One of my favourite things to write about, to make all of the PlayStation 4 owners out there a little green with envy, is Xbox One updates. After around about a month out in the public testing phase that always preludes a full release, the October update is now out in the wilds. This means that Xbox owners have now had three OS updates – August, September and now October – since Sony first announced the PS4’s 2.0 update at Gamescom, and Phil Spencer has already blabbed about some of their future plans.
So, what’s new this time around? Well, this update really helps to establish the Xbox One as a media hub, thanks to the Media Player now have DLNA and MKV support and the OneGuide support expanding to another 11 countries. Connecting with your friends is also greatly improved with a big update to the way Snap works and the addition of Friends and Messages Snap apps. The Friends section as a whole has a ton of new functions to let you share and keep tabs on what you and your friends are getting up to in games, and a pretty cool Gamerscore tracker.
There are a couple of minor changes since the test release though. For some reason there’s no mention of the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner support, ahead of its street date next week, and the Netherlands has been skipped by for OneGuide support.
Here’s Larry Hryb to tell you all about it, followed by the full list of changes. Don’t forget that you can now force your Xbox One to check for updates in the System section of the Settings app.
- New Snap and Friends functions – Stay in the game and in touch with your friends at the same time with improved Snap, SmartGlass and Achievements functions.
- Snap Updates – We’ve updated the Snap Center to include quick access to many of the things our fans wanted faster access to when playing a game – Friends, Messages, Game DVR, clock, and battery indicator – as well as making it easier to close and open new snap apps when playing a game. A double tap of the Xbox button on your controller will bring up a menu that allows you to open a new app in snap mode, close the current snapped app, or switch focus between your game and your running snapped app. Additionally, two apps have been optimized for Snap mode:
- Friends Snap App – Access your friends list without leaving the game. Quickly check your friends list to see who’s online right now and take actions like send message, invite or join.
- Messages Snap App – You’ll be able to open, read and respond to messages in Snap mode, and messages will now be displayed in a threaded conversation view.
- Achievements App – Updated to enable sharing of achievements you’ve unlocked with captions, see a list of friends who have unlocked specific achievements, and an updated achievements Snap landing page that that shows Achievements on recently played games, when a gamer is not actively playing a game.
- Friends section – The new Friends section enables you to see at a glance what’s going on with your friends. You can stay up-to-date with their current activities, the most popular games your friends are playing, and a Gamerscore leaderboard to see who has improved their Gamerscore over the last 30 days.
- New SmartGlass features – You can now see a list of your top games in your profile. You can also see a list of your friend’s most popular games in the Friend’s section of SmartGlass.
- Snap Updates – We’ve updated the Snap Center to include quick access to many of the things our fans wanted faster access to when playing a game – Friends, Messages, Game DVR, clock, and battery indicator – as well as making it easier to close and open new snap apps when playing a game. A double tap of the Xbox button on your controller will bring up a menu that allows you to open a new app in snap mode, close the current snapped app, or switch focus between your game and your running snapped app. Additionally, two apps have been optimized for Snap mode:
- Improvements for TV and video – We’re excited to roll out updates that will make your viewing experience better than ever on Xbox One, whether you want to watch TV or use SmartGlass as a universal remote.
- Media Player DLNA and MKV support – The latest version of the Media Player app will now have support for DLNA streaming. With this update, you will be able to easily access and play music, watch photo slideshows or movies stored on home media servers and devices that support the DLNA server protocols. Additionally, you will now be able to playback MKV files stored on a USB device or a device on your home network that supports DLNA streaming.
- Live TV MiniGuide – For markets where OneGuide is available, a new MiniGuide on the bottom of the screen will display details about the TV content that is currently playing. You can quickly change channels, see what’s on other channels, and tune to the previous channel or other recent channels. While watching TV, you can also launch Miniguide using voice, by saying “Xbox Select – MiniGuide”
- OneGuide in 11 new countries – Live TV listings and schedules will be made available to customers on Xbox One and SmartGlass for Belgium, Chile, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and Russia in the next few days.
- Internet TV Apps – Apps with live TV channels can now include their TV listings within OneGuide. In addition, other Xbox TV features such as channel changing using speech and Miniguide will work with these apps. These features are enabled automatically the first time you sign into a supported app. The first app to support this feature will be Zattoo with an upcoming content update for their app. The Zattoo app is available in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Denmark.
- Universal Remote Control in SmartGlass – If you are in one of those 11 countries that are getting OneGuide TV listings, you will also be able use your mobile device to control your Xbox, TV, and/or Cable/Satellite box.
- Live TV initial setup experience – This update will enable you to select “On start, go to TV” for your Xbox One console. Additionally, you will be shown a one-time message highlighting this new capability, if you had previously setup Live TV or have not yet set “On start, go to TV” under Settings – Power & startup.
- Live TV Cable & Satellite Box auto-detection – In select markets the Live TV Setup experience is being improved by attempting to automatically detect the set-top box connected to the HDMI-In port on your Xbox One.
- New accessory and “hide” features – We are also excited to roll out a few other cool features this month:
- Updated Devices & Accessories page – To access the new page, go inside Settings, where you can Find, Assign, and Update Xbox One accessories. You can now more easily “assign” accessories to specific users, such as assigning a headset to a specific gamer.
