Back in June, at the E3 gaming expo, Microsoft unveiled a major overhaul of its Xbox One interface, promising that it would arrive later this year. Earlier today, at Gamescom 2015, Microsoft said that this "new Xbox One experience powered by Windows 10" will arrive in November 2015.
So far, we"ve only seen bits and pieces of the new Xbox One interface, and much of what we"ve seen is now weeks old. Today - after briefly whipping up Microsoft fans into a frenzy - the company"s Mike Ybarra showed off a screenshot showing the latest design of the Xbox One Home screen, which has been tweaked a bit since our first look at it in June.
More sections have been added to the top row (originally, this list was made up of only Home, Community and Store). The overall layout is a bit "tighter" too - while there were acres of space between UI elements on the earlier Dashboard design, this latest version appears to make better use of the available canvas.
A few more icons have appeared on the leftmost column as well, and notably, the Cortana icon - which used to be at the top of those icons - has now been replaced by a more familiar "search" magnifying glass.
Whether this change will stick in the final release remains to be seen, but we do know that Cortana will be a part of the console"s new user experience. Ybarra does point out that the software remains in development, so anything can change between now and launch.