Xbox has shown that the classic Xbox 360 Blades dashboard can run again, though for now only as an experiment. The demo came from Scott Van Vliet, Xbox CTO and head of Xbox Labs, the new internal group announced by CEO Asha Sharma to explore emerging technologies across gaming and hardware.
In a clip posted on X, Van Vliet runs the Blades inside a web browser on a PC, next to the 2008 New Xbox Experience (NXE) and the 2011 Metro-style dashboard. All three interfaces appear fully navigable. The post asked followers to name their favorite era.
Image: Xbox — https://labs.xbox.com/en-CA/
Sharma replied by quoting the post: "Blades on web. Do we like this experiment?" It is not the first time she has raised the Blades. One of her earliest tweets as Xbox CEO asked fans whether the dashboard should come back.
The experiment arrives as Xbox Labs looks at the growing wave of mods and remixes of games built with generative models that are spreading online. The group has not yet produced concrete results, but the demo suggests Xbox is also looking to its past to figure out how to make the console experience more customizable on next-generation hardware.
Questions remain. A dashboard like this would still have to fit the advertising slots Xbox places in its modern interfaces, and it is unclear how that would be handled in a Blades-inspired version. For now, the Blades' future depends on player feedback and on Xbox Labs' decision about which experience to pursue.
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