 Hey, this is Ross with The Verge, and we are checking out the new Fall 2011 Xbox Live Dashboard Update. It should be launching to all Xbox 360 consoles in the week of December 4th. So the first thing you will notice with the new update, this is actually the second big visual revision after the Blades that it launched with in the new Xbox Experience that came out a couple years ago. In fact, it mirrors very similar to the Metro UI design you've seen in Windows Phone devices in the upcoming Windows 8 panel, and even the Kinect Hub that we saw a preview of back about a year ago when the Kinect launched. Now speaking of the Kinect, there's actually a lot of improved Kinect functionality, first and foremost being the Bing search that you can actually access with your voice. If you go all the way to the left panel, you'll see Bing search for apps, search for whatever. You can do it as a text thing, but it's actually the biggest pain. Better yet, from anywhere in the menu, you can just go ahead and scream, Xbox Bing the Gun Stringer. There you go, just thinking. This Bing search only works when you're connected on Live, and what it'll do, it lets you search for games, movies, TVs, anything that Microsoft offers and can let you download and or purchase. So as you see here, we have a couple choices for the Gun Stringer, the game itself, a launch trailer, a few ads, it's always there. So let's go ahead and take a look at this. We can also do it by search, by voice. Xbox, the Gun Stringer, item 2, loads up. And we don't have the game yet, but it is a free download, so we can go ahead and just say, download. Once we get to the internal menu, we can use connect to WAV, but voice control is pretty much gone at this point. Go ahead and tap WAV, finds it, and confirming download. So in addition to games, you can also use Bing to search for the movies, TV, and music that Xbox offers. For example, let's give this a shot. Xbox, Bing Modern Family. Okay, as you see, we'll have Modern Family, which is available in multiple episodes, and for some reason, the Sonic Generations demo, American Idol Encore, downloadable music, opposite day and the like. Let's go ahead and look at what we wanted in Modern Family. Xbox, there you go. Modern Family, season 2, good cop, bad dog. Alright, and it lets you purchase through Zune Music. It is still a finicky service, but it is nice that, unlike last version of this, you can actually use more natural language. You can actually say the episodes you want. You don't just have to go panel one, panel two, and it does have that latent search function. So with this new update, Microsoft is making a much bigger push toward video, and including that, they're going to be updating the Netflix app and adding in a YouTube app, which is not here yet, but should be there launch week. They've overhauled the ESPN app. They've added Sci-Fi, Epix, Dailymotion. Devo should be coming up. There's a lot more apps. Verizon Fios will be adding live TV, as will Comcast, to various aspects. Basically, Microsoft's ultimate goal is to keep your Xbox on at all times and kind of watch video through the console itself with some added functionality. Let's go ahead and take a look at the Sci-Fi, which is offering some on-demand options. Okay, so after something of an elongated load time, you get the Sci-Fi menu. It has the exact same Metro UI as everything else on the new dashboard update. You can search through it. You can look through the new show content. You can look at some of the game trailers that Sci-Fi offers. But as with everything else, we're most interested in the more natural language connect voice options. Let's go ahead and give that a shot. Xbox, being human. You can use this to go through the entire system. Video, Casting Crew, Episode Guides. There goes the neighborhood part one. And from here, you can take a look at some of the information about the episode. You can get more video options. Or if you want, you can share. The other big thing Microsoft is touting with this update is the ability to share items through Facebook and even the most inane things like an episode of Being Human. So we can go ahead and do the share function. And what this will do is it will bring up my Facebook account. I've already got that tied in from earlier. And you can just add a wall post that says, exactly, it just says, you're interested in being a human episode. There's not a lot of functionality for this one, but they do have some cool Facebook features elsewhere in the new dashboard. Let's go out of here. So now again, there will be integration with Verizon Fios Live TV and on demand, Comcast Video on demand, and they will have some new apps like HBO Go and a new Netflix and of course, most excited of all, the YouTube app. Unfortunately, we don't have that in the preview, but it should be rolling out sometime this week. Now, some of the other big features that Microsoft is rolling out with the new update includes beacons and cloud storage. Now, let's go ahead and show beacons. The idea behind this is that there are times when I want to play a game like Call of Duty, but I do not want to wait. I want to go ahead and say I want to play the game, wait for my friends to get on, and at the same time, I'm going to go ahead and watch Netflix, Hulu, whatever. So to get there, you go from the friends, the social tab, go to your friends, and then go down to beacons and activity. Now, what we can do here is we can create a beacon, and this will basically say, it will tell me when my friends are playing this game, and if I want, I can add messages so other people can see my beacons. