For any console, a functional and user-friendly system user interface is one of the key ingredients to being a top-tier console. The Xbox One dashboard is one such UI, and will be getting an overhaul later this year, according to a new blog post on Xbox Wire.
The redesign of the Xbox One dashboard aims to streamline gamers accessing their games, as well as being more able to “deliver an easy and seamless experience for you to navigate your console.”
The redesign, while still in an experimental phase, mainly focuses on the Home layout of the Xbox One dashboard. In keeping with the spirit of streamlining the user experience, they did away with the Twists atop the Home screen in favour of separate buttons that access services such as Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, Xbox Community, and the Microsoft Store.
More interestingly, though, is the deliberate decision to remove the voice-activated Cortana, in favour of “moving away from on-console experiences to cloud-based assistant experience.”
What this means is that gamers will no longer to able to use Cortana to activate their apps and games on their headsets, and instead have to rely on their mobile phones to utter voice commands via the Cortana app.
This decision has certainly sparked a bit of irritation among the Xbox One community, manyt expressing their exasperation at such a decision, as it seems to undermine the streamlined experience that Microsoft aims to deliver to its players.
No doubt, many will miss Cortana’s presence on the new dashboard, but it’s something players will have to get used to for the time being.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.
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