UPDATE 1: Microsoft New Zealand has confirmed that Kinect for Xbox 360 will recognise New Zealand accents once the dashboard update rolls out later tonight. Voice control had previously been disabled for the local region due to the system not understanding Kiwi pronunciation correctly.

"A lot of work has gone in to teaching Kinect to recognise how we speak and now Kinect technology has been optimised so it can recognise all of us," said Xbox NZ chief Steven Blackburn.

Microsoft will launch a total overhaul of the Xbox 360 dashboard tomorrow, featuring a new interface design, Bing search and Kinect gesture and voice controls.

First introduced with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's new "Metro" UI – which will also be an important part of Windows 8 – displays content in a series of square tiles, with categories such as games, social, video and music shown as textual tabs along the top of the screen.

The new Bing search engine allows users to search through any content available from the dashboard, including Xbox Live Marketplace and third party video services, as well as local content on their Xbox 360.

The new interface has much improved support for Kinect gesture and voice controls throughout the dashboard. A search for content can be initiated, for example, by simply saying "Xbox, Bing, Harry Potter" – which should be a much faster process than flipping through the menus with a stick and typing using the onscreen keyboard.

 
New Xbox 360 "Metro" dashboard launching tomorrow
Don't expect to see any of this in New Zealand.

A new "apps" menu enables access to video on-demand services, including YouTube. The apps available will be country-specific, so it's likely there won't be much to see here in New Zealand, unless TVNZ and TV3 make apps for their content. Users in some countries will also have access to a "tv" menu which offers streaming live television via the internet.

Additionally, Xbox Live Gold members will gain access to Cloud Storage, which allows save games and profiles to be uploaded to the internet and accessed from any other Xbox 360 by logging in with the same Gamertag.