Stop
startalso freed up some more room for your
recently played titles, allowing you to
hop back in more easily than ever.
On its original launch, one of
Microsoft’s goals seemed to be to
treat the Xbox One as a multimedia
device, as much for watching
television and browsing online as
playing games. After that didn’t work
out, it’s been a frustratingly slow
road to get videogames back in the
spotlight again. Now, with both yourrecently played titles and your four
key gaming apps front and centre,
Microsoft finally seems to be making
real progress, leaning into the
strengths of one of the best gaming
consoles ever made.
Over the following months, the
update will be updated and changed
based on feedback from Xbox Insider
users. After that, the plan is for it to be
rolled out to all users by the autumn
of this year.
The redesign isn’t without its
casualties, however. The update alsoremoves the on-console Cortana
functionality, meaning you can no
longer use voice commands via your
headset. If you still want to chat to
your Xbox, you’ll need to do it via
the Xbox Skill on an Alexa-enabled
device, or the Cortana app on your
smartphone or computer. Rossetti
describes this as simply “moving
away from on-console experiences to
cloud-based assistant experiences”,
but it certainly suggests that Cortana
was something of a failed experiment
on Xbox One.
We’d be surprised if this wasn’t also
a nod to Microsoft’s plans for
its upcoming console, Xbox Project
Scarlett. Expect the new machine to
launch out of the gate next year with
a clear focus on gaming, a minimum of
built-in voice functionality and Game
Pass as a core, front-and-centre
feature. And we’re all for that. QA spot of Home
improvement
Microsoft experiments with changes to Xbox Home
and Cortana through the Insider program
UPDATER
ENTRYLet’s be
completely honest
here: the Xbox
One dashboard
has never exactly
been what you’d
call ‘best in show’.
Despite numerous well-intentioned
updates over the years, it’s never
reached the point of feeling as smooth
and natural as it should – the legacy
of an architecture that was originally
planned to be controlled primarily via
your voice, not your gamepad. But
Microsoft’s new upcoming changes
may be about to finally fix things.
Currently being tested via an
experimental update rolled out to
those in the Xbox Insider program,
this redesign aims to declutter and
simplify Xbox Home’s interface. “It’s
the first thing you see when you
turn on your Xbox One,” says Bradley
Rossetti, Xbox Insider’s team lead, via
Xbox Wire. “And we want to deliver an
easy and seamless experience for you
to navigate your console.”
Dashboard lite
That’s achieved via some clever
tweaks. One is the removal of the
ever-unpopular Twists from the top of
the screen – they’re replaced simply
with buttons off to the side. These
quickly and easily take you to four of
the most common apps you’re likely to
open in 2019 and beyond: Xbox Game
Pass, Mixer, Xbox Community and the
Microsoft store. At the same time, it’s
The Xbox One’s
launch was heavily
disrupted when many
of Microsoft’s plans
proved controversial.
Much of the design
was based around
features such as a
constant connection
to the internet and
Kinect always being
plugged in – when
those ideas were
rolled back, that
design suddenly
made far less sense.
Thankfully Microsoft
has remained
committed to
updating and
improving the Xbox
One ever since.INSIDER XBOX HOME UPDATE
“The plan is for
it to be rolled out
to all users by
the autumn of
this year”
ABOVE A shot of
the new look
dashboard – note
the buttons on
the left.
RIGHT Cortana is
based on Master
Chief’s AI
companion from
the Halo series.EXCITED? HORRIFIED? LET THE WORLD KNOW AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/OXMUK
010 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE