Major Nelson: 'Faster' Xbox Live Dashboard in next update

23.06.2009
There has been a lot of frustration with the sometimes-sluggish menu flipping of the New Xbox Experience, but Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson) confirmed via his podcast, that: "We are making the guide faster" and that he is "intimately involved" in it's development.

"The team has done some really good stuff around making performance enhancements. 'Performance enhancements' doesn't sound right because it sounds like we're going to give the guide a little blue pill, and we're not doing that.

"Whatever we call it (and it's not going to be called the NNXE), but whatever the next version of the dashboard is called, it's better with a lot of very cool new features. That update will be out later this year"

It was also revealed that Zune HD video streaming, Avatar Marketplace and Games on Demand (a download service for full 360 games) are among some of the new big features expected.

Some have speculated that this faster dashboard improvement will prepare the system for the release of Project Natal, allowing players to use hand gestures to flip through menu's somewhat like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. While this seems like a cool idea, it may lead to a whole new set of dashboard frustrations. But again, this is just speculation.

Expect the new update to be available later this year.