During the last few weeks, Microsoft have been upgrading their Xbox service, presumably in time for the release of Kinect. Three main features have been updated and these are the Xbox.com website, the Xbox360 dashboard and the account management features.


New Xbox.com Website

The new website looks nice and it seems more box-like, which in my opinion is better because it promotes neat layout and makes browsing their Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live account management pages much easier than it was before. Good job Microsoft!

Here is what the new Xbox.com website looks like!


I'm not so sure about the friends list though because it takes much longer for the page to refresh now, but that's fine because account management is much more simple now and I think most people will be grateful for that because current status is not so vague anymore.


New Kinect Dashboard Update

Along with the new website is a new dashboard update, which enables support for the new Kinect add-on. We are now Kinect-ready and all games will be released with this new update soon. Many say that this new dashboard is too bright and they prefer the previous dashboard... thing is, Kinect has been made (and marketed) as a family add-on for the Xbox360, so yes the new look is obviously going to be bright and colourful to cater for the target audience.

Here is what the new Kinect Dashboard looks like!


In my opinion, Kinect is just a way of adding new possibilities to gaming, along with a whole new wave of customers. I would think many development teams and publishers will now be looking to grab a larger chunk of customers, both Kinect and non-Kinect players.


Auto-Renewal and Cancellation

The bad thing about Microsoft these days is that they will not allow you to change the status of your Xbox Live auto-renewal, which means if you don't phone them up to cancel in time for your next bill then you we be charged automatically. They used to allow you to change this option (which should be a legal right on all platforms!) but removed it some time ago. You now have to phone them and speak to a robot-like call centre person, the call is easy to make but you can't help feeling like they are grilling us for information that we ignored in the past.

Here's what the new Account Management looks like!


The call took no longer than 10 minutes (including the queue time) and auto-renewal was disabled on Xbox.com as soon as the call had been made, what struck me as odd though is that they asked me why I wanted to disable auto-renewal! I told them that I didn't have funds in my bank account right now to pay for renewal and that I would be using game cards soon, which later made me wonder how many people will say the same thing when they call.


My current view of Microsoft and Xbox Live

I am not Microsoft's biggest fan by a long shot, but I am impressed by the amount of growth on Xbox Live in the past 12 months. Dashboards have gotten better and better, as have the games being released and now there is a really nice v2 Xbox360 (the slim model) with a new technology, modelled to match the new look... all this along with a new website and improved support, means it is a great network which is due some great releases in the near future.