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Microsoft Announces Xbox 360 Update

Published May 29th, 2006 in Gaming, Internet, Microsoft, Noteworthy, Technology

This is really good news! This will be the first major update the 360 since its launch in November. The update will be rolled out “in about a week” and will include many goodies such as background downloading (finally), Xbox Live Marketplace enhancements and more. There is a short overview below, but follow the link for the full article at Joystiq with many photos.

New Media and Entertainment Menu on the 360 Marketplace focuses content into groups, as well as having a link for iPod AAC support. It does have groups like Televison and Short Films, but no content has been added. Is Microsoft going to partner up with a TV network?
There is also a Games menu and Demo’s and Game Videos. The Games screen now has a ‘Newly Released’ section so that new additions to the Xbox Live Arcade can be quickly located and downloaded.
The new download manager offers background downloading so that you can play a game while waiting a file to download (hooray!) It contains a download queue of files to be downloaded in order after the previous has completed. There are siz download slots available, but downloading will pause of you play a game online.
Fast Forward/Rewind button in videos downloaded from the XBLM ranging from 2x to 16x speeds.
Music Player & DVD Playback Improvements - Music playing stays the same when you move from one function of the 360 to the next. With DVD playback you can add bookmarks to films so that you can play a game if you get an invite from a friend and resume playback when you put the disc back in.
“Full” USB keyboard support - It’s a bit ambiguous, as I plugged in my Mac’s USB keyboard a couple of times before to enter some stuff.
Startup feature, instead of automatically booting into whatever game is loaded in the drive, you’ll be able to set your console to boot into the Dashboard by default. I have been waiting so long for this feature!

The update should be available within the next two weeks, so login to Xbox Live regularly (if you don’t already) to see whether it has been put up. The full list of features will be on Xbox.com during the week.