The Xbox One dashboard demo has been revealed in full, and at first it appears to be a more complex retooling of the Xbox 360 dashboard.
However, the introduction of voice commands combined with the new Xbox One Kinect appear to make it simpler in general. Here’s hoping the voice recognition works even with a speech impediment, because otherwise there are going to be some owners who will end up just using the controller and the hand motions for everything.
From the start, it seems the console signs you in automatically based on voice recognition alone, as the guy in the video only says “Xbox on.” The console gives him the welcome screen with his name and avatar instantly.
The Xbox One dashboard demo shows us that it might not require you to lift a finger until at least you decide to play video games. Yes, contrary to our first impressions of Microsoft’s marketing, the next-gen console will play games, too.
The video doesn’t make it clear if he’s using the controller or hand motions to navigate the interface, but all he has to do once he finds a movie paused in the menu is say “Go to…” and the title of the movie. It then loads the movie and plays until you once again give it another command. Then the movie pauses and sits in the background while the menu pops up.
The activity feed menu gives you a variety of options, including the ability to report other players, remove friends, mute yourself in chat, and even review your own profile. You can see your gamer score, reputation in meter form, and the most recent game played, as well as how many friends and followers you have.
The Xbox One dashboard demo shows that the console takes every aspect of itself as seriously as everything else.
As the movie is unpaused, the player then gets a notification that the game he wanted to play is ready. The game shown is Titanfall , a title that was made multiplayer only, so in order to play it, he had to wait until a game was available to join.
Just as we’re about to start enjoying Titanfall , the guy in the video decides to watch TV, and then adds a web browser to the side of the screen. Right then he gets a Skype call from a friend who invites him over.
As the Xbox One dashboard demo shows, Microsoft’s latest interface is quite versatile and makes snapping to different features on the fly rather easy. We can only hope that the voice commands can pick a voice out from other noises, because not everybody lives in a quiet environment.