Looking to further improve your Xbox One experience, Microsoft has detailed the next wave of system features that will become available as part of the planned April update. Rather than focus on a single feature, this update appears to be more well-rounded, tweaking various aspects of the Xbox One user experience. Among the changes are improvements to your friends list, GameDVR video quality, Kinect voice and motion recognition, and game an app saves.
Here's what Microsoft has previewed so far for the April update:
- Game and app saves and updates. A game save progress bar will 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 favorites 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.
Like the March update, Microsoft will invite select Xbox LIVE members to preview the system update early. What's more, the company will be extending the number of invites sent out.
"The engagement from the community has been incredible and we’ve gotten valuable feedback and bugs that have helped inform our feature improvements and quality before we rolled out the system update to the broader community," Microsoft's Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb said. "We will continue to push new features and other updates to these folks to explore and we’ll be trying new things with the UI, like notifications, different ways of discoverability, and a bunch of other ideas the team is working on. Through this process, some features will launch, others might not and all will be refined through feedback."
Earlier this month, Microsoft released an Xbox One update that focused mostly on the console's party and multiplayer systems, while also adding Twitch streaming functionality.
