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Xbox One New Dashboard
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Xbox One dashboard update: What you need to know

Microsoft has rolled out the new dashboard for its Xbox One console and its brought a plethora of changes with it – including the highly anticipated backwards compatibility functionality.

Microsoft CMO Mike Nichols has described the new UI as “the most significant release we’ve ever made to a console–and that anybody’s ever made to a console,” and while that may sound like bragging, the added functionality the update brings with it backs it up. Here’s what you need to know:

Home screen

Boot up your Xbox One with its shiny new interface and the first thing you’ll notice is that the Home screen has had a slight overhaul. Your most recent apps and games will be instantly viewable, but you’ll notice that Pins have been moved to the bottom of the screen. You navigate to them by flicking down on the thumbstick, or by pressing the LT or RT to go up and down. It’s not a drastic change but it feels altogether cleaner once you get used to it.

Backwards Compatibility

Microsoft pretty much brought the house down at this year’s E3 expo when it announced this function during its keynote. At the time it sounded too good to be true and while there are some catches – you can’t play every Xbox 360 game on the new platform right now – it’s a massive step forward that Microsoft’s nearest and dearest competitor has yet to take.

There’s a full list (100-odd) of the Xbox 360 titles you can play on the Xbox One over at xbox.com, and if you favourite titles from yesteryear aren’t included yet, you can vote for it on the site and Microsoft may make it available in the future.

New Sidebar

Perhaps the biggest new change to the UI is the dashboard’s new sidebar, which players can access by flicking left on the homepage or double-tapping the Xbox Button if you happen to be in a game. The sidebar handily groups your Friends, Parties, Messages, Notifications, Settings and Snap in one place.

This means, for example, you can start parties, initiate chat with mates, send invites and change your settings without having to quit out of a game to the Home screen.

Community

To the right of the Home screen is the Community hub, which operates kind of a like a Twitter feed that’s dedicated solely to gaming. You can watch gaming clips, interact with friends or the personalities you follow on Xbox One and add your own updates. You can also comment on, like and share posts and clips. To the right of the Community feed you can also see updates, news and posts from people in the gaming industry.

Avatars

Remember that little virtual representation of yourself that you could dress up like Ezio from Assassin’s Creed and have 343 Guilty Spark zipping about its head? Well it’s back now and is a more prominent feature on the new Xbox One dashboard. It’s had a bit of a visual scrub but it still looks pleasingly cartoon-like.

The Store

The Xbox shop has been overhauled to make it more streamlined and easier to navigate; flick to the right of the Community page and you can access the Store pages for Games, Apps, Movies & TV Shows and Music. Products are a lot easier to find now and you can follow games, which allows the Xbox One to keep you notified of any updates and announcements from the developers.

Hit ‘Browse All Games’ and a handy list of tabs opens up, making it easier to enter codes for games and dig into your wallet. You can also access the Subscriptions tab which to see the games available for download if you happen to be an Xbox Gold subscriber.

Remapable controller buttons

The new dashboard update also brings with it the ability to remap some of your controller’s buttons. All that you have to do is go into the setting and find the Devices options. Once there, and while the controller is plugged in through a USB cable, you can remap some buttons.

The whole UI does look a lot smoother, but what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Our Charlie Fripp is in the Xbox Preview Programme, and has had the dashboard for a couple of months. We are actually very lucky to get the final, polished product. Charlie, on the other hand, didn’t have that much luck when he first installed it on October.

[Source: Gamespot]

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