While the original Xbox One was initially launched in 2013, Microsoft kept adding new features, fixing bugs, and giving the software the stability it deserved, even though in the beginnings it was slow and quite buggy. We all know by now that the next console in line after the Xbox One is Project Scarlett that will be released on 2020’s Holiday, and with that in mind, Microsoft is still taking care of the Xbox One.
New Home Screen To Have Impressive Looks
Recently, Bradley Rossetti, the Team Leader of Xbox Insider said on Xbox Wire that the Xbox One would get a newly designed Home Screen layout and some new voice commands would also be implemented. The looks of the layout look sleek and should even speed-up the overall performance of the interface.
The changes are as follows, stated by Xbox One’s devs:
The Home on Xbox One is the first thing you see when you turn on your Xbox One, and we want to deliver an easy and seamless experience for you to navigate your console. We’ve heard your feedback and have continued to iterate on Home to get you into your gaming experiences faster and keeping more of your content front and center. With today’s update, we’re experimenting with a streamlined user interface… the first thing you’ll notice is we’ve removed the Twists from the top of Home in favor of separate buttons that launch your gaming experiences. The goal is to let you jump into Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, Xbox Community, and the Microsoft Store quicker than ever. We’ve also shifted things around to make more room for your recently-played titles… The new experimental Home rolls out this week to select Xbox Insiders in our Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead rings.
Harder to Talk With Cortana Now
As we look on the details for the new Home Screen layout, it’s already beginning to look impressive, but that’s not all. Some other changes revolve around the voice commands. It seems that now, Cortana will only be accessible through the app or the Xbox Skill and you won’t’ be able from now on to talk to her through your headset or Kinect. That is also referring to Amazon Alexa devices as well. On this aspect, the Xbox One team stated the following.
We are now further evolving the way we support voice commands on Xbox and are moving away from on-console experiences to cloud-based assistant experiences. This means you can no longer talk to Cortana… However, you can use the Xbox Skill for Cortana via the Cortana app… to power your Xbox One, adjust volume, launch games and apps, capture screenshots, and more — just as you can do with Alexa-enabled devices today… Starting this week, this update will roll out to our Alpha Skip Ahead ring and will fully roll out to all users this fall.
As of now, many gamers will find the Xbox One Home Screen revamp intriguing and will satisfy them, but the new changes brought to Cortana will surely have a not so pleasant response from them.
Daniel Kiss is the senior editor for News Lair. Daniel was working as a writer since he finished high-school, first for local papers then he started online, nowadays he likes to write about the latest games and tech innovations.