New Xbox Dashboard revealed: fast, pretty, adaptable
By: Kostas Farkonas
Tags: Gaming, Smartphones, UI, Xbox, Microsoft

Road to NextGen 2020

New Xbox Dashboard revealed: fast, pretty, adaptable

Microsoft redesigns the Xbox user interface preparing it for similar use across a range of devices

Since its products and services at the center of Microsoft’s strategy now, the new Xbox interface was redesigned so as to be fast and fluid across console, PC and mobile devices. (Image credit: Microsoft)

The introduction of a new home entertainment system is the best possible reason for platform holders to re-examine the often overlooked user interface these products rely on. Microsoft has kept the Xbox One’s home screen, guide, store and various areas of content largely unchanged since 2013, making tweaks here and there but staying true to a certain approach in design and functionality. With the advent of Xbox Series X, which is based on an SSD and can therefore offer impressively speedier navigation and content presentation, Microsoft had the chance to make big changes to that user interface — and a few hours ago the company confirmed that it has done exactly that through an official announcement and related video it published on YouTube.

The new Xbox interface is designed in such a way that it will look the same and operate in a similar manner on the current Xbox One S/X, on PC (through the Xbox app in Windows 10), on mobile/tablet (through the iOS/Android apps) and on the Xbox Series X. In the case of the latter the SSD seems to have been put to good use as the home screen will load more than 50% faster compared to a current HDD-based Xbox and will return from a game almost 30% faster than it does now. Microsoft has also done a fair amount of cleaning up and optimizing “behind the scenes”, as the new interface will be as fast as described while taking up 40% less system memory. Nice!

The new interface is designed so as to work in the same way across devices, while taking advantage of screen real estate and input methods used on each. (Image credit: Microsoft)

Since services and content — not specific hardware — has been put at the center of Microsoft’s strategy, the whole interface works in a unified way across devices while offering some handy new functions (such as the ability to send a captured video clip from an Xbox One/Xbox Series X game to a smartphone for easy social media sharing through the latter). There are some differences in graphics detail in the whole UI, but that’s a conscious and quite frankly smart choice on Microsoft’s behalf, as it’s more important to keep speed and usability at the same level regardless of a device’s capabilities. All other functions — Friends management, Activity, messaging, notifications etc. — behave in the same general manner and any small differences are down to screen estate, text size or method of input.

The new, re-designed and re-imagined Xbox interface will be available to all consumers “this holiday season”, which can mean anything from early November to late December. Since one can safely assume that Xbox Series X — widely expected in the first week of November — will come with this interface preinstalled, though, the necessary update of Xbox One S/X and the new apps for Windows 10, iOS and Android are sure to closely follow. Hands-on impressions of the final form the new Xbox UI will take in less than 100 days from now, then!