We did it for the Switch. We did it for the PlayStation 5. It’s only fair that we do it for the Xbox, too. Earlier this month, Sony announced it’d purge the barely-used Accolades feature from PS5, which allowed you to bestow awards on others in multiplayer games. This spurred a thought exercise: What other features could get removed from popular gaming platforms without much fanfare?
The Xbox’s UI is pretty fine-tuned, having been honed over roughly a decade. (The Xbox Series X/S uses the same UI as the Xbox One; it’s universal across console generations.) Still, there’s always room to trim. Here are the features Microsoft could purge from the Xbox without causing much of an uproar.
You can pin any game to the Xbox’s permanently: Just hover over its icon, tap the hamburger button, and select “add to home.” Maybe there’s a use case I’m overlooking, but the logic behind this has always failed me. If you play a game frequently enough that you need it pinned permanently to your home screen, it’s probably already on your home screen as one of your most-played games. (The top line of the Xbox UI shows your six most recently used apps. Also your game library is literally right there.)
