Following complaints by the community of it being too cluttered, Microsoft has said it is going to change course on the planned changes to the Xbox Home dashboard.
In September 2022, Microsoft announced that Xbox Insiders were to be invited to “help shape the new Xbox Home experience.” This test was a “multi-month series of experiments to learn how to create a more personalized home screen experience and address some of the top trends and fan requests.”
Unfortunately, the changes haven’t been as well received as Microsoft had hoped and the company, in a blog post, said it is pausing those experiments and will work to “balance the experience, accessibility, function, and the needs of our community and bring you a great and refreshed Home experience.”
One of the biggest issues the community had was with how crowded everything felt and how the new UI blocked the backgrounds that users could choose. As you can see in the image below from Microsoft, the Halo image is mostly blocked by all the tiles, and the community would like to see a bit more balance between items to interact with and the backgrounds that make their home theirs.
As Microsoft works to address the complaints, Alpha and Alpha-Skip Xbox Insiders will be reverted back to the original Xbox Home experience they were using and their previous settings and backgrounds from before the test will be activiated. The “new Home” settings will be saved for the future.
“Thank you for all the feedback you’ve shared. It’s a key part of our process, and our team is working hard to incorporate it into the experience and get it to you to use,” Ivy Krislov, senior product manager lead, Xbox experiences, said. “We are excited to share even more details with you soon!”
For more in the world of Xbox, check out our list of the top 15 Xbox Series X/S games and our chat with Xbox’s Sarah Bond and her committment to indie support.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
