The new Xbox One UI talks back to you, and is coming this Christmas

With the slow, quiet death of the Great Kinect Experiment came some pretty pointed questions - when would Xbox One receive a new user interface that didn't so heavily rely on the doomed camera peripheral, and what would it entail? Last night, Major Nelson answered both of those questions: it's coming this Christmas, and the dead AI lady from Halo lives in it now.

Clearly built to complement the upcoming Windows 10, the new interface keeps the Xbox One's simple tabs, but aims to streamline the process of getting around - it's literally faster for a start.

It's not yet clear what input this requires, but I'd be surprised if it didn't allow for regular headphone mics as well as Kinect, given Microsoft's dropping of the camera as a pack-in peripheral. All-in-all, it looks like a positive set of improvements - no huge changes (which explains why it didn't make it into the main Microsoft conference), but intelligent ones, reflecting a potential new audience.

Joe first fell in love with games when a copy of The Lion King on SNES became his stepfather in 1994. When the cartridge left his mother in 2001, he turned to his priest - a limited edition crystal Xbox - for guidance. And now he's here.