Most of these interviews covered some of the most important new features in the Dashboard Update. The biggest is easily the implementation of the “download manager,” which allows you to queue up to six pieces of Marketplace content for download in the background while you continue to do other things. It even pauses the download anytime a bandwidth intensive task comes up, like launching a multi-player session. This feature is something I have seen everywhere on the message boards I work on. It’s probably pretty safe to assume this was one of the most requested features that the Xbox team received. Another major, and also oft-requested feature, is having an option to boot straight to the Dashboard instead of automatically loading the game disc that is in the console when you power on. The option to change this setting can be found in the System > Console Settings menu. This is really welcome, I think I personally want it to boot to the Dashboard the overwhelming majority of the time, as I’ll usually check, messages, friends and Marketplace before I decide what I want to do. I mean think about it, Xbox Live, Marketplace and the Dashboard are such compelling features that there is no small number of people out there who would prefer to start there than immediately jumping into a game. That’s incredible. I think the only thing I see regarding this subject is to provide a way to choose where you boot on startup, similar to how the GameCube has that option available by holding down the ‘A’ button during the power-up sequence.

There are some other important additions, such as the FF/RW option when viewing videos or the Vision camera, that are well covered by the other sites and videos linked above. However, one thing that is interesting to note is that this Dashboard update is the very first such update from Microsoft to have the release info fully documented and posted publicly on Xbox.com. I think there are a few smaller updates in the larger list that may interest people.

• The memory units are now labeled ‘A’ and ‘B’ whereas before they were just listed in order of the way they were inserted into the system. Now it just makes a little bit more sense.
• The development team has worked on improving the visual quality of the built-in DVD player — this is one of the great features of software DVD decoding, you can constantly make it better.
• You can now play a video, demo or apply a theme directly after the download completes, instead of trying to play/apply it and then being taken to another screen that again gives you the option to play/apply.
• They have made the scrolling through of large lists of music much faster, which is a welcome tweak.
• They moved the entire categorization of Marketplace off of the Xbox and it’s now handled on the server side. Which means that the Xbox Live team can create new categories for Marketplace content on the fly and you won’t have to download another update.
• If you let your Xbox 360 sit idle long enough for the screensaver to activate, your online status will go to “Away” which is great because now when I step away from the console for a while, people don’t think I’m ignoring their Uno game invites.
• They have found a way to improve the download performance for the most requested pieces of Marketplace content too, so when something new and compelling gets released, hopefully they will download a bit faster.

Those are just some of the other things in the update I found interesting. I’m sure some of the more technically inclined people or people who have experienced something they are fixing, making more efficient or found the Dashboard was lacking a feature they were missing for will find a few other things in the whole list they will like.

I can’t wait to see what the next major Dashboard update, hopefully in the Fall/Winter sometime, will have in it.

EDIT: Elle from the Xbox team has a nice post about the update as well.

Which brings me to wish that Final Fantasy XI was able to pass along similar information. I’m guessing that, along with the fact that you couldn’t really award retroactive achievements, there might be some technical reason that stands in the way of reporting that type of information back to the dashboard or Xbox.com friends lists. The thing is with PlayOnline was that I knew whomever was online on their friends list was playing FFXI. Now when I see them on “PlayOnline Viewer” I want to know details! FFXI or, unlikely, TetraMaster? Why isn’t it the mysterious Final Fantasy XI entry/icon which only shows me as playing it the day I installed it. I also want to see what their character name is, what server they are on and what jobs and levels they have active at that moment. It just seems… to fit… and satiate my curiousity about people I didn’t know were playing MMOs/FFXI.

Besides the usual opt-in/opt-out marketing options, there were two things that caught my eye. The first was the “Played Games” option, which lets you show or hide your Played Games list from whoever is looking at your Gamercard. The other option is for “Member Content.” Elle comments that this option “doesn’t have a lot of use right now, but it will as people create content to share with other people. You can choose whether you want to see the content.” It will be interesting to see how that comes into play in the future.

When rumors of the update to the Dashboard started circulating a few weeks ago, every few posts was either specifically expressing hope for or requesting the addition of a voice chat feature that would let you have multiple people join in.

Looks like the folks on the Xbox Development Team have noticed the same thing and have addressed why one-to-one chat is the only option available on their Xbox Team blog.

Finding out that the minimum broadband requirements are 64kbps upstream and downstream for all Xbox Live functions and games was a pretty interesting piece of info to come out of it… I know nothing about games networking, but that seems like a pretty small bandwidth requirement and it’s a testament to how the networking has been optimized for online considering all the games work pretty well online.