Note: According to Major Nelson the sign ups were closed as of Saturday morning. Based on past dashboard beta’s there will likely be additional windows to sign up for those who did not get in this time.
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This has become an annual tradition but this year it gets a bit of a twist.
Over the past few years when the annual Xbox Live Dashboard Beta was announced sign up was done via Microsoft’s Connect testing portal. That sign up process usually meant looking up your console ID and then transcribing it from the console dashboard to the sign up form at Connect.
Of course, that always caused some issues with folks who may have mistyped a digit in that console ID and that in turn meant their console was not included in the public beta. These beta’s always fill up very quickly so that meant some were left out because of the sign up error.
Well in order to address that and collect all the dashboard information that is necessary the Xbox Live Public Beta signups will be done via the Xbox 360 Console itself.
According to Major Nelson, aka Larry Hryb from Xbox Live, there will be a sign up link on the Home Hub of the Xbox 360 dashboard.
As of this posting that link is not in the hub yet but I am sure Twitter will tell everyone when it does show up and then it will be a race for people to get signed up. Major Nelson also confirmed that there are limited spots in this beta although no mention was made of how limited it is.
However, if this year is like beta tests in years past there will be additional opportunities for more users to get in as it progresses.
The Xbox Live 2013 Public Beta FAQ will be live later today at http://support.xbox.com/xbox-360/system-updates/xbox-360-beta-faq and it also appears that an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) will need to be signed in order to get in the program.
Note: To manually refresh your Xbox 360 Dashboard instead of power cycling it just bring up the Xbox 360 Guide, press and hold RT and then press Y.
Update: The link to sign up has gone live in the Xbox 360 Dashboard as of 8:30 AM EST.
Here are pictures from the dashboard sign up process:
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I do like the you are “IN” here. No need to wait and find out if you made the cut.
Good Luck with your own sign up.
Source: MajorNelson.com via @Pureinfotech
