I really miss the original 360 “blade” dashboard. It was so fast and everything was predictable. So much so you could navigate without looking at the screen. It also had a great sound effect when you switched between blades.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
When sleeping (how most people use the console) it’s practically as fast, especially with Instant Resume on the Series X/S.