14 DAY TRIAL // After starting to roll out the new Xbox 360 dashboard update 2.0.16197.0 last week, Microsoft has now made it available for download all over the world.
October is quite a busy month for Microsoft as not only is the company releasing its long-awaited Windows 8 PC operating system, but it’s also making some changes to its whole entertainment strategy, including the Xbox 360.
In order to better support the Xbox Music service as well as the Internet Explorer web browser, the company started rolling out a brand new dashboard update for the Xbox 360, taking its software up to version 2.0.16197.0.
The company began releasing the update last week and has now confirmed that it’s available for all consoles around the world.
In case you can’t connect your device to the Internet and get the update, you can download it right now from Softpedia and apply it either with a USB stick or a CD or DVD.
Plenty of great features have been included in the dashboard update, so check them out below, via Major Nelson.
“- Refreshed Xbox 360 Dashboard: We've updated the UI with a few things, including an updated layout with more tiles, a combined TV & Movies channel and, in the US, a Sports destination - Internet Explorer for Xbox: With Internet Explorer on Xbox, you can easily find and view internet content on the biggest screen in the house, including HTML5 videos - Recommendations and Ratings: Recommendations will allow you to discover new favorites, generated based on a number of variables including the content you previously viewed, what your friends are consuming and what is most relevant and popular with our Xbox community. You can now rate content yourself and also see Rotten Tomatoes ratings - Pinning: Pinning lets you personalize the dashboard by saving your favorite movies, TV shows, games, music, videos and websites right to the home screen. It's as easy as opening an app or a favorite movie and clicking "pin" - Xbox Video: Formerly called Zune Video Marketplace, Xbox Video offers hundreds of thousands of TV shows and movies for buying or renting in instant HD streaming - Recent: Previously called Quick Play, the Recent view gives you a list of movies, games, apps or other types of content that you most recently accessed on the console - Enhanced Search: The last Xbox LIVE update brought Bing voice search to Xbox so you could use voice to search for movies, TV shows, actors, directors and artists. This year we 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.”
Expect the Xbox 360 to receive even more updates in the following months, as Microsoft is planning to add more features and services to its home console.