I agree with you. Really like the new look MS are making for there Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox dash. I have a windows phone and IMO its the best UI I have ever used and with the Mango Beta on my Phone it offers me more information at a glance than any other Mobile OS out of the box. I see the new 360 dash being the same and it will show users what to expect from Windows 8. Cant wait to get this dash on my 360 as this alone will make kinect even better than it is rather than having 2 dashboards. Its also nice to see they are keeping the mini bade menu too as this is good when you are in game for jumping form a game to the information you want without quitting the game.
Going to be a big few years for MS and the new UI across the different platforms but I think this will be a winner for them in the end.

Bring back the blades!

I'm guessing the recent changes are for Kinect integration, currently they have two different dashboards ( normal and kinect) so this new dash looks like it'd work fine for both devices.

True XMB works fine , but tbh I never really had any major issues with the old X360 dashboards either. I guess there's always room for improvement.

Depending on what LiveTV offers, the verdict is out. That said, XBL doesn't offer anything I feel you should have to pay to access the app. ESPN 2.0 does look fantastic, but for people who don't have an ISP supporting it, you can't use it. I don't think you should pay to auto-sync trophies either btw.

you can put them in folders. You seem like a noob when it comes to the XMB. you can sort EVERYTHING out. create a demo folder and put your demo's there. create a ps classics folders and put your ps1 games there. XMB is much more organised.

It's people like you who end up spreading false information. Just cause you couldn't figure out of to sort your games out by creating folders.

Press triangle. If you have a PS3 that is.

@MYK1992 - "you can put them in folders."

The 360 dashboard does that for you automatically.

I liked it better because it was so simple without all that fancy .

It "LOOKED" simple but it was a very clunk and hard to navigate, not what I would call a good user interface.

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".