But there doesn’t seem to be an option to use Kinect for controls (other than through voice on the initial ‘web hub’ screen). If you could control scrolling of websites Minority Report-style with the Kinect, that would be great too. But there doesn’t see to be an option to import bookmarks into IE on the Xbox. Of course, if you could avoid typing in URLs and rely on your favourite websites, that would be great.
That’s at least 29 seconds too slow if I’m actually supposed to use the browser. It took me at least half a minute to type in. The awkward dance of treating the left stick as a movable cursor and the A button as the mouse’s left button is painfully inelegant and excruciatingly slow. Microsoft was able to cook up a little bit of compromise in its controls with voice (using Kinect) but the Xbox still leaves the grunt of the work (entering a URL) to the controller. The screen is bigger, sure, but the entire process is so much slower. But it isn’t nearly as good as browsers on your laptop or your tablet or your phone. That’s not to say Internet Explorer on the Xbox sucks. But now that a browser on the Xbox 360 is finally here? Well, it kinda feels like seeing the ghost of technology’s past.
Based on IE9, the Xbox 360 finally gets the browser that people have been asking for for years, the feature that the PS3 and even the Wii had forever and a half ago. So What’s New?īut the biggest feature in the new dashboard update is Internet Explorer. Which is to say, the new Xbox 360 dashboard update looks like Windows Phone 8 which looks like Windows 8 which looks like Outlook which looks like Surface which looks like Xbox which looks like, well, Microsoft. It’s tweaking and massaging and honing a design concept that Microsoft so obviously believes in. Visually, the similarities between this year’s Xbox 360 update and last year’s dashboard is like how Windows Phone 8 looks nearly the same as Windows Phone 7 save for a few re-sized tiles. It’s nearly the same as last year’s (don’t call it) Metro design. There are more apps and there’s the pretty awesome Xbox Music and a few other features thrown in but in terms of look and feel? We’ve been playing with the new 2012 Xbox 360 dashboard update for a few months now and to be completely honest, most people won’t even notice a difference. Yep, the Xbox 360 is finally getting Internet Explorer, a real browser for your TV.
Pretty soon, Microsoft will officially release a new software update to all Xbox 360 users that will include a big blue icon with an ‘e’ stamped on it.