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to select Modern Warfare 3. The comment that's default is I want to play this game with friends. I'm going to go ahead and leave that, but you can modify it if you want. You can also choose to share to social networks, and you can tell everyone on Facebook, yes, I want to play this right now. Anyone who's seeing this, please come on and play with me. So let me go ahead and set the beacon. And that's it, and I have a, if I want to have a change of heart about sharing this on Facebook, I can do that, and I can also further modify the message. So I'm going to cancel. I don't want Facebook to see that. But all the same, my beacon is still there. And every time one of my friends starts playing Modern Warfare 3, I'll get an alert on the bottom. Anyone who wants to see, you know, go through their friend's beacon should be able to see this as well. So that's it. The other big new feature, if you go over to settings, is cloud storage. Now this one's, you have to enable, at least in this one, you have to enable yourself. But if you go over to system, you'll see storage options. From storage options, you'll see all devices, you'll see hard drive, and you'll see cloud saved games. It actually shows up just like the memory card in hard drive does. Now Microsoft is offering you 511 megs of storage in the cloud. And from there, if you are on someone else's Xbox, you can go ahead and bring in your save files, provided you've already saved them to the cloud. Now we've already had Call of Duty saved here. I'm going to go ahead and move it off just to show you how easy it is. And that's that. But if I want to move it back, I can do that. And then if I want to sign on to someone else's Xbox, all my save files where I last left off in the campaign, that will all show up. And this works for any game, just like a memory card. So that's kind of a general overview of what we're going to see for the new dashboard update. There's plenty more in store, a lot of video content to come, including the YouTube app, a much improved Netflix app we've seen a preview of, but we don't have it here, unfortunately. Now again, all that should be arriving the week of December 4th. It should roll to anyone that has an Xbox 360. And that's it. Now if you don't mind me, I'm going to start playing some Call of Duty. Come here, you. Come on. Off the set. Good boy.
 Hey, this is Ross with The Verge, and we are checking out the new Fall 2011 Xbox Live Dashboard
 Update. It should be launching to all Xbox 360 consoles in the week of December 4th.
 So the first thing you will notice with the new update, this is actually the second big
 visual revision after the Blades that it launched with in the new Xbox Experience that came
 out a couple years ago. In fact, it mirrors very similar to the Metro UI design you've
 seen in Windows Phone devices in the upcoming Windows 8 panel, and even the Kinect Hub that
 we saw a preview of back about a year ago when the Kinect launched. Now speaking of
 the Kinect, there's actually a lot of improved Kinect functionality, first and foremost being
 the Bing search that you can actually access with your voice. If you go all the way to
 the left panel, you'll see Bing search for apps, search for whatever. You can do it as
 a text thing, but it's actually the biggest pain. Better yet, from anywhere in the menu,
 you can just go ahead and scream, Xbox Bing the Gun Stringer. There you go, just thinking.
 This Bing search only works when you're connected on Live, and what it'll do, it lets you search
 for games, movies, TVs, anything that Microsoft offers and can let you download and or purchase.
 So as you see here, we have a couple choices for the Gun Stringer, the game itself, a launch
 trailer, a few ads, it's always there. So let's go ahead and take a look at this. We
 can also do it by search, by voice. Xbox, the Gun Stringer, item 2, loads up. And we
 don't have the game yet, but it is a free download, so we can go ahead and just say,
 download. Once we get to the internal menu, we can use connect to WAV, but voice control
 is pretty much gone at this point. Go ahead and tap WAV, finds it, and confirming download.
 So in addition to games, you can also use Bing to search for the movies, TV, and music
 that Xbox offers. For example, let's give this a shot. Xbox, Bing Modern Family. Okay,
 as you see, we'll have Modern Family, which is available in multiple episodes, and for
 some reason, the Sonic Generations demo, American Idol Encore, downloadable music,
 opposite day and the like. Let's go ahead and look at what we wanted in Modern Family.
 Xbox, there you go. Modern Family, season 2, good cop, bad dog. Alright, and it lets
 you purchase through Zune Music. It is still a finicky service, but it is nice that, unlike
 last version of this, you can actually use more natural language. You can actually say
 the episodes you want. You don't just have to go panel one, panel two, and it does have
 that latent search function. So with this new update, Microsoft is making a much bigger
 push toward video, and including that, they're going to be updating the Netflix app and adding
 in a YouTube app, which is not here yet, but should be there launch week. They've overhauled
 the ESPN app. They've added Sci-Fi, Epix, Dailymotion. Devo should be coming up. There's
 a lot more apps. Verizon Fios will be adding live TV, as will Comcast, to various aspects.
