In a recent podcast Microsoft’s Xbox Live director of programming, Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb has said you can actually bypass the whole new look, and even forgo the avatars.
The current look, or ‘blades’, will still be available as they’re fully integrated in the Guide button for those the new look isn’t quite ”flipping their bit,” says Hryb.
”I know that there are some people that aren’t going to like the happy, happy, shiny New Xbox Experience. For whatever reason it’s not flipping their bit,” said the Major during his latest podcast.
”Here’s my message to you: you don’t actually have to use it. You can never go there, just leave your game disc in and pretty much do everything that you could before but on the Guide level - one button press away in every single game.”
”The Dashboard as you know it today, in other words the ‘blades’; Games, Live, Media and System,” Hryb goes on to explain, ”We’ve taken those blades and moved them to the Guide. Every single function that you can do today in the Dashboard you are going to be able to do in the New Xbox Experience in the Guide.”
”When you press the Guide button on the Xbox 360 controller, the new Guide will come up and you’re going to be able to do everything in there. You’re going to be able to contextually browse Marketplace, did you know that? So when you have Gears of War 2 of Halo 3 in there you’re going to be able to go straight to that section.”
For the games who don’t like the idea of avatars they can completely ignore them too and stick to using their pictures. It’s possible in the future that the avatar could get input from the developer studios themselves.
”I was talking to Todd Howard,” Hryb says, talking about the Bethesda executive producer, ”and he was like, ‘hey, I want to talk about Avatars - do you think there’s a little hazmat suit for Fallout 3 we could make?” Okay yes, that would be cool.
The new generation of the Xbox360 dashboard is coming this year - embrace or be uncool!
The ‘blades’ - they just couldn’t cut it any longerSource: CVG
