Screens of the Xbox 360’s Kinect dashboard have surfaced, giving gamers the world over time to practice saying, “Xbox - Netflix.”
Sporting a layout that is undeniably similar to the Wii Dashboard (coincidence?), the Kinect Dashboard appears vastly less cluttered than the current 360 dashboard.
As the instruction on one of the images states, “if you see it, just say it.” Kinect responds to voice commands for maximum ease of control. Of course, as demonstrated during Microsoft’s E3 press event, such commands seem to require the spoken preface “Xbox.”
Voice control aside, the layout of the Kinect Dashboard is primarily designed to support Kinect’s Minority Report-like gestural navigation control. The large, clean “buttons” on the dash board are, no doubt, significantly easier to manipulate than the endlessly scrolling scrolling menus and sub menus (and sub sub menus) of the current 360 dashboard.
Kinect’s gestural navigation and voice control (not to mention the nifty “wave to sign in” feature) are, for me, among the most interesting features of the unit. They may be enough to recommend the system, provided Microsoft can deliver Kinect for a reasonable price.
As for the Kinect Dashboard, based on appearance alone, it looks to be a significant improvement over the current version. It would be great if Microsoft offered all 360 owners the option to update to this layout, no matter which control method they are using.
What do you think of the Kinect Dashboard? Are you picking up Kinect?
Source: Gameaxis