 Basically, Microsoft's ultimate goal is to keep your Xbox on at all times and kind of
 watch video through the console itself with some added functionality. Let's go ahead and
 take a look at the Sci-Fi, which is offering some on-demand options. Okay, so after something
 of an elongated load time, you get the Sci-Fi menu. It has the exact same Metro UI as everything
 else on the new dashboard update. You can search through it. You can look through the
 new show content. You can look at some of the game trailers that Sci-Fi offers. But
 as with everything else, we're most interested in the more natural language connect voice
 options. Let's go ahead and give that a shot. Xbox, being human. You can use this to go
 through the entire system. Video, Casting Crew, Episode Guides. There goes the neighborhood
 part one. And from here, you can take a look at some of the information about the episode.
 You can get more video options. Or if you want, you can share. The other big thing Microsoft
 is touting with this update is the ability to share items through Facebook and even the
 most inane things like an episode of Being Human. So we can go ahead and do the share
 function. And what this will do is it will bring up my Facebook account. I've already
 got that tied in from earlier. And you can just add a wall post that says, exactly, it
 just says, you're interested in being a human episode. There's not a lot of functionality
 for this one, but they do have some cool Facebook features elsewhere in the new dashboard. Let's
 go out of here. So now again, there will be integration with Verizon Fios Live TV and
 on demand, Comcast Video on demand, and they will have some new apps like HBO Go and a
 new Netflix and of course, most excited of all, the YouTube app. Unfortunately, we don't
 have that in the preview, but it should be rolling out sometime this week. Now, some
 of the other big features that Microsoft is rolling out with the new update includes beacons
 and cloud storage. Now, let's go ahead and show beacons. The idea behind this is that
 there are times when I want to play a game like Call of Duty, but I do not want to wait.
 I want to go ahead and say I want to play the game, wait for my friends to get on, and
 at the same time, I'm going to go ahead and watch Netflix, Hulu, whatever. So to get there,
 you go from the friends, the social tab, go to your friends, and then go down to beacons
 and activity. Now, what we can do here is we can create a beacon, and this will basically
 say, it will tell me when my friends are playing this game, and if I want, I can add messages
 so other people can see my beacons. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to select
 Modern Warfare 3. The comment that's default is I want to play this game with friends.
 I'm going to go ahead and leave that, but you can modify it if you want. You can also
 choose to share to social networks, and you can tell everyone on Facebook, yes, I want
 to play this right now. Anyone who's seeing this, please come on and play with me. So
 let me go ahead and set the beacon. And that's it, and I have a, if I want to have a change
 of heart about sharing this on Facebook, I can do that, and I can also further modify
 the message. So I'm going to cancel. I don't want Facebook to see that. But all the same,
 my beacon is still there. And every time one of my friends starts playing Modern Warfare
 3, I'll get an alert on the bottom. Anyone who wants to see, you know, go through their
 friend's beacon should be able to see this as well. So that's it. The other big new feature,
 if you go over to settings, is cloud storage. Now this one's, you have to enable, at least
 in this one, you have to enable yourself. But if you go over to system, you'll see storage
 options. From storage options, you'll see all devices, you'll see hard drive, and you'll
 see cloud saved games. It actually shows up just like the memory card in hard drive does.
 Now Microsoft is offering you 511 megs of storage in the cloud. And from there, if you
 are on someone else's Xbox, you can go ahead and bring in your save files, provided you've
 already saved them to the cloud. Now we've already had Call of Duty saved here. I'm going
 to go ahead and move it off just to show you how easy it is. And that's that. But if I want
 to move it back, I can do that. And then if I want to sign on to someone else's Xbox,
 all my save files where I last left off in the campaign, that will all show up. And this
 works for any game, just like a memory card. So that's kind of a general overview of what
 we're going to see for the new dashboard update. There's plenty more in store, a lot of video
 content to come, including the YouTube app, a much improved Netflix app we've seen a preview
 of, but we don't have it here, unfortunately. Now again, all that should be arriving the
 week of December 4th. It should roll to anyone that has an Xbox 360. And that's it. Now if
 you don't mind me, I'm going to start playing some Call of Duty.
 Come here, you. Come on. Off the set. Good boy.