If you owned an Xbox 360 during the early days of its lifespan, you'll surely remember the 'Blades' dashboard, often described as possibly the best user interface in Xbox history by veteran fans of the brand.
Unfortunately, the 'Blades' UI disappeared entirely just a short time after the launch of the Xbox 360, and it's been impossible to access it ever since - that is, of course, unless you still have an Xbox 360 that was never updated.
Modern Vintage Gamer is one of those people, and so he's taken to YouTube to rekindle some nostalgia of what the 'Blades' dashboard looked like, giving us a tour of everything from the games to media to console settings' layouts.
It's a great walk down memory lane in perfect HD quality, and in all honesty, we still really miss this version of the Xbox 360 dashboard! It'd be great to see it come back as some kind of optional interface in the future...
You can check out the full video up above, and let us know what you thought of the 'Blades' down below.
Comments 9
Ahh my 360 still has the blades on it! If I had been more bothered to fix the damn thing then I could be raking in that sweet sweet YouTube ad revenue right now 😂
Omg, I loved that dashboard so much! You could actually see themes and stuff. I got so annoyed when the NXE rolled out. Man, those were the days. And let’s not forget the old Xbox 360 intro... 360 really felt premium back then. I can still remember walking into Woolies to pickup my copy of Oblivion (Elder Scrolls) and the wireless adapter for Halo 3.
This brings me back. I still remember ripping cds and listening to my own custom soundtrack as I played tony hawks American wasteland. If I remember right the system was so smart it automatically replaced the game music with my own while I still heard all dialogue and sound effects. Such an awesome feature.
Good or bad I love everything about my 360 =]
The blades are still the best. Really not a fan of the Series X dashboard
I always disliked this UI. It was boring and lacked a Wow factor. I am happy with the latest one but cant wait until they redesign in a couple years.
Blades was such a good design for usability, but not very marketing-friendly from a presentation factor. All function, minimal form. When Sony had the glitzy XMB with the glitter effects it must have appeared lacking. Though NXE certainly wasn't the right solution for that....
I think they've hit the sweet spot with the X1/Series UI echoing Win10 . It could use tweaks, but the Win10 baseline makes the whole synergistic effect of the ecosystem obvious.
Aw... not ANOTHER Blades article. Why all this torment? I still miss them dearly. I positively HATE the new Windows 10 look.
" ...often described as possibly the best user interface in Xbox history by veteran fans of the brand."
Possibly? POSSIBLY??? Ab-so-f-ing-lute-ly!!!
Seeing the games section and the "arcade games," back when all the games you downloaded were classified as an "Xbox Arcade" game for some reason. You can tell that was the early days of an online focused console, physical media was still a big thing and the main way everyone got their games back then. Heck that 360/PS3 gen was the last time I bought all my games on disc, after that discs became little more than a physical version of DRM and I just found it more convenient to have a digital library.
It's a real trip down memory lane for me, the gaming industry was very different back then.
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