Xbox Live Fall Update 2011

[Jason]

Looking forward to this new update coming soon, especially these two additions:

Cloud Profile With new roaming profiles you will be able to bring your complete Xbox LIVE profile to any Xbox 360®, any time. Sign into any Xbox 360 and access your games saves, friends lists and your Gold membership, including your Microsoft Points balance to make purchases.

Beacons
With Beacons you'll be able to tell your Xbox LIVE and Facebook friends that you want to play a game online. Beacons will also let you know which friends play the same games you do and when friends are playing or want to play the same games. So, no matter what you’re doing, you can join them and start playing.   

[Jason]

I had forgotten that this was discussed here back in June: Link

Hopefully it comes out on November 25th as mentioned here: Link

[Jason]

Looks like it's coming out on December 6th:

While many of you have been involved in the Xbox LIVE Preview Program and have been busy getting an early look at the next Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE features, I wanted to let you know that the official release for the update for all Xbox LIVE members will be Tuesday, December 6th.  In this update, free to all console owners,  you will see:

   
•     New personal and social features including Cloud Storage for Game Saves and LIVE Profile
•     Beacons and Facebook Sharing
•     Enhanced Family Settings
•     Integrated voice and gesture controls across the dashboard and in apps
•     Bing voice search (Available this year in the US, UK and CA)

In addition to all these great dashboard features, starting on December 6th and continuing on an ongoing basis through the holiday months, a wealth of new content will be coming to Xbox 360. New, customized applications for television, movies, internet videos, sports and music will begin rolling out from world-leading providers in more than 20 countries.

Source: Major Nelson

[Jason]

Anyone get the update this morning? I logged into Xbox Live around 7:30am ET but didn't get it. 

[Jason]

Major Nelson via Twitter:

FYI: The timing for Xbox 360 dashboard update has been slightly delayed. I’ll have a status update later today

[Ted]

Mine updated late last night.

[Jason]

Mine updated last night around 11pm, so I didn't get much of a chance to check it out. I'm looking forward to checking out the "Cloud Saves" and "Roaming Profile" tonight.

[Ted]

The cloud saves require 500 mb of storage on your hard drive for some reason.  I don't know what that is for.  Maybe a cache?

[Jason]

The cloud saves require 500 mb of storage on your hard drive for some reason.  I don't know what that is for.  Maybe a cache?

I think it automatically syncs with your hard drive for offline access to the files. If that's the case, that's pretty good.

[Jason]

Found this tonight at TeamXbox.com:

If you’re a bit concerned about the finicky nature of saving your games over the internet, you don’t need to be. When you use the cloud storage save function, it doesn’t automatically upload your saved file to the Xbox Live cloud, instead opting to partition off 511 MB of space from your hard drive, save the files there, and then send them to the cloud. As a result, all cloud saves are also saved locally on the Xbox they were created on, meaning that even if your internet cuts out while you’re using the cloud save function, the saves will still be available to use on your hard drive.

Xbox 101: Cloud Storage