Microsoft announces the first wave of features for this summer's Xbox One updates

By Jez Corden
last updated

Microsoft just unveiled the first of two waves of major updates planned for the Xbox One Preview Program.

Announced via Xbox Wire (opens in new tab), the first update will bring promised features such as Cortana, improvements to the games and apps list, enhancements to sharing clips and screenshots and much more.

"Last November, we transformed Xbox One to make it faster and more social with the New Xbox One Experience, and since then we've been delivering regular fan-requested features and updates. Expected this week, we're releasing into Preview a summer update that will start to rollout to our Xbox Preview audience for Xbox One, and in the coming weeks, we'll release it to the Xbox app (beta) on Windows 10. New features will roll out to the preview audience in waves, not all at once. We're really excited about this update as it lays the foundation to bring together more people and more games across devices through Xbox Live.""Starting this summer, Xbox One and the Xbox app will receive the first of two updates that will help you stay connected with friends on Xbox Live and enjoy even more games across your favorite devices. Cortana will come to Xbox One; the Xbox and Windows Stores will start to become unified; we will begin to introduce your top PC games with Game Hubs to Xbox Live, and more. These updates are crucial to giving our fans around the world a great gaming experience wherever and whatever they play."

Invites to the preview program will be heading out to members in waves via Xbox Live message. Eventually, all preview program members will be invited, but access is being sent out to members who submitted the most surveys and feedback in the previous update preview. If you have received an invite, head to your apps, then select Xbox Preview Dashboard, go to Registration, and enroll yourself under "Preview - Latest Xbox One Experience."

For more detail on what the update contains, read more of our coverage below:

Jez Corden
Jez Corden
Co-Managing Editor

Jez Corden a Managing Editor at Windows Central, focusing primarily on all things Xbox and gaming. Jez is known for breaking exclusive news and analysis as relates to the Microsoft ecosystem while being powered by caffeine. Follow on Twitter @JezCorden and listen to his Xbox Two podcast, all about, you guessed it, Xbox!

48 Comments
  • what about the users on the developer preview? we are stuck on a buggy build with no updates since 3 months more or less
  • whoever disliked my comment is an idiot
  • keep going i love it
  • are u mad bros?
  • um there is no developer preview on xbox one. what are you refering to??
  • The devkit preview or whatever its called
  • That my friend is just the xbox one with some app. I wouldn't expect much. Xbox is about gaming not writing apps.
  • Still is a preview like the xbox preview program, but just for devs. PS: The app is only for the activation.
  • Like I said I wouldn't expect much. How many users do you think use it? 100 1000 200 000?.. If it works as expected other than the odd bug fix I wouldn't expect it to change.
  • they should update the retail mode dashboard, and fix a lot of UI related bugs, also better integration with VS.
  • Devkit is devkit. Stop using it as your main Xbox.
  • I don't, im just saying that is full of bugs
  • I think they'll update it soon if it's a few builds behind retail, as people using them for Dev need to test on the correct version of the OS. I think it is just slow to get started but should pick up. Hopefully we'll soon see some of the Xbox One apps being replaced with their UWP equivalents which would hopefully offer a little performance boost
  • When you switch on Dev mode it takes you out of the Mainstream builds and also out of the normal preview updates, so you can end up behind. They will have to update it to the latest builds when UWP properly comes to Xbox as you need to test on the latest version. So on this dev branch at the moment it's behind, even though it's for dev only it should get updates, you just shouldn't use it on your main Xbox as people say.
  • I don't, i play on another xb1, just saying that is hard to deploy vs projects with so much bugs
  • I'm with you on this, I think some people didn't realise what you meant, or thought you were using it on your main xbox and then complaining. My bet is that it picks up steam soon and starts getting more regular updates. Should hopefully be like the Preview SDKs on PC