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Xbox users rejoice, because the new Xbox Home will make your console’s homescreen look ten times better than it did before today. The Xbox team officially announced the home design the morning of July 26, as part of the latest update to the Xbox Series X|S.
This is an update and a home design that’s available for both consoles too. In fact, it’s available on Xbox One also. Microsoft says that it’s currently rolling out the new Xbox Home design to a “subset of all Xbox consoles.” If there is one caveat to seeing this new design, it’s that not all users will see it today.
The team confirms that some uses will need to wait “weeks” before it shows up. Still, you might be one of the lucky ones. So if you own an Xbox, you should definitely see if the update is available download and install. Because the visual appeal is worth it.
The new Xbox Home adds game-specific backdrops
You’ll immediately notice this design if you own both an Xbox Series X|S and a PS5. Because this is more or less how the PS5’s homescreen looks. With a few tweaks of course. While some personally prefer the old PlayStation design of “themes” from the PS4 era, the new look for PS5 with the game-specific backdrops is still quite a nice touch. And that’s what Xbox users are now getting.
As you scroll through the installed games on your console, the backdrop will adjust to fit that particular game. As you can see in the image above with the Starfield backdrop. That being said, you DO NOT have to stick with this type of backdrop. This is actually an optional feature you can enable, the Xbox team says. As the default setting for the backdrop still allows for customization. Meaning you can choose what you want the backdrop to be.
Outside of backdrop aesthetics, the new Xbox Home also makes things more organized. Recently played games as well as other content and apps are now floating at the bottom. Which plays into the new options for the backdrop because you can now see more of it. All of these changes were initially tested with members of the Xbox Insider program around 8 months ago. So it’s not the first time this design has popped up. But it is the first time that all users will begin to have access to it.