While it's still months away from the Xbox Series X's holiday 2020 launch, the Xbox team is slowly finalizing details about the console. Hardware details are the first to be finalized, with the Xbox team confirming the Xbox Series X's specifications in recent months. Launch games will come soon as studios evaluate development during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meantime, some of the first details about the Xbox Series X's user interface are starting to be talked about.
The latest report, care of The Verge, is that things may not be changing significantly with the release of the Xbox Series X. Verge senior editor Tom Warren says that, "Microsoft wants a similar UI across Xbox One/xCloud/Xbox Series X." That means that the UI for the Xbox Series X may be similar, if not identical, to that of the Xbox One.
As evidence, Warren posted a screenshot from one of Microsoft's recent videos for the Xbox Series X. The image shows the Xbox Series X's presumed UI, which at first glance is just the Xbox One UI. It's unclear if Warren has heard anything else on the subject or if these images are all that he's basing this assumption on.
It's also interesting that Warren mentions xCloud. xCloud, Microsoft's game streaming platform akin to Google Stadia, is currently in closed technical testing. Little is known about Microsoft's plans for xCloud going forward, but clearly the intent is to unify it with the Xbox platform to some degree.
It just goes to show that the Xbox team's plans for its UI are platform agnostic. If this report is accurate, the UI will work on old hardware, new cutting-edge hardware, and services that are hardware-agnostic. That makes it a bit easier to understand why, even with the Xbox Series X's improved hardware, that doesn't necessarily mean the UI needs to be entirely rebuilt.
Though Xbox keeping the same UI, both for platform unity and for user comfort, is more than understandable, it's also understandable for Xbox fans to feel somewhat frustrated. There's a unique value to opening a brand new console and learning its new UI. It lent itself to the idea of truly stepping onto a new platform, moving into the next generation. Of course, part of Xbox's goal with the Xbox Series X is to erase many of the boundaries between console generations. It'll be a new, unique experience in its own way.
The Xbox Series X releases holiday 2020.
Source: The Verge