The upcoming update for Xbox One looks to be a big one with tons of new features and small tweaks to make your gaming experience better. Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb and Richard Irving go over all the changes coming to Xbox One in October in the video below. The big feature for this release seems to be Snap enhancements, which has been a focus of Microsoft for some time. The June update saw “double tap to snap” and Achievement snapping added, but October looks to go even further.
Xbox Live’s Major Nelson and Richard Irving from the Xbox Engineering team walk through October Update
A feature that I personally have been waiting for is the control options you now have while an app is snapped to the screen. If I snapped my Achievements before then I had to go to the Xbox One Home to close it once I was done. Now gamers will be able to double tap to control the Snapped app, change the app, or close it altogether. Also, two new apps are snappable thanks to the Xbox One October update: Friends and Messages. These additions really make Snap a useful feature that gamers can get in and out of quickly.
Microsoft is also slowly integrating Kinect features into non-Kinect actions. Now you can double tap the Xbox button and then hit X to record the last 30 seconds of video. This used to be reserved to the voice command “Record That”, but with people able to buy Xbox One without Kinect now this seems like a wise move. Achievements are a favorite of nearly every Xbox gamer, so they got even more enhancements in the October update. You can now see what Achievements your friends have, allowing some fierce competition or allowing you to ask someone for help if they’ve got the Achievement you’re looking for.
A huge improvement has been made to the Media Player that was added recently. It already let you watch media that was stored on a USB drive, but now you are able to view videos that are stored on your network. Adding in .mkv support should help this be even more useful as you stream all those videos you have purchased. This isn’t all there is, so you’ll have to check out the video to see everything coming to your Xbox One this October.
