Yes its official, courtesy of Major Nelson’s blog:
John Schappert, Corporate Vice President of Xbox LIVE, Services and Software, announced today during his Tokyo Game Show keynote that the New Xbox Experience will ship to Xbox 360’s around the world (in 26 countries, localized in 11 languages) on November 19th 2008.
Unfortunately that means that it won’t be on the Gears of War 2 disc that ships about a week earlier.
Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on the new dashboard. It looks so slick and logically organised. Granted a lot of the features like Netflix movies and Video Marketplace will be null and void for South African users, but I believe the remaining features will make it more than worthwhile. And the best part is that you don’t have to buy anything to get it. Yes as always, Dashboard updates are FREE.