New Xbox Dashboard brings Cloud storage, Beacons, and more on December 6

by Ben Gilbert on Nov 22nd 2011 9:24AM

Despite a 2AM email announcing it, we managed to find out that December 6 is the big day for Microsoft's next Xbox 360 dashboard update. Major Nelson reconfirmed as much this morning on his blog, noting the variety of new features that the update will bring: cloud storage for games saves and profiles, beacons and Facebook sharing, "enhanced family settings," a more thorough set of voice commands with Kinect, and, of course, Bing voice search (US, UK, and Canada).

Beyond the new functionality, the Dashboard will see a visual redesign, and the introduction of "customized applications for television, movies, internet videos, sports and music" (YouTube, cable TV, and so forth). Frankly, we're just eager to keep talking to a machine instead of leaving the couch.

Via: The Verge
Source: Major Nelson

Tags: dashboard-update, dashboard-update-fall-2011, microsoft, q4-2011, release-date, xbox

Reader Comments (99)

Recently had some game saves go corrupt... again. Cloud storage really is long overdue. Better late than never.

@jsx92

F'n A!

@jsx92

Did anybody at joystiq sign up for the beta tests? it seems kinda late to announce some of these features. i've been enjoying the cloud storage feature now for a while but the only bummer i've encountered is not being able to access last.fm. anybody else have that problem??

BTW, for those who sign up to use the cloud storage, your xbox WILL NOT turn off immediately because it updates your cloud info at shut off time. so it will take about 5 seconds or so for your console to shut off from the time you turn it off. it had me worried for a bit so i thought i'd share that.

@jsx92

"Recently had some game saves go corrupt... again."

Is that a common issue on 360?

@jsx92
How would cloud storage prevent corrupt data? wouldn't it just upload the corrupt data to the servers?

@Co

I've used mine regularly for 6 years and have never had a game save go corrupt.

@jsx92

gald I mostly game on the PS3...the cloud. MS Xbox playing catch up

@JTiizii

LOL..fanboy... I game on a gaming system, now if I want to talk Im going to use my Cell Phone... thats what phones are for.

BTW I have an Xbox, I would game on it if it actually had games come out for it other than Kinect.. it took a full year for an exclusive to come out...enjoy the cross game chat because without games what else can you do

@latin trident Someone didn't read the NDA.

Splendid. Always sad to see the end of a dashboard's era (I still miss the blades) but nevertheless, I'm pretty jazzed for this.

@Shadowbender

Do you have a kinect? If so, it's pretty impressive how most features of this interface work with it. Being able to get back to zero after drilling down several menus by saying "Go Home" is super satisfying.

@baby sea tuna

I just may buy one during the blackest of all Fridays, because I'm highly curious to see the new features.

@baby sea tuna

"after drilling down several menus"

Sounds like an issue and oversight in and of itself.

Band-Aiding it with Kinect "Go Home" hardly sounds like a solution either, considering like 87% of all 360 owners dont own/use Kinect.

@Co

Because you've never used the home button on the Wii remote to skip backing out of menus before? Don't make this out to be more than it is, the more complicated menu systems become these days, the more shortcuts are needed. I guess it's a lot easier to check out what your friends are playing, compare your achievements, and send messages on the Wii than on the Xbox, since you can't do any of that shit anyway.

As for your "nobody has kinect" statement, the Xbox jewel and Y button can serve the same purpose. It's just not as cool to do.

Seriously though, why do you even post on these Xbox threads? You don't have one, nor do you have any interest in getting one, and you never contribute anything useful...so what's the point?

@baby sea tuna

because....wait for it......he's a douche?

@Shadowbender

I loved the blades too. Takes me back.

@Co i'm in the beta and the new dash is stunning. kinect is EVERYWHERE in the dash. people are saying way too much as it is about the new dash (all of you are still under NDA!!!!) but kinect navigation through everything is fast and nice. faster than a controller once you get used to things. you can hand navigate or voice navigate but you no longer have to scroll through things with a controller. if you know exactly where you want to go, just say it. even browsing through the game marketplace or videos is so much nicer. i'm stopping now! already said too much. :p

@baby sea tuna

"I guess it's a lot easier to check out what your friends are playing, compare your achievements, and send messages on the Wii than on the Xbox, since you can't do any of that shit anyway."

hahaha BURN!

@onlysublime Funny thing about the NDA. Once a feature has been revealed by Microsoft (or even by someone else violating the NDA) you are free to talk about it. If you bothered to read it, you'd know that.

Soo... will all those themes I bought still work here? I haven't heard anything about it yet.

@Tommy758

They'll still work, they just will have that big rectangle in front of them. IF it's a premium theme, the little setpieces will still show up when you click on your friends.

@Tommy758
If you got the themes for the cool little scenes behind your friends avatars you're not going to be happy. The only time I've seen one show up is when I clicked on my own avatar/profile to look at cheavos.

