I HEART CHAOS

When the big visual overhaul to the Xbox 360 dashboard goes live tomorrow, it will not only bring the 360 dashboard in line with Microsoft’s Metro UI cross platform standard, but it will allow you to use your Kinect to control the dashboard through motion and voice.

The real change to the dashboard, is not in its looks, but in the greatly expanded voice and motion control. Pulled way beyond the “Kinect Hub” on the current interface, users can use their hands and voices to navigate through the vast majority of Xbox menus. This expansion, combined with the console’s new Bing integration, has made searching for content on Xbox Live far more intuitive.

Users interested in taking in a flick with a particular actor can now search for that actor by simply telling their Kinect, “Bing Christian Bale” or “Bing Robert DeNiro.” Instead of having to search for something in each of the services on the platform, users will be able to see all mentions of that keyword in all content across all Xbox Live services. So a search for Christian Bale could theoretically bring up everything from “Batman Begins” on-demand to the soundtrack from “Newsies” from across several different services. Users can, of course, also type in their Bing searches through a controller-based menu.

The updates seem to make the Xbox more of an entertainment hub than just a game console. In the new menu, “Games” is now the third item in the list behind movies, videos and music. 

The hub will also come with a brand new YouTube channel, Facebook integration if you want to brag about your game achievements on Facebook and “beacons” to let friends know that you want to play a certain game through Xbox Live or Facebook.

Via