Xbox 360 Dashboard Redesign

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you would know that Microsoft announced a complete redesign of the dashboard you know and (sometimes) love. What you may not have seen is the glut of video content available to give you an in-depth walkthrough of all the new features.

First we will start off with the trailer for the redesign, presented by Larry “MajorNelson” Hyrb…

As well as the dash re-design, Microsoft is also introducing Avatars that will replace the current gamerpic system. While more personal, it still remains to be seen what will happen to all the gamer pictures you have purchased, including how the Xbox Live Vision camera may/will be utilized.

We’ve already reported what is going to happen to your themes in this post – “How themes will work on the new 360 dashboard” – so we know they’re safe, it’s actually looking like they might be a better fit in the new dash.

Next we have the Avatars featurette…

After watching the quick trailer and hearing about avatars, I’m sure you’re very interested to see how the new dash is going to work for you, below we have a full walkthrough so you can see exactly how it is going to work and feel.

What do you think of the new dash design? according to an impromptu poll in our forums, user seem to be excited about the redesign, I also got in touch with a well known Xbox Live Arcade developer to get thoughts from a developers perspective…

What are your first thoughts on the dash redesign

I think it buries the arcade, but also puts Arcade games on par with retail games, so both good and bad.

Were you informed of the update ahead of time, or was it news to you at the press announcement

It was news to me at the press announcement

What do you think about gamer pictures disappearing from the dash, are you worried the DLC creation process will become more complex now you have to create content for Avatars as opposed to a static image.

I can’t imagine the design style for Avatars being hard, I just don’t want to be a skinny white guy in my games. It turns out I’m already a skinny white guy. I’d much rather be a Space Marine, or a starship or dragon. So I’m Anti-Avatars, if there’s a choice not to use them, you can bet I won’t.

So if you had a chance to incorporate Avatars into an arcade game you would prefer not to?

As in have Avatars star in our games like Wii sports?

Yeah, so like Mii’s where you can have gamers playing with abstractions of themselves instead of a “standard” character.

Yeah, save that stuff for the Wii. I want to make good games.

You can check out the official announcement on the Xbox Website, then Jump into our forums and voice your opinion!