If you are not an Xbox preview member, you have only seen a small glimpse of things to come for Xbox one. If you are a preview member (beta tested) you have probably been frustrated the past few weeks with a very buggy UI. This weekend there was a new preview dash update that fixed most of the bugs and brings us much closer to a public release.
Things are shaping up nicely for the new xbox one experience with many new features and layout revisions to the UI that will make the xbox more convenient to use. I cannot detail all of these revisions, but I will note a few that you may notice in the following videos that showcase the new UI. (Keep in mind, I fail at taking videos so they are not the best quality but this is just a sample.
A few new points I would like to point out are as follows:
1. Backwards compatible games. Most of the 360 disk based games will be available by the end of the year. Many of them are ready to play now (after you reinstall them on the one) 360 arcade games are touch and go, I would state 80% of arcade games have been made available for download free of charge if you already own the game on the 360. (These show up in the “ready to install” area of the games and app screen.
When playing a 360 game, it is important not to go full screen on an xbox one app or progress will be lost (save, save often) while playing, pressing both start and back buttons at the same time will bring up the familiar 360 UI window for ease of use and game management.
2. Button remapping. I have heard rumors of this on the PS4, but I don’t know the validity or extent. I can tell you and you will see in the video below that every face button can be remapped to another face button, dpad, or bumper. The triggers can be swapped, the sticks can be swapped, and the sticks can be inverted independently. This is all done through a simple interface and usb cordon the xbox itself. You will not be required to modify the controller or use a third party app. This is all official through the on board menus of the xbox one.
3. The new layout is more pleasing to the eye, the snap menu has been completely revised and now appears on the left side of the screen which help not to remove the focus from the games of other media being played. The friends list, party system, and message system are all now included in this left snap menu for ease of access. These features all help navigation. MS has also introduced some new shortcuts to get to the stuff you want quicker. IE to open the snap menu, just press left on the dpad from the dashboard, to get to your pins, hold the left trigger, to get back hold right trigger. These are just a few. One thing that I found un necessary was the change in voice commands when using a Kinect. They changed the commands to what seems to be 3 syllables or three words. So the old “xbox launch” is now “xbox open that” This don’t seem like much but is a pain to the people who do use this function.
If you would like to join the preview program, I can send a invite to your gamertag net time I am online if you drop it in the comments below. Please enjoy the video of new things to come.
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