A video has hit the web demonstrating what appears to be the new Xbox 360 dashboard and interface update, set to be unleashed on the masses in time for Kinect later this year. Plans to upgrade the dashboard to better mesh with Kinect haven’t exactly been a secret, so the video doesn’t come as a surprise, though one might question where it comes from and how the uploaders got ahold of the update.
The changes appear to be mainly aesthetic, and the whole thing looks.. well, flatter, for one thing. It’s definitely flatter. The sense of depth conveyed by the current dashboard (pictured right) is replaced by an interface where the options rest beside, rather than behind, one another.
Is it an upgrade or a downgrade? That’s mostly a matter of personal taste. The real question is whether it will facilitate Kinect navigation, as that’s presumably the goal in updating the dashboard to coincide with the peripheral’s release.
Kinect will allow players to navigate the 360’s menus and dashboard using hand gestures and voice commands, a feature that nerds everywhere have been dreaming about since Minority Report. Microsoft could have simply patched the current dashboard to support it, however, without updating its look and feel, so there must be a reason for the aesthetic changes.
The video most likely comes from a daring Kinect Beta tester looking to promote his site (ModernPrestige.com), which will probably go great until Microsoft comes down hard on the site and the tester. He or she is also a Modern Warfare modder, though, based on the video, so there probably won’t be much love lost on either side.
Now, I know how easy it is to get your undies tied in a knot over these things, especially when they seem unnecessary, and change is obviously really scary. Please try to remember that the dashboard only exists for five seconds before we load up a game, though. It’s really not worth the internet tantrum.
