It’s all about offering a “Consistent Experience”
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Yesterday, we highlighted the new Xbox Game Dev Update episode that had been posted to YouTube, which included a complete broadcast of Jason Ronald’s next-gen presentation from GDC 2026 back in March.
Following this, Tom Warren over at The Verge pointed out that the presentation included a “Consistent Experience” image showing off the Xbox dashboard across multiple devices, complete with changes to the UI for each of them.
Firstly, here’s a bit of what Ronald says during this part of the presentation:
“As a player, if I choose to move between screens, I shouldn’t have to learn new user interfaces just based on the screen that I’m on. That doesn’t mean you’re going to have to exact same user experience, because we think about things like screen size and input modalities, but this is really designed around a consistent, familiar, distinctly Xbox experience wherever you choose to play.”
As you can see, there are subtle differences for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S dashboard in the image above, such as the profile icon being moved to the top right, a switcharound of the five central icons at the top as well, and the removal of a “browse the store” button in favour of an advertisement for the ROG Xbox Ally.
It’s the PC side of things that’s most interesting to us though, with the mockup seemingly adding multiple new sections and rectangular game titles that are similar to the recent makeover on the Microsoft Store for Windows.
The ROG Xbox Ally in this image is shown to be running essentially the same dashboard as the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, which seems a little weird unless it’s meant to be highlighting Xbox Remote Play. Is there a chance that the console UI could be coming over to the Ally in the future? Maybe, but we’re sceptical about that.
Something to keep in mind about all of this is that it’s just a mockup — Xbox has shared images like this before that haven’t represented the final product, so don’t take it as anything official right now. The Verge asked Microsoft to comment on it, but apparently the company declined to.
We’ll have to wait and see if any of this comes to fruition, but in any case, they clearly want to make things more “consistent” going forward in terms of the overall UI and dashboard. That’s surely a good sign!
What do you make of this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.
