When you think back to the early days of the Xbox 360, it’s easy to think of the incredible games – including one of the greatest launch lineups of all time – the seamless Xbox Live integration and Party Chat. But when Microsoft were building the Xbox 360 OS, they were thinking about the future, with the player at the heart.
Before the Blades dashboard, the most advanced console dashboard was arguably the SEGA Dreamcast’s, which itself only had a handful of options including data management and generic hardware configurations like date and time. A basic dashboard was something just accepted by console gamers, we didn’t appreciate there was a world outside of playing games. A world where you could spend hours without launching a game.
So much has already been said about the original Blades dashboard and twenty years on, their influence is still present. It’s a testament to the forward thinking of Xbox at the time, a future focused agenda that offered console gamers an experience and features they’d never seen before. With a nostalgic lens on the iconic four blades, it’s easy to look back at the dashboard’s vibrancy and reminisce of opening the Xbox Store, launching an early Xbox Live Arcade title like Cloning Clyde or Geometry Wars, or opening up your music library of tracks you’d ‘ripped’ from CDs.
Though what’s often overlooked about the Blades is that they made launching your console feel like you were ‘coming home’. Not just in the return to dashboard sense; rather the feel of being at the centre of what’s happening.
The games
Xbox and the Blades wanted you to play more and gave you access to do just that. Be it more retail titles or something exciting from Xbox Live Arcade, the 360 urged you and friends to give everything a go. At the time, demo discs were still the norm way of trying out a new game, and with Official Xbox Magazine they lived on long into the 360’s life cycle. But with Xbox Live, you had access to demos of all the big games and a guaranteed trial for every single Xbox Live Arcade game – and often, the dangle of an achievement unlock if you parted with 400 – 800 Microsoft Points. Microsoft Points were a clever way to encourage online spend, at the time the world was still coming online (I remember in the 2007 – 2010 era working at GAME (UK) asking people if they had broadband and so many still did not!), but with Microsoft Points it felt like you weren’t spending real money, although not in a predatory way.
An issue with the modern Xbox One / Series dashboard is Store curation. With an explosion of instantly available games compared to what was there in the early days of the 360’s life, Xbox Live thrived in offering a curated collection of high-quality games that were hand picked by Xbox. The 2008 Summer of Arcade (or Winter if you live in the southern hemisphere) collection pitched XBLA greats including Braid, Castle Crashers and Geometry Wars 2 as the games you had to play, and for good reason. Nowadays, my suggested titles are questionable to say the least.
The social
The four Blades – Xbox Live, Games, Hardware and Media – were all that you needed. Xbox 360 consolidated your media life, a portion of your social life and your gaming life in one location, which had never been seen before.
The Blades played a significant part in inventing social gaming. Want to see who’s playing? Open your friends list and see who’s playing what, and why not send them a Private Chat invite to arrange the night of gaming ahead? It’s easy to forget when the Xbox 360 launched in late-2005, social media hadn’t become a prominent societal entity. Facebook was barely known; group chats were ringfenced to the likes of MSN Messenger (which did briefly integrate with Xbox Live in 2007); and watching trailers for the latest game was done by downloading them to your 20gb hard drive. The internet term ‘social’ was basically unknown, but the 360’s Blades made it feel like they were already there.
The you
Xbox wanted the four Blades to feel like they belonged to you. With custom backgrounds, including the option to plug a USB memory stick to import photos, as mentioned above logging on really felt like ‘coming home’. Of course, when the New Xbox Experience and Avatars launched in late-2008 the customisation ante was upped significantly but the Blades paved the way.
Every early Xbox 360 owner will have their Blades stories to tell. From the first time booting up their console seeing “Games. Tournaments. Entertainment. All the rewards. Endless possibilities. What are you waiting for?”; the first time topping up their MSP balance to buy a XBLA classic; to the first time you received a Private Chat invite from a school friend – Party Chat wasn’t added until the NXE dashboard – it was all magical. It was all about you Jump(ing) In.
The future
Xbox 360’s Blades and Guide set the standard for console gaming OS that still prevails today. PlayStation 3 and Wii borrowed heavily from what blew our minds in 2005 and you can trace the UI of modern generation hardware all the way back to the Blades. If you’re feeling nostalgic and have an Xbox Series console, there is a Blades themed dynamic dashboard you should switch on right away. It won’t bring back the Blades of glory, but it’s a way to honour the way they blazed the trail.
2008’s New Xbox Experience was an excellent functional upgrade but never quite had the sense of home that the Blades gave us. The NXE dash only lasted a couple of years, as in late-2010, Xbox 360 updated it’s dashboard again with the ‘Metro’ tile system which could be controlled by the highly successful Kinect camera.
To twenty years of the Blades, and 17 years since they went away. We miss your ‘swoosh’, your colours and your feel of being home.
What are your best memories of the Xbox 360 Blades? Was it the best Xbox dashboard, or is it just nostalgia? Come and join the active and friendly Gamer Social Club Discord to chat all about your best Xbox memories.
