I never had the first one. The second one is pretty damn sweet.
The original "Blades" GUI was awesome. I absolutely hated the new one; it was like a Happy Meal box exploded inside my 360. Bleh. The newest hardware revision was awesome, though.
But is it backwards compatible?!
Ravenprose said:The original "Blades" GUI was awesome. I absolutely hated the new one; it was like a Happy Meal box exploded inside my 360. Bleh. The newest hardware revision was awesome, though.
I wish they gave you the option to use the Blade Menu if you wanted. Totally preferreed that over turning my 360 on and seeing fucking Justin Bieber.
I much prefer the new design. I'm one who enjoys the extra options it provides.
travo said:I much prefer the new design. I'm one who enjoys the extra options it provides.
What options does it provide that the Blades couldn't have?
edgecrusher said:travo said:I much prefer the new design. I'm one who enjoys the extra options it provides.
What options does it provide that the Blades couldn't have?
Avatars! Well, we didn't Netflix or any of those other services until the changes. I guess we could've had those with the blades, but moving through and checking out different apps seems better this way. I like the cleaner look, I suppose. Maybe Microsoft could've given users a choice.
edgecrusher said:travo said:I much prefer the new design. I'm one who enjoys the extra options it provides.
What options does it provide that the Blades couldn't have?
Kinect navigation support. The blades were too small to navigate with Kinect, thus we needed HUGE BOXES all over our screens. *sigh*
Only thing blades were good at was that the dashboard loaded pretty fast. Nowadays with the metro-fied interface everything seems to take ages to load. However, from an aesthetic point of view, the blades look like ass now.
Archangel3371 said:Avatars are awesome
Oh yes he did. 
And let's not forget built in wi-fi (remember the $100 dongle)? HDMI as default and the death of the HD-DVD accessory (and removable HDDs).
Did anyone here own a HD-DVD device? What was the quality like?
I wish they kept the removable HD thing though, that was a pretty sweet feature of the old machines. About the only feature I miss at all come to think on it.
travo said:Avatars! Well, we didn't Netflix or any of those other services until the changes. I guess we could've had those with the blades, but moving through and checking out different apps seems better this way. I like the cleaner look, I suppose. Maybe Microsoft could've given users a choice.
Avatars...
Yeah they could have easily kept the Blades and just added those services to them.
Ravenprose said:Kinect navigation support. The blades were too small to navigate with Kinect, thus we needed HUGE BOXES all over our screens. *sigh*
Ugh...true. That and the ads are really the only reason to go with the new system.
I guess we do have a stripped down version of the Blades on the Home Menu on the controller...but its not the same.
I think it is genius that Microsoft launched a new console since the 360 came out. And no one noticed.
I think if you were to take the original 360 and a 360 from today and showed them to someone 40 years from now, they would assume the 2012 360 was a different console.
Vastly different GUI. Vastly different hardware design (exterior) and the visual fidelity has come a long way since Perfect Dark Zero.
Remember these?
No avatars, no ads. No nothing really, except simplicity.
One explodes, the other is stable (and silent).
This was a PR shot.
I know that we've unformly observed improvements with games over the course of a generation, and also had hardware revisions before, but I think the change in GUI really does differentiate the 360's evolution from any other in gaming console. And I dig it.