Microsoft’s newest console just got a significant update a few weeks ago, changing a whole bunch of stuff in the process. Next month’s update won’t be quite as wide-ranging but it still adds tweaks that people have been asking for.
April’s Xbox One update gets detailed on the console’s news site, bringing news about improved friends functionality and better info about saves and updates:
- Game and app saves and updates. A game save progress barwill show you the status of your game saves. You will also be able to easily tell what games and apps are being updated or have been updated recently.
- Friends improvements. Notifications will be added to see when favourites and friends sign in to Xbox Live. This actually was one of the most frequently requested features from the first preview wave and we made it a priority to include it in the April update. Also, friends who are in multiplayer will be identified in the friends list. We’ll also add the ability to view friends’ most popular apps.
- Kinect voice and motion improvements will continue to fine tune the quality and reliability of Xbox One commands.
- Improved GameDVR video quality through compression algorithm improvements.
Here’s hoping that last one really delivers a substantial bump to video quality because, hey, that’s always nice. And raise your hands if you’re psyched for those Friends List improvements. That is a lot of hands.
Comments
13 responses to “The Xbox One Improves A Little Bit More Next Month”
well i know ill be turning off friend list notifications pretty quickly. i dont care every single time xyzspacekillatehn logs in and out of xboxlive.
By the sound of it you’ll only be notified if they’re marked as favourites so you won’t have to turn anything off.
It looks like the preview has also added option to change the volume of snapped apps (although doesn’t appear to be working atm) and the ability change what the game volume does when using kinect for chat. So worth noting those features will also probably be included.
Seems like another decent update though that is pushing the console closer to where it would have been at launch pre-drm reversal. Friend notifications especially is something I am sure many people have been waiting for.
Also, doesn’t mention it here, but hopefully it let’s us know when a friend starts playing the game we are playing again.
Unfortunately I don’t think friend notifications are in the preview yet, so can’t test that out (unless I missed it in the settings app); but yeah, having an option for that would be good as well.
Yeah, if you could go ahead and add external HDD support
That’d be great.
Seriously though, just get the party and friend system up to the ease-of-use and speed of the 360 and external HDD support then I’ll be happy. Very happy.
P.S. Also at 8pm Eastern I expect my bloody Titanfall fix for the evening! Get freaking xbl back up! Its normally safe as houses and I’m trumpeting it’s tune, but right now its down with nothing more than this support page being updated with the same msg every half an hour.
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status
Says only Redbox is down when I check it? I’m not gaming, but Xbox Live seems to be up for me, listening to Xbox Music on my One.
Yeah, they had it fixed pretty quickly. It was the ability to interact with your friends in any way. You could still play but the friends “app” just didn’t work.
Nothing wrong with DVR, what they really need is to repair party chat.
Party chat isn’t broken, why would it need repairing? It works fine.
I play with a lot of groups and there’s about three common errors that that are quite frequent.
my most common is stating some people are in other activities, when they are just clearly in a match and party doing nothing wrong and it was totally random….We proved this at a Lan last weekend where random problems would appear and we were all in the same room.
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=C4F659D2895251BC!740&authkey=!AM54_tzEiSjm3JI&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.jpg
Can confirm this. Even with the most recent updates, the number of times I join a party session only to have the chat not responding still makes me wonder just how much they ‘fixed’ it at all.
Compare this to Skype or any PC based chat model, the Xbox one system is a complete friggen joke.
Then we have the fact the lastest controller adaptor firmware is complete crap (random disconnects and a number of the 3rd party headsets are choppy sound (turtlebeach) or the mic gain is fubar (polk4shot) and you have to wonder if Microsoft are running ahead too fast to try and make up for lost time rather than ensuring their components actually work before they roll them out?
The Xbox platform is WAY too US centric from the perspective of an Aussie gamer and whilst I love my xbox one to bits, I cannot stand up and be part of the cheer squad for MS.
The Xbox one isn’t even on par with the stability and functionality of the X360 atm and that’s just downright embarrassing.
Agreed