@Tommy758 Yes all mine still work

I'm most excited for cloud storage of game saves and profiles. No more carting your profile and save data around on a flash drive to a buddy's house

@The Tim That's the only reason I bought the flash drive...being able to access my save game on someone else's Xbox just by signing in kinda blows my mind. I have a friend who strictly plays co-op games with me, and for one game the save will be under her name and another under my name but on her Xbox. I am excited.

@The Tim It's only 512MB of cloud storage.

@ Eric

512mb should be enough. My profile only takes up 4 mb when I move it to a flash. And you shouldn't need to have every save on the cloud all the time. That's not a ton of storage space but it's usable

@The Tim
your profile wil be on the cloud already no need to put it in you 512mb

I WANT THE BLADES BACK! WAAAAAAA!!!!

@shard765

Just hit the Xbox jewel, voila! Blades!

@baby sea tuna Haha, yeah I know. I actually already have this update. I was just playing devils advocate for the people that STILL miss the original horrible interface.

i thought xbox had cloud storage already o_O when my old xbox got stolen & got a new one not only did i get my profile back but my saves as well O.O maybe i just imagined that other part though.

@Knives Chau - Some XBLA games save your game progress to your XBL profile (I know Twisted Pixel's games are like that as an example) so you'll always have the saves for those games when you're signed into your profile but that is different than the cloud storage feature.

Will we have to pay for Cloud Storage? Like PS3 owners do?

I actually prefer the blades now that I think about it. They were really cool.

This new dashboard update is just a gimmick P.R. move to get people to "like" the new Windows 8...er...Windows 9....er whatever system's supposedly out. (shows how much I care to know about Windows products).

This new menu will have people begging for an easier way to navigate, for the next NEXT dashboard update in 2013. lol

PIGEONS!

@EechuTah
you already paid for it.

@EechuTah

Yes and no. I assume it is gold exclusive, but then again everyone is already paying for that.

@EechuTah - You do have to be an Xbox Live Gold member to use Cloud Storage, yes.

@EechuTah

I'm guessing it's gold only.

@EechuTah Just a gimmick? Have you even tried it yet? It's a lot cleaner, and more visually appealing.

@Uberdave everyone isn't paying for Gold....there are far more XBL accounts than there are Gold ones.....

I bet Microsoft has ad-ded a bunch of ad-ditional features that ad-d alot to the user experience.

Skimming over the top options of the interface, thought the third option was "soul".

So, Microsoft's great new plan for an interface is... the XMB...

@Gibbeynator

Well, it is the vastly superior interface.

Though Microsoft kind of ruins in the simple, elegant design by spamming you with advertisements.

@Gibbeynator
Haha, I hadn't thought of that, but there are similarities. Since I own both and am in the dashboard beta, I can say that they aren't really that alike, however. This new dash is really cool.

The PS3 menu might be much faster and simpler but it's also an organizational disaster. The options menu is like a mile long and there's TWO top menu items for video, TWO for PSN. It's also kind of tricky to find the Blu-Ray disc if you have some Qriocity downloads mixed in with it in the video menu.

Someone needs to hire an Apple GUI designer or a web designer for their next console's menu system. These engineers just don't understand.

@Gibbeynator

You have obviously never seen WMC from WindowsXP. XMB is almost a direct rip of that.

@jsx92

Hate to break it to you, this new dash is the same. There's a video section, but Netflix is now in an completely unnecessary "Apps" section. Also, some other things don't make sense. For example, to change themes you have to go to the "Social" section, click on yourself, and then go to themes... that makes little sense. On the XMB it's just Settings and then Themes... makes perfect sense. So let's not pretend the 360 dash doesn't have it's own oddities. It always has.

@jsx92

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the TV section. So there's arguably 3 video sections on the 360 dash.

How underwhelming.

I guess it's Microsoft, so I shouldn't have expected anything else.

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New Xbox Dashboard brings Cloud storage, Beacons, and more on December 6

Reader Comments (99)

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:32AM jsx92 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:20AM drballsey said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:25AM latin trident said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:28AM Co said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:42AM eat it said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:58AM Cletus VanDamme said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 12:06PM eescala7 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 1:10PM eescala7 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 6:04PM Ghost Toon said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:32AM Shadowbender said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:49AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:57AM Shadowbender said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:30AM Co said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:56AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 11:04AM Cletus VanDamme said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 12:28PM Mode7James said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 3:06PM onlysublime said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 3:45PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Nov 24th 2011 12:37PM MDizzy said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:34AM Tommy758 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:41AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:43AM Brando Calrissian said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 11:04AM Stuwie said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:34AM The Tim said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:44AM radioactivez0r said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:19AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:26AM The Tim said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:41AM Protege420 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:34AM shard765 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:42AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:02AM shard765 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:37AM Knives Chau said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:02AM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:39AM EechuTah said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:54AM Roxas560 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:56AM Uberdave said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:56AM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:57AM Vcize said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:57AM carbonize said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 11:12AM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:41AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:41AM Daverator said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:42AM Gibbeynator said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:52AM houstons85 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:58AM theSkillfull1 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 10:03AM jsx92 said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 1:29PM Ordeith said

Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 3:09PM Vidikron said

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Posted: Nov 22nd 2011 9:51AM houstons85 said

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