Microsoft has released a new trailer outlining some of the features arriving with the March Xbox One update.
Larry Hyrb, aka Major Nelson or Director of Programming at Xbox Live, speaks to Xbox One engineering team member Richard Irving in the new update trailer.
Mostly, the trailer outlines the new Party and Friends modifications coming to your Xbox One dashboard next month.
“I think we’ve addressed the number one most requested feature, which is turning party chat on by default”, said Irving.
Cross-game chat for Xbox One Parties has also been made easier for gamers by clearly marking who’s doing what.
In your party list, those playing the same game will fall into one section, with anyone undertaking “other activities” in another.
“You now have three distinct options for bringing people into your party. You can invite them just to the Party if you want to chat, you can invite them just to your game or you can invite them to the Party and to the game simultaneously.”
If one of your mates sends you a party invite and you accept, you will automatically be added to the Party chat and then you will be taken straight to the multiplayer set up for that particular game.
“There’s a lot of refinement to the UI to improve your access to different features of the system and we are actively awaiting more feedback to continue to improve the experience”, added Irving.
The March update will also bring improvements to the Friends app on the Xbox One.
“The most important thing is it’s faster to access your online friends. Our data and research showed that the majority of people were going just to check the online status of their friends and now its three button clicks or one voice command away.”
Microsoft has also added a new context menu that makes it easier to send messages, send party invites and compare the game you’ve played with your friends’ activities.
To see all the other Friends and Party tweaks, watch the video embedded below.
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