Microsoft has promised a slew of new content providers to beef up Xbox Live’s offerings, but most of them will not be available when the updated, Kinect-integrated dashboard launches tomorrow.

Epix (US only) and Lovefilm (UK only) are two of the services that will be there on day one. Yes, yes, please hold your applause.

UFC's channel won’t launch until December 20, while services like Crackle, Dailymotion, Rogers On Demand, Vudu, and Verizon TV are vaguely slated for later in the month, and MLB.tv, HBO Go and Comcast's Xfinity On Demand are apparently “early 2012.”

We’ll be taking a look at the dashboard when it launches tomorrow--stay tuned.

Microsoft has promised a slew of new content providers to beef up Xbox Live’s offerings, but most of them will not be available when the updated, Kinect-integrated dashboard launches tomorrow.

Epix (US only) and Lovefilm (UK only) are two of the services that will be there on day one. Yes, yes, please hold your applause.

UFC's channel won’t launch until December 20, while services like Crackle, Dailymotion, Rogers On Demand, Vudu, and Verizon TV are vaguely slated for later in the month, and MLB.tv, HBO Go and Comcast's Xfinity On Demand are apparently “early 2012.”

We’ll be taking a look at the dashboard when it launches tomorrow--stay tuned.

Rango is awesome

I really hope the UFC app will be good.

Looking forward to it.

Too much to ask for a Crunchy Roll app, finally?

Hey guys, the new dashboard is wicked good. Super fast, everything is very well compressed, and I don;t have to wait an hour to see all of my games pop up. In fact, it's crazy fast. Jumping between categories is much faster and easier, no more kinect-ified look. It's pretty sexy too, and the added density of things to press means it seems like there are fewer levels to go down. Also when you search for pimps, Halo 3 comes up. That's pretty wicked. Beacons are neat, 'specially if your lazy and wanna get a really big game going quickly. CLOUD SAVES WOO.

So what I'm saying is this is perfectly fuckin ok by me and anyone who complains is an ungrateful git.

Launches tomorrow. I thought it launched today for some reason.

Aw man... I was hoping to burn through The Wire on HBO GO during the week after Christmas. Damn you content providers! Damn you!

Dailymotion is up. It is kind of like Youtube.... But, with less of the content you would want. Also, those videos blown up to fit on my 73" TV is not incredibly attractive. But, it is totally functional. The nice thing is that it loads quickly...

But, as a whole this new dashboard is infuriating. The insane amount of ads and their size in relation to everything you would actually want to use is offensive.

Just go here for a sneak peek:

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/5/2611761/xbox-live-fall-2011-dashboard-video-walkthrough-demo/in/2313209

Hopefully it somewhat cleans up the mess that is the current dashboard.

I geuss it was too much to expect it all to go live at the same time. Looking forward to seeing how the new kinect dash works.

I hope theres more boxes and less rollout menus. I like the aesthetic feel of the current dashboard but sometimes you really gotta go through a lot of menus to finally get at what you want.

Already have the dash its a nice new windows phone 7 esc revamp and adds are much less prevalent best thing? u dont have to move from the first screen to play games lol and kinect works much better

@familyphotoshoot: It is. HD streaming worked great. Not supposed to say much more.

It's to bad HBO Go isn't coming on launch day. It's been available on the Roku for a little bit now.

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

Well this is annoying as I was hoping for the HBO Go app tomorrow.

@admanb said:

@MideonNViscera said:

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

but if you pay in Canadian dollars it's not real money anyways, so...

sucks for you cause your"real" USD is pretty much at parity with our "imaginary" money.........

@admanb: Uh......

via Bank of Canada --

On December 5, 2011, 1.00 Canadian Dollar(s) = 0.99 U.S. dollar(s), at an exchange rate of 0.9861

And once again its the US that gets everything, with a few things for the UK, and jack all for the rest of Europe.

I pay the same for Xbox Live as people in the US, yet don't even get half the content. Something ain't right there.

I guess it makes sense not to launch everything on one day. It divides the usage so everyone isn't using everything all at once.

so much wasted space on the new dash, and filled with ads. Yay.

Actually looking forward to UFC channel. If I can watch free events on it and order pay per views without having to pay for the channel itself, that would be great.

My cable provider still doesn't support HBO Go, which means I still can't watch Game of Thrones!

... Yep. Can't watch it. Such a shame. No other way to get that content, no-sir-ree. Certainly none that a man of my upstanding moral character would stoop to. Nope...

I'M TALKING ABOUT PIRACY.

I came in here expecting not to be able to play games or something.

And mildly on-topic - is that the same LoveFilm who have continued to abuse me with spam in every possible opening since I cancelled my subscription? Or is that just what all subscription services do these day? Pretty disgusting :(

Been waiting for LoveFilm to show up here for a while now, might use it every now and again if the prices are decent. Hopefully those vouchers from Amazon will be redeemable, too.

@MideonNViscera said:

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

As a Canadian, the fact that Rogers On Demand was mentioned made me do a double take. Should I even remotely have some hope that there's some Canadian content coming down the pipeline? Or am I confused and misplaced because Rogers On Demand is also a service for the US?

