September Xbox One update details revealed
The latest Xbox One update has been detailed by Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hyrb. New Snap functions have been a priority for the Xbox team recently, with the developers working to make it more useful and allow it to display things like achievements. The September update further adds to Snap by allowing players to access to your friends list, messages, Game DVR clips along with a clock and battery indicator without going to the dashboard.
Other enhancements give the option to add captions to shared achievements as well as the ability to look at achievements in Snap mode from a game that you are not currently playing. SmartGlass will now also show your top played games as well as what games your friends are playing. The full list of changes can be seen at Larry Hyrb’s official blog.
Last month’s update brought a number of new social features to the Xbox One that had been specifically requested through Xbox Feedback. These allowed gamers to purchase games remotely through Xbox SmartGlass, improvements to the activity feed and new notifications for when friends share, like or comment on game clips. The update also updated the Blu-ray app to allow 3D Blu-ray movies to be watched through the console along with the addition of a “last seen online” time for all users.
Regular updates for the Xbox One have been one of the main features of the next generation console since its release last year. Rather than wait to release larger updates every few month, as was the case with the Xbox 360, Microsoft have opted to put out monthly patches to bring new features and improvements to gamers as soon as possible. This was largely seen as a response to the poor reaction from critics and fans when the console first launched and was missing many of the features that its predecessor had.
The monthly updates look set to continue until at least October, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealing through Twitter that: “We’ve worked through the feature list through October. MUs will continue and features look good.”