This Day in History: Cortana can now connect to your Xbox Live account for gaming news, activity and more

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Back in 2015, Microsoft was laying the groundwork for Cortana, gaming, and your Xbox. Here's a flashback to our original coverage.

Images of how Cortana was able to connect to your Xbox Live account back in 2015.
Images of how Cortana was able to connect to your Xbox Live account back in 2015. (Image credit: Future | Daniel Rubino)
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The article below was first published on Friday, Oct. 23, 2015.

Microsoft is continually improving Cortana for Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. This morning, we had a report that there is a new connected feature available to users even on the non-Insider build of Windows 10: Xbox Live.

  • Stay up to date
  • Get insights about your gaming activity
  • Provide you with relevant content, updates opportunities and offers
  • Notifying you of your friends availability to play
  • Scheduling game sessions per your request

There should be little doubt that we are seeing the nascent stages of getting Cortana on the Xbox One, which is set to received Windows 10 later in November. Indeed, many of us already had Cortana in an earlier preview of the Xbox One dashboard (it was later removed, but you can see our hands-on here).

Images of how Cortana was able to connect to your Xbox Live account back in 2015. (Image credit: Future | Daniel Rubino)

Clearly, in the coming months Cortana really will be the go-to hub for all of Microsoft's products and services.

For now, our connected account simply shows a very cool countdown widget to Halo5: Guardians including a 'learn more' button.

Thanks, Anthony G., for the tip!

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.

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