Rango is a good movie. You all should buy that on Xbox Live. I'm biased. 

@heatDrive88 said:

@MideonNViscera said:

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

As a Canadian, the fact that Rogers On Demand was mentioned made me do a double take. Should I even remotely have some hope that there's some Canadian content coming down the pipeline? Or am I confused and misplaced because Rogers On Demand is also a service for the US?

Nope you're absolutely right. Rogers on Demand is a Canadian thing, which leaves me hopeful that we might get meaningful content from this update after all.

I'm not a huge fan of the new 360 dashboard. It takes longer to find games (you have to scroll through home, social, video and TV before you reach Arcade games or the marketplace) and the marketplace itself is segmented in a weird way; again Arcade games and demos are harder to find and Indie games are pretty much screwed.

The 2/3rds of the home page being ads on a service for which I'm paying a subscription isn't even my major complaint against it.

Still can't go from a game you own to its marketplace content or filter DLC (Extras) into any useful list; you scroll through all the avatar items, trailers, gamerpics and themes to find actual DLC manually.

My 200+ list of arcade games might also not be best browsed by going through them individually from left to right but that's the ONLY way to get through them.

I hope the beta doesn't reflect the finished product too much; It's been a long time coming and I don't want to be stuck with it for too long as it stands.

It looks nice though.

(Is the Xbox 360 still a game console? Are they expecting to sell them to people who never play games now?)

@FreakAche said:

@heatDrive88 said:

@MideonNViscera said:

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

As a Canadian, the fact that Rogers On Demand was mentioned made me do a double take. Should I even remotely have some hope that there's some Canadian content coming down the pipeline? Or am I confused and misplaced because Rogers On Demand is also a service for the US?

Nope you're absolutely right. Rogers on Demand is a Canadian thing, which leaves me hopeful that we might get meaningful content from this update after all.

That's actually pretty landmark setting then, isn't it? I mean at the most for third-party Canadian content, the only partner that Microsoft has made for their Xbox live content is Netflix right? Even then, we Canadians know how much we're missing from their Canadian-filtered streaming content.

Even further on top of that, I can't imagine the Rogers On Demand service offering anything truly different than what their current Rogers On Demand service currently does. Granted, I think Rogers does a good job with their On Demand service, even though I'm not currently subscribed with Rogers - but the end result isn't us getting any thing that is really considered new content, which makes me sort of sad.

@heatDrive88 said:

@FreakAche said:

@heatDrive88 said:

@MideonNViscera said:

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

As a Canadian, the fact that Rogers On Demand was mentioned made me do a double take. Should I even remotely have some hope that there's some Canadian content coming down the pipeline? Or am I confused and misplaced because Rogers On Demand is also a service for the US?

Nope you're absolutely right. Rogers on Demand is a Canadian thing, which leaves me hopeful that we might get meaningful content from this update after all.

That's actually pretty landmark setting then, isn't it? I mean at the most for third-party Canadian content, the only partner that Microsoft has made for their Xbox live content is Netflix right? Even then, we Canadians know how much we're missing from their Canadian-filtered streaming content.

Even further on top of that, I can't imagine the Rogers On Demand service offering anything truly different than what their current Rogers On Demand service currently does. Granted, I think Rogers does a good job with their On Demand service, even though I'm not currently subscribed with Rogers - but the end result isn't us getting any thing that is really considered new content, which makes me sort of sad.

Well I don't really know enough about Rogers On Demand to comment on the quality of their service and I'm not even a Rogers customer, but the fact that Microsoft is doing this partnership shows that they finally care about supplying subscribers outside of the US and UK with content.

@MideonNViscera said:

I'm in Canada so I'm sure I'll never get any of this. Pretty sure I pay the same price as Americans for all these "premium features" too haha

Tell me about it. I pay the same for Gold as anyone in the US, but since I live in the Bahamas and all this content is region locked I get none of it. In fact, a few times they've even region locked DLC too. It happens less often than it used to, but with Gears 1 and 2 specifically I remember not being able to download new maps and such as it was all locked. Not to mention I can't even buy Games on Demand. It sucks, but I know there's a bunch of legal b.s. as to why it is the way it is.

Lovefilm = Netflix for the UK (only run by Amazon and with less streaming deals, something they're trying to fix and going as far as to drop Flash and use Silverlight for their website streaming system to let them sign more deals with DRM-happy studios. They had to send out a big sorry message to their MacOS and Linux customers about it recently).

@yevinorion said:

...I live in the Bahamas...

Want to trade a shitty apartment in Sweden for your place? :D

I like how it's a combination Windows Phone 7.5 and the XMB.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

Also when you search for pimps, Halo 3 comes up. That's pretty wicked.

SOLD!

Not even a huge Halo fan either.

Ugh, no HBO GO on day 1. Sadness!

Anyone know if Microsoft is selling the main panel advertising spce or reserving it for ads for their own content? I sure can't wait til I turn on m Xbox and 60% of the main userspace is a nice big Telus ad.

Only complaint so far about the new dash in the beta (aside from the grotesque over-monetization of a paid frikken service) is a quirk in the Cloud saves. Even though there is a local cloud cache kept on the hard disk, if the cloud is down you cannot load from or save to your local cache in any game. You can browse and copy saves out of the local cloud cache onto local storage from the dashboard, but you can't select "Cloud" as a storage option in any game until it comes back up. I wonder what happens if you are just plain Offline - maybe it will use the cache then.

@Zaxex said:

I'm not a huge fan of the new 360 dashboard. It takes longer to find games (you have to scroll through home, social, video and TV before you reach Arcade games or the marketplace) and the marketplace itself is segmented in a weird way; again Arcade games and demos are harder to find and Indie games are pretty much screwed.

The 2/3rds of the home page being ads on a service for which I'm paying a subscription isn't even my major complaint against it.

Still can't go from a game you own to its marketplace content or filter DLC (Extras) into any useful list; you scroll through all the avatar items, trailers, gamerpics and themes to find actual DLC manually.

My 200+ list of arcade games might also not be best browsed by going through them individually from left to right but that's the ONLY way to get through them.

I hope the beta doesn't reflect the finished product too much; It's been a long time coming and I don't want to be stuck with it for too long as it stands.

It looks nice though.

(Is the Xbox 360 still a game console? Are they expecting to sell them to people who never play games now?)

It wasn't so much a beta as it was a way to soften the blow to their servers on day one and to make sure it works correctly. If a large number of people already have the new dash, then it is less stress on the servers. I wouldn't expect any differences from the beta to the final dash when it comes to features. How much could they really change in the month beta users have been using it?

@Zaxex said:

I'm not a huge fan of the new 360 dashboard. It takes longer to find games (you have to scroll through home, social, video and TV before you reach Arcade games or the marketplace) and the marketplace itself is segmented in a weird way; again Arcade games and demos are harder to find and Indie games are pretty much screwed.

The 2/3rds of the home page being ads on a service for which I'm paying a subscription isn't even my major complaint against it.

Still can't go from a game you own to its marketplace content or filter DLC (Extras) into any useful list; you scroll through all the avatar items, trailers, gamerpics and themes to find actual DLC manually.

My 200+ list of arcade games might also not be best browsed by going through them individually from left to right but that's the ONLY way to get through them.

I hope the beta doesn't reflect the finished product too much; It's been a long time coming and I don't want to be stuck with it for too long as it stands.

It looks nice though.

(Is the Xbox 360 still a game console? Are they expecting to sell them to people who never play games now?)

Ouch. I hope you are wrong about some of this. A lot of the hassles you describe are why I don't like the PSN store...

I really like the current XBL dashboard and systems...hopefully the new one is more functional than you make it sound. Fingers crossed.

@Alphazero: I didn't like it. Want to fight about it?

Will be interesting to see the LoveFilm app and see how it compares to the PS3 version.

I wonder how barren the Canadian version of the dashboard compared to the US version.

@WilliamHenry: I figured the current beta version could be older than what they intend to roll out to everyone tomorrow. In other words I wouldn't be surprised if there were differences between the beta version and tomorrow's; I expect we'll have to download a new update like everyone else. There's been at least a few updates since the beta started.

Lovefilm is in @Zaxex said:

I'm not a huge fan of the new 360 dashboard. It takes longer to find games (you have to scroll through home, social, video and TV before you reach Arcade games or the marketplace) and the marketplace itself is segmented in a weird way; again Arcade games and demos are harder to find and Indie games are pretty much screwed.

The 2/3rds of the home page being ads on a service for which I'm paying a subscription isn't even my major complaint against it.

Still can't go from a game you own to its marketplace content or filter DLC (Extras) into any useful list; you scroll through all the avatar items, trailers, gamerpics and themes to find actual DLC manually.

My 200+ list of arcade games might also not be best browsed by going through them individually from left to right but that's the ONLY way to get through them.

I hope the beta doesn't reflect the finished product too much; It's been a long time coming and I don't want to be stuck with it for too long as it stands.

It looks nice though.

(Is the Xbox 360 still a game console? Are they expecting to sell them to people who never play games now?)

I quite like the new Dashboard. But I agree with you, they didn't change much about the "lowest layer" of information, like the available downloads for a game.

Their focus was the "top layer". And that's pretty nice, I think.

And I don't have many ads, but I'm in Europe so maybe that's the reason.

@plaintomato: Hopefully I'm just being nitpicky. I really liked it when I started using it but more and more things seem unnecessarily obfuscated. It just seems to take more button presses and scrolling to find things. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

I don't care. I just want my system to play games. Maybe watch netflix. I don't give a shit about all this extra stuff I can buy (ooh, I can get Hulu for $10/mo, so I can watch a few episodes of shitty network television that I don't care about and get lots of commercials while I'm doing it! SO EXCITING!). If they could give me an option to disable the 75% of the screen that is dedicated to mother fucking advertising, that'd be pretty god damn sweet.