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Modern Vintage Gamer: I miss the Xbox 360 Blades Dashboard

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


The Xbox 360 launched in 2005 with a unique dashboard known as the "Blades". I still own one Xbox 360 console that was never updated and still contains the Blades Dash in all its glory. In this episode we take a look at what made the dashboard so popular with fans and how many have wanted to see it return.
 

matty3092

Member
Goddamn seeing this video hit me right in the nostalgia think I got a 360 in March 2008 thanks to playing COD4 at a friend's house and loved it. Ah the memories.
 

carlosrox

Banned
This was the best. I miss it too.

One of the first revisions they did was pretty decent too, it just got worse over time.
 

phil_t98

#SonyToo
The blades were awesome but I can’t see how they would work with a modern day console and all the features they have.

navigating the store fronts would be a nightmare. As much as I loved the old blades style we needed to move on from it
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Aw I loved this dashboard. After that update that made it fast & responsive it was just perfect. It looked cool, lent itself well to themes, and was logically laid out in a way that made it easy to find whatever you wanted.

I feel like every update after this was more aimed at aligning it with the Windows “Metro” UI, showing off your avatar items (and selling you new ones), advertising, and Kinect functionality.
 

Jubenhimer

Member
The blades were awesome but I can’t see how they would work with a modern day console and all the features they have.

navigating the store fronts would be a nightmare. As much as I loved the old blades style we needed to move on from it
This, it was a great interface for its time. But I seriously doubt it'll work on modern consoles.
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Reaction GIF
 
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nemiroff

Gold Member
EVERYONE loved the blades, and there was no reason to not love the UI at the time. You can still legitimately critique today's UI, but keep in mind that the blades literally wasted about ~40% of the screen for menus.. It doesn't take a UI pro (like me ackchyually) to understand that it's not really suitable for sorting information and as a design language in a UI/UX in 2021. A lot has changed since back then, including users, products and design.., and also things like f.ex. taxonomy / context / hierarchy / functionality / data / expectations (and not the least overarching and integrating the store).
 
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sn0man

Member
Would be a nice gesture if Microsoft updated the 360 one last time and gave people the option to run the blades and released a theme making kit.
 
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