Microsoft is clocking in some serious overtime hours this Fall. Just a few hours following the debut of their first Surface television commercial, the company has announced that the 2012 Xbox 360 dashboard update has begun rolling out to consoles worldwide tonight.
Major Nelson has all of the details, and while it may not be as huge of a change as last year this update is no slouch. Beginning tonight and continuing in the next few weeks, expect to see all of the following goodies make their way to your Xbox 360:
- Refreshed Xbox 360 Dashboard
- Internet Explorer for Xbox (supports HTML5 video)
- Recommendations and Ratings (user reviews and Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings)
- Pinning (Pin your favorite movies, TV shows, games, music, videos and websites right to the home screen)
- Xbox Video (buy or rent TV shows and movies in instant HD streaming)
- Recent (a list of movies, games, apps or other types of content recently)
- Enhanced Search (Added genre search to the list, so now you can search for action, comedy, romance, drama or sci-fi. Bing voice search now includes results for video across the Web, including YouTube)
- International Expansion of Voice Search (We’ve expanded our Kinect voice search capabilities to 9 new countries – Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Ireland.)
Not mentioned on the list is Xbox Music, but rest assured it will be active once your console updates to the latest version. Unfortunately Xbox 360 users won't have access to the free ad-supported music streaming, but it will support streaming with a Xbox Music Pass and purchasing of music. Also for those curious, Xbox SmartGlass will be lying dormant in the Xbox 360 until Windows 8 is released.
The dashboard update is seeing a gradual rollout, so if you don't see it tonight you might not want to bother staying up late.
Source: Major Nelson
