Starting with the US and UK, gamers can expect more voice commands with greater accuracy, natural language and text dictation. Xbox has adopted Microsoft’s vision of making Cortana a digital assistant. Thanks to Cortana, gamers can find great new games, see what their friends are up to, start a party, accomplish common tasks, turn on Xbox One using Kinect, and more.
According to a post by Mike Ybarra, the Xbox boss at Microsoft, here are the other highlights:
Xbox One
- Background Music: The Pandora app, Groove Music, iHeartRadio apps will now let you listen to your favorite music in the background while gaming on Xbox One.
- Language Region Independence: Location no longer decides language on Xbox One.
- Xbox and Windows Store convergence: Microsoft has started to combine the best of the Xbox Store and Windows Store to give gamers a single cohesive experience across their devices. Gamers will be able to filter search results by genre, read reviews written by fellow gamers – including those voted “most helpful” by the Xbox Live community – easily recognize what titles are on sale with strikethrough pricing in lists, and more.
- Facebook Friend Finder: Gamers can now log into their Facebook accounts from their Xbox One, making it easier to find more people to play games and have fun with.
- Improved sharing on Xbox One: It’s now easier to share screenshots, GameDVR clips, and achievements on Xbox One automatically and
- Improved Game Collection to give gamers a wider range of choice.
Xbox app and Windows 10 PC gaming
- Top Windows 10 PC games show up on Xbox Live: League of Legendsand XCOM 2 are are now available in their own Game Hubs on Xbox Live.
- Windows Game Bar improved full-screen support: Xbox has now added support for six additional games in full-screen mode with Windows Game Bar: League of Legends, World of Warcraft, DOTA 2, Battlefield 4, Counterstrike: Global Offensive, and Diablo III.
- 60 fps game clip recording with the Game Bar, double the required rate for flawless recording.
Xbox app on mobile
- Xbox app on iOS and Android: Announced and released during E3, the Xbox app is now available on iOS and Android.
Microsoft listened to gamers’ requests for Background Music, Language-Region Independence and the ability to use the Windows Game Bar with more games running in full-screen. With the integration of the stores Microsoft clearly hopes to drive up sales. It will be interesting to know if gamers will purchase more from Windows stores as a result of the fulfilled requests, making a great case for Microsoft’s return on investment in this update.
