The blades also resembled the shape of a 360 case. Beautiful design, but I believe it wasn't scalable enough for the new content, therefore got replaced.

Yes, before it got replaced entirely they added a fifth blade for "Marketplace" - hard to believe now but that was a major development in 2006 or 2007 when it happened. But when they opened up the floodgates for video streaming services and such, they just couldn't keep adding blades

> the new content

Ah, yes, the advertisements, masked with the veneer of pointless avatars and a nearly-useless Facebook app. My first time having ads funneled natively through a device I had purchased.

Now advertisements in the dashboard are the status quo for Xbox and Sony, so I guess they were ahead of the curve there.

For sure. The new UI is way too complicated

I scratch this itch with the JX 720 XBMC skin as the default dash for my OG XBOX: https://sites.google.com/site/xbmc4xboxskinmods/jx720

Not sure where to find it now, but back in The Day there was a modified copy of the XBOX360 1888 dash (November 2005 launch ver) floating around as a standalone XEX that would run on a homebrew-enabled 360.

Totally agree, by far the best dashboard of any console I have ever used.

Another great feature was just how blazingly fast it was to hope into and out of that dashboard while playing a game.

Both the PS4 and Xbox One were such a disappointment to me. Even after years of use, figuring out where menu items were and long delays switching between menus. Combined with PC gaming getting both cheaper and gaining great controller support made it so I will never buy a console again. Buying games for a system with a limited lifespan to then be frustrated by the experience is a just not worth it. Meanwhile Steam games I bought almost 20 years ago are still downloadable and playable.

The PS5 and XBSX|S are a lot better in this regard, everything is much faster and they have full compatibility with the last generation. The Xbox's compatibility goes as far back as the original system from 2001.

I miss game consoles not having dashboards. Game just runs.

With game consoles being more “media centers” than just game consoles in 2023 I’m not sure I agree.

At the same time I don’t think there’s anything preventing you from ignoring 90% of a console and just launching disc-based games. You’ll need an internet connection for patches but beyond that it’s pretty easy past initial setup.

Do you actually use the media center pieces?

I only use PlayStation for gaming and occasionally to play a BluRay. It’s really not a great general media box; it would need a better remote control, for starters.

And yet Sony insists on wasting screen space with a a pointless media library icon that can’t be removed.

All HDMI PlayStations can read control signals from the HDMI receiver i.e. can be controlled by the TV remote, though running third party apps (such as Netflix) would be problematic with a TV remote because for some stupid reason Sony does not allow apps to exit(3) so you can start anything with a TV remote but if it's a non-builtin player you need a PS remote or a controller to bring up the system menu and kill the app.

> All HDMI PlayStations

Forgive my pedantry, but the "Fat" (CECHA~Q) PS3s do not support this, only the "Slim" and "Super-Slim" models: http://www.edepot.com/playstation3.html#PS3_Model_Difference...

I use an Xbox One X solely as a "YouTube/Kodi home theatre"... (I also have a lot of game systems and computers). Indeed I have the trusty infrared remote! It's a pretty nice setup! Especially as I can play some games on it from time to time. :)

Do you mean the media remote is poor or do you mean the controller? https://www.playstation.com/en-us/accessories/media-remote/

> At the same time I don’t think there’s anything preventing you from ignoring 90% of a console and just launching disc-based games.

It takes longer to run the game ever since the 360/PS3/Wii gen, and the 360 is notoriously annoying about user sign-in, and there's that center button you accidentally press mid-game to bring up the hub. Wii has probably the worst dashboard cause you need to set up the IR transmitter and Wiimote to get past it even for games that only use GC controllers.

I get the media center thing as a selling point for other people. I just have never used a game console for things besides games.

It’s certainly slower but in absolute terms it still only take tens of seconds on a cold boot.

When sleeping (how most people use the console) it’s practically as fast, especially with Instant Resume on the Series X/S.

I dont miss scratched discs or blowing into cartridges, and whatnot i much prefer just starting the game from the UI, the switch isnt bad in this regard, starts up on your game menu you pick a game and play.