Today, Microsoft published a virtual walkthrough of the upcoming redesigned Xbox One dashboard that covers the new home screen and overlay guide in detail.
The video, hosted by Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb and Richard Irving of the Xbox engineering team, delves right into the new home screen, which has been dramatically changed. When the update rolls out for every Xbox One owner later this year (or right now for select Xbox One preview members), users will see that the home screen has shifted to have pinned items at the bottom of a scrolling page. Pulling the right trigger will cause the cursor to jump to the bottom of the page, right where your pinned items are. Pulling the left trigger will cause the cursor to jump back up to the top where the last running application is featured. Standard ads are shown to the right on the home screen, as well.
The other big feature shown off in the video is the new guide overlay, which can be access by moving the cursor all the way to the left from the home screen or double-tapping the Guide button on the Xbox One controller while inside of an application or game. The guide overlay shows your friends list, Xbox Live party, messages, settings, and more.
As part of the guide overlay coming in from the left side of the screen, the Snap functionality has been changed to reflect this. So, when you decide to snap something like achievements or your friends list, it will slide in from the left instead of the right.
Be sure to check out the full video for more on how the new Xbox One UI will work, changes the team has made to the settings options, and more.
Another major update coming to the Xbox One this fall is the addition of backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games, which was announced at E3 2015. It is unclear if both the new UI and backwards compatibility will be released in the same update, but that will likely be the case.
