Microsoft do love a console UI redesign, and the Xbox One system update first announced back in August has now left the various testing rings and been made available to all.
It’s an update that touches on a lot of different aspects of the system’s layout, with an emphasis on customisation – you can now theme your entire Dashboard, though currently just dark and light – and a more vertical approach to organising your content. Naturally you most recent game is front and centre, but alongside it there’s more emphasis on trying to help you to discover activities that your friends are playing and letting you get to things you care about more quickly. So you can skip straight to the ‘My games & apps section’, or scroll further down to get what Microsoft call Blocks that you choose yourself and can focus on a particular game, friend, your pins – now going up to 40 pins – and various services.
The Guide quick menu has been tweaked, shifting the layout from vertical to horizontal, and you can switch tabs with the thumbstick, D-pad or bumpers on the controller. There’s now flyouts for “friends in games”, game invites will appear in the Multiplayer tab, and a new Tournaments section integrating into Xbox Arena.
There’s tons of other changes, but one significant part of this update is how it lays the groundwork for the Xbox One X, both for new buyers and those upgrading. The setup process has been streamlined if you bring settings over on an external drive, and you can get some of the heavy lifting done beforehand if you want to upgrade.
Learning from Sony’s mistakes with the PS4 Pro, games are clearly marked as Xbox One X Enhanced in the store and with filters to let you know what’s already installed and ready to install, and with external drive support, you can copy games to another drive so you can get playing right away. You’ll even be able to download 4K updates on Xbox One and Xbox One S.
Source: Xbox Wire
Starman
And no doubt they’ll spend the next 6 months updating and patching it, only to scrap it all with yet another UI redesign. I never bother using the new features much because every time I do they get quietly removed with the new refresh.
leeroye
Ah great this will be fine. The last update borked my console and i had to do a factory reset. It kept getting so far into installing, failing, rebooting and the doing the same thing over and over.
Since i installed the update (eventually) every so often i have to remove my account and re add it as the thing refuses to sign in until i do so. Then i have issues with plex not loading and once again the only solution seems to be to remove my account as re-installing the app does nothing.
If only my firetv box had nowtv, i could get rid of the thing, its only used as a media player these days.