Xbox Ideas is Microsoft's revamped feedback program for gamers

Microsoft is giving its Xbox Feedback program a slight overhaul. The company this week revealed that Xbox Feedback is becoming Xbox Ideas, complete with a new home and a greater emphasis on honing in on specific feature areas or topics.

The program will still solicit feedback from Xbox Insiders as usual, but the process for gathering that feedback is now part of a three-phase system. Each Idea Drive campaign will run for between one and three months, with the goal of focusing on a limited number of ideas at a time.

The first phase involves collecting ideas from Xbox Ideas users. During this phase, Microsoft says that it will "very carefully moderate" the ideas and make any necessary edits for clarification on those that are accepted. Duplicates will be pruned, and any unrelated ideas will be weeded out.

After the collection phase, ideas go into a voting phase in which users can vote and comment on all of the new ideas. When voting closes, the ideas will still be visible on Xbox Ideas. Microsoft will then review the results and post them on the Xbox Insider blog.

There's one last feature of Idea Drives called the suggestion box. Microsoft explains:

The last feature on the site is the Idea Drive Suggestion Box. This is your opportunity to pitch an Idea Drive of your own. If there's an area of Xbox that you want to help improve, please suggest the Idea Drive here. Just like the Idea Drive forums, this area is highly curated, and specific idea requests or unrelated posts will be removed, so please focus on suggesting general Idea Drives. If we pick your Idea Drive then you can post your Idea.

The new program is an effort by Microsoft to keep Xbox feedback more tightly curated and focused. If you're curious, you can check out the new Xbox Ideas UserVoice page for more. As for the older Xbox Feedback UserVoice, Microsoft says that it will remain available as a read-only archive, so you'll still be able to read old posts, but you won't be able to comment, vote, or submit new posts.