A Look At The Future

Microsoft is now taking entries for the preview program for the new Xbox dashboard. According to a certain Major, several thousand entries will be accepted so there is a good chance of people getting in. If you're interested in testing out the new dashboard before it's public release (likely very early November) then head HERE to sign up, HOWEVER, be aware that once signed up, you won't be able to revert back to the old dash, and will lose all voice functionality (except in game chat, of course) with people not participating in the program. This means no voice chat, no party chat and no voice messages. The reason behind this seems to be because of an upgrade to the voice codec to increase the quality of voice chat. If none of that bothers you, then head to the above link and enter in your details to register. No wait necessary, you'll either be accepted or declined on the spot, however the dash won't be available for another week or two.

P.S. Forgot to mention the preview is strictly 18+... Sorry kids.

Be Heard

It's been a while since we've seen a Xbox console update, but there is finally one on the way and its bringing us a whole new level of communication... ok, well it's fixing one that currently sucks. The Xbox currently uses a low bit rate codec to encode voice chat because Xbox LIVE was originally designed to be running on 64k connections, but these days the vast majority of people are running faster connections (at least in most countries that aren't named Australia) so with the Fall Update (which actually comes in Spring for Aussies) we'll be seeing an update to the voice chat system that aims to make the audio a much higher definition. Will this make it possible to communicate in a team game like Halo or CoD without sounding like your mic is wrapped in alfoil? yes... will it reduce the pitch of the billion 12 year old kids on Halo? probably not. The fall Update will likely be released in the first week of November to go with the launch of Kinect, and thus update the dashboard for Kinect control as well.