A Spot Of Home Improvement

Microsoft experiments with changes to Xbox Home and Cortana through the Insider program

Let’s be completely honest here: the Xbox One dashboard has never exactly been what you’d call ‘best in show’.

Despite numerous well-intentioned updates over the years, it’s never reached the point of feeling as smooth and natural as it should – the legacy of an architecture that was originally planned to be controlled primarily via your voice, not your gamepad. But Microsoft’s new upcoming changes may be about to finally fix things.

Currently being tested via an experimental update rolled out to those in the Xbox Insider program, this redesign aims to declutter and simplify Xbox Home’s interface. “It’s the first thing you see when you turn on your Xbox One,” says Bradley Rossetti, Xbox Insider’s team lead, via Xbox Wire. “And we want to deliver an easy and seamless experience for you to navigate your console.”