movie with voice or gestures is less useful if I have to pick up the controller to get through certain parts of the process. This update should fix that.
Just by looking at the pictures of the new dashboard, the performance improvements are obvious. No more endless scrolling to find a deal of the week.
The discoverability aspect has to do with the use of Bing to search for movies, games, etc. There is not too much out there about how well the search functions. I will reserve judgement until I have a chance to test it.
Cautiously optimistic about October 25th. (or November 15th)
No comments:
Post a Comment