Kinect-enabled Xbox Live Dashboard Update Released

After months of speculation and beta-testing, Microsoft updated the Xbox Live Dashboard earlier today, so the next time you hop onto the service, you’ll be prompted to install it. The major feature of this update is to enable Kinect support, but there are a couple of other notable introductions as well, such as ESPN content streaming, Netflix search, support for Zune pass and more.

Being that this is a major Dashboard refresh, I had expected to see something quite different, but that’s not the case at all. Overall, the structure is identical to before, although the entire graphical template has been overhauled. The look is much more modern, although there is a lot of white, which is sure to frustrate some – especially those with bright screens.

For party gamers, there’s a new audio codec introduced that’s supposed to increase the clarity of everyone connected, and so far, the reception to that seems to be good. There’s also been some reorganization going on, but being that I don’t take full advantage of Xbox Live, I couldn’t immediately spot any real differences. The biggest changes have to do with orders, and little else.

Despite being a minor change on the surface, the new Dashboard does look good, and its performance seems to have been improved as well. I do find it to be a little unstable, in that I couldn’t get onto Xbox Live until after I rebooted the console after the install, and likewise, the entire service seems to be rather slow. That could be due to the fact that the servers are overloaded, but even so, it’s a little frustrating.

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