The Death of Character in Game Console Interfaces

When I got my Switch years ago my reaction to the UI was basically "This is it?" It felt like an un-styled working prototype. My thought was "Nintendo rushed this thing out the door to stay in business, surely they'll add some character over time" as they had done with the 3DS (the 3DS started out good but got better).

Nope? I'm still waiting. The only real big change they made was the introduction of their terrible virtual cartridge licensing system.

I genuinely hate the Switch home screen. I would rather be booted into the "More Games" UI instead of this dumb horizontal scroll of a handful of most recent games and then having to scroll over to pick "more games". If you want to be minimal, at least make it easy to pick the game I want. I've got a 65" TV, give me the grid, not 4 titles at a time!

Most of all, BRING BACK THE FUN. Colors, music, silly interactions. Sure, add the option to turn it off, because a vocal minority hate that stuff, but how many of us have the Wii store music burnt into our brains?

It's also the games. Let's count them:

1. A collection of logos of the 30 studios that contributed to the title somehow, skippable or not.

2. A bunch of EULAs that you have to click through at least on the first run.

3. An epilepsy warning that you always have to click through. I'm looking at you, Paradox and Vampire: Bloodlines 2. (For the record, I bought it extremely cheap, not at the launch price.)

4. On Playstation at least, the silly "press any button" screen. Why can't you give me the menu directly?

5. Another silly warning "this game has an autosave function". You may have to click through it or not.

6. If Rockstar, try to trick the user into launching the online component every time.

I wish this had shown the modern interface for contrast with the others.

I have no idea what the current Xbox UI looks like, so while I appreciate the legacy console examples I would have liked the reference point.

The settings are a lot more intricate than they used to be, especially video settings. So I'm guessing a lot of the intent is to present the information as clearly as possible and call it a day. Direct users towards big pictures for the games and for the store and hopefully have a wizard for the user to get on the internet.

The other day I mused, "software used to look like an alien space ship. Now it looks like paperwork."

I wasn't even thinking of the Xbox when I wrote that, just software in general in those days. Feels like everything had depth, character, texture...

But reading this article, man the Xbox sounds amazing! I need to buy one now.

"When I powered on my Xbox Series S for the first time... It felt no different from Windows 11."

(1) No accident (2) Ever see a Windows phone? That was the whole idea.

TBH they have accessibility to keep in mind - visual contrast, screen reader support, etc.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, but I've yet to find a great example of something that is both accessible and full of character.

Nothing like going from Toonami to the original Xbox while drinking a green monster. Peak childhood right there.

I miss when you turned on your console and booted directly into the game. Sony's XMB is a terrible UI. Things are unintuitive to find and take forever to get there even when you do know where you're going. Something like the NDS UI is at least fast and easy to use, aided by the touch interface. However, I bought a console to play games, not to click through a bunch of settings (that's what a PC is for!).

I was greatly disappointed to learn back in 2020 that PS5 didn't even support themes. The only customization it offers is disabling / enabling sound and changing a background to a screenshot for one of the menu items which is a dashboard (with customizable widgets at least) with your friends' activities, new store arrivals or whatever you choose.

Changing to an appropriate theme when there were holidays or when I beat a good game that stays in my mind was something that I didn't know I would miss once switching to a new generation.

Cool interfaces don't make billions of dollars. Match-3 games and microtransactions and season passes and skinner boxes make billions of dollars.

You understand, right?

"Even today I can burn hours clicking around the Wii"

I mean, the menu's fine but its not that exciting

They also turned into ad billboards and digital storefronts.