- Firmware updates – You can update the firmware for an individual device.
- Find my Controller – You can also more easily find (or identify) a controller by making it vibrate.
- Hide Games and Apps on your console – You can now hide items in the “Ready to install” list under My Games and Apps. This is a per-console setting and items will reappear in the list if they are installed again from the Xbox Store. To access the shortcut to temporarily show “hidden” items, press X while holding down both triggers and it will show all hidden items until you exit My Games and Apps.
- Updated Devices & Accessories page – To access the new page, go inside Settings, where you can Find, Assign, and Update Xbox One accessories. You can now more easily “assign” accessories to specific users, such as assigning a headset to a specific gamer.
- Password resets just got better – We’re making it easier and more secure to reset your password and add protection to your accounts. Coming later this month, if you haven’t set up your security information already, we’ll ask you to provide an alternate email address or cell phone number to use if you ever need your password reset. You’ll only need to set this up once per account, and you won’t need it every time you sign in. To set up your account security go to https://account.live.com/proofs/ and get more information athttp://support.xbox.com/en-US/my-account/security/add-security-contact-information.
Source: Xbox Wire
Eldaveo
Great update, particularly if you are into your achievements. Keep em coming Microsoft.
Starman
One of the best updates so far. The Gamerscore leaderboard is pretty good.
DividSmythe
Yes I must agree. I’m on preview dashboard and have loved the achievement leaderboard. It for me quite competitive in leaderboards, which is great coming from a PS lover but MS are doing a great job at converting me.
Starman
Yeah I’ve had it via the preview dash for a while as well, though I can never get to number 1 as a friend is on around 10,000 in the last 30 days!
DividSmythe
Wow 10,000 you have got your work cut out. The highest on June is just over 5000 but he does have a million gamerscore. Not that his my friend but I follow him.
Amphlett
Well as a PS4 owner I can confirm that I have tinges of green in my eyes. That sounds like a great update! Well done MS!
One thing popped out at me though, why would I want to turn my telly on, switch on the xbox and then have the xbox show me the telly channels? Seems odd.
Stefan L
The TV functions feel like they’ll work a lot better with Kinect plugged in and voice commands. So you can actually say “Xbox On”, have the XBO wake up, automatically turn on your TV and also load straight to the TV app. The idea is that you can then use the OneGuide, which could quite easily be significantly better than the one built into your TV or satellite/cable box.
What it really wants is some proper DVR gubbins for that TV tuner they’re releasing though…
TSBonyman
Microsoft are doing a great job with all their updates, Sony paling in comparison.
MrYd
How exactly do you access this “find my controller” feature if you’ve lost your controller? Use a second controller to access the feature? In which case, why not just use that? The other one will turn up eventually. Silly MS.
And I’d be worried if I had an XBone and saw the words “easier” and “reset your password” anywhere near each other. That’s something that shouldn’t be easy to do.
Stefan L
Kinect, of course!
And though it’ll be easier, the real improvement is in having it be more secure. Having a second point of contact means that if your account is compromised by way of your primary log in details, you have this fallback which can see Microsoft send you messages like, “Your password has been changed. Are you sure you want to do this? Get in touch if this isn’t you.”
Mr Blighty
Ps4 launched in very solid state, and didn’t need constant fixing and feature patching.
I would hate to be the Xbox one owner that needed to system update each time they wanted to play a game.
Avenger
Seriously? This isn’t about stability, this is about features more than anything else. PS4 is still lacking some of those features. Updates are just being pushed out quicker on Xbox (at the moment) that’s all.
Mr Blighty
Because the Xbox one was so lacking. Most of this stuff is just fixing broken and missing things, the PS4 has premium polish from the outset.
DLNA is the only real thing on that list, the rest is crud or catchup.
Starman
@blighty the xboxone has far more functionality now than the ps4, read some of the other updates linked in the article and tell me it doesn’t. DLNA, external hdd, media player for starters. These are not stability updates like the ps4 usually gets.
Mr Blighty
Ps4 I’d getting USB music playback in firmware 2.0
Its only dlna that Xbox one has, ps4 has way more functionality in all other areas
Mr Blighty
Masamune
microboxofx
I’ve heard rumors of a Mr Blighty talking rubbish on here. Finally seen it for myself, and the rumors are true lol
Mr Blighty
Go look at the gaming features of the PS4, it still totally destroys the Xbox one, which has been a patchy, glichy mess, and still lacks many launch PS4 features.
Masamune release has plenty of great stuff in.
microboxofx
You keep taking those drugs Blighty, because you obviously need them. I’ve never read such rubbish in all my life. The Xbox One had more features at launch than the PS4 has now. And the X1 has had new features added every month since launch. Not bug fixes, extras. How many additions has PS4 had since launch, I’ll give you a clue 0. X1 is a multimedia device, PS4 is just a game console. Which is unfortunate as there aren’t really any games on the damn thing either. And what games you have, run badly because Sony continually push performance that the PS4 isn’t capable of handling. DriveClub is absolute rubbish compared to Forza Horizons 2, read the reviews and see for yourself!