This is pertinent info for the dashboard update that should hit in the next week or so.
The final product is sleeker than the developer build we saw last, which was already a cut above the old dash. The flat, Metro squares put the console in a Microsoft uniform while providing better access to content in a more appealing style. Navigation is quicker, snappier, more enjoyable, and downright futuristic feeling when paired with a Kinect sensor and voice integration. The new dash even seemed to boot our old Xbox 360 Elite up a few seconds faster than the old guard, clocking in 22 seconds from "on" to home screen as opposed to the previous Dashboard's 25 second clock time. By the time the new dash caught up to the old, the Kinect sensor had finished its warm up and was ready to take commands.
We would have liked to see motion or voice control dig a little deeper -- there are still some corners of the Xbox that need a controller to be navigated properly, namely the settings page, Avatar editor, and a handful of prompt screens. But, other than these minor shortcomings, the Dashboard's Metro overhaul succeeds in revamping the console interface into a more intuitive, user-friendly and appealing environment. It is, without a doubt, the biggest and best change since NXE, and we won't miss the old "new experience" one bit.
Xbox Live profiles are now universally accessible from the cloud. Players behind the Xbox Live Gold paywall also have access to cloud based storage for save games -- a boon for gamers who migrate between consoles, or upgraded to slimmer Xbox, for various reasons. The Xbox's cloud storage feature needs to be activated through the console's settings page before it can be used -- our system offered us 511MB of cloud space after we switched it on. Uploading data to the cloud was as easy as saving games to a memory card, we effortlessly traded data with the Xbox hard drive using the console's data management tools.
Naturally, cloud saved games won't be available if you aren't connected to the internet, but a sudden disconnection won't ruin your day. We pulled our console's ethernet connection out midway through a session of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but the Xbox had no trouble loading or saving our game, and didn't default back to its hard drive until we exited to the Dashboard. When we plugged the console back in, the saved games we created while offline were right there, in the cloud, seemingly stored locally in the interim. Half a gig of cloud storage isn't a ton of space (heck, our Skyrim save data totals over 1.3GB in of itself), but we can definitely dig the convenience of accessing saves remotely without lugging around a memory card. We didn't get the chance to access our Xbox Live profile remotely via the cloud, but as we understand, it's as simple as signing in at home -- the old "gamertag recovery" feature is dead and gone.
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