Microsoft and the Xbox team are very excited for the Series X to finally launch, and a large part of that stems from the seamless nature of the upcoming console. Microsoft recently explained that the Series X will be able to add HDR support to Xbox One and even 360 games that were never designed to run in HDR. With the new Quick Resume feature, you will be able to keep your progress on multiple games and apps at once and switch between them very quickly. All of this sounds very slick and smooth, but something that hasn’t historically been smooth is the user interface of any console.
Creating an entire computer interface that needs to be controlled by just a few buttons and joysticks isn’t quite as straightforward as one designed to be navigated with a mouse and keyboard, or simply a touchscreen. Most gamers are familiar with their respective console’s interface however, to the extent that the layers of menus and shortcuts make sense (and make the interface on a different console feel counter-intuitive). Essentially, it’s like a shower; you use your own shower enough that its intricacies make total sense, but everyone else’s seems wrong.
The new Xbox One Guide Menu:
Tweaking this then can be unnerving, as things aren’t quite where you expect them to be, and though the changes to the Xbox One interface over the years have been gradual, the most recent change seems to be a sign of the future. They changes the order of the tabs on the Guide Menu… doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but now the UI of the Xbox One is unrecognizable from what it was at launch. Here is the current Xbox One home screen and the next image is what it originally looked like.
While the new update just shifts the order of a menu and tweaks a few small visual things, but it feels like one of the final steps towards next-gen. Who knows, the Series X could launch with a completely different UI, but it seems like Microsoft is easing users into a gradual – or seamless – shift from the past to the future.