Microsoft has announced its plans to bring a new Home experience to gamers that are part of the Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha rings this week. The company has also indicated that this new experience features improvements and enhancements from the feedback received from users.
The Xbox team behind the new design further indicated that:
As we mentioned when we paused our experiments last month, we heard you tell us that the changes to the top of Home felt crowded and didn’t leave enough space for you to enjoy your background. So, we designed hundreds of options, then refined with prototypes and finally user-tested in our Research labs until we found one we hope you’ll love. It balances the experience, accessibility, function, and the needs of our community.
Here’s what you can expect as far as the new Xbox Dashboard is concerned:
First up, the new experience facilitates easier navigation to the library, the Microsoft Store, Xbox Game Pass, search, and settings for users. The update will ship with a new quick access menu at the top of the Home page.
The layout has also been simplified and now features more space that allows the user to view the background properly. The size of the tiles has been reduced significantly and they’ve also been moved to the bottom of the screen to create more space.
The update also ships with a responsive game art feature that’s designed to “update the default background and show off the beautiful art associated with each title when you hover over the tiles.”
And finally, the tile that opened “My games & apps” (the first tile in the second row) has also received a significant update. Users will now get a notification when something new pops up or when there’s something that requires immediate action. The company has further stated that it’s a work in progress and that users are likely to encounter updates from the library or the Microsoft Store.
Towards the end of last year, Microsoft expressed its intentions to make changes to Xbox’s Dashboard. It was even reported that the Dashboard would lose many of its customization options, though this odd change is not part of this new update. In fact, users have been sending out feedback to the Xbox team asking them to incorporate more customization features into the Dashboard.
If you want to test out the overhauled Xbox Dashboard experience, you’ll need to join the Xbox Insider Program and download the Xbox Insider Hub. Microsoft has indicated that it intends to make more significant changes and improvements to the Dashboard and that it is still taking feedback into consideration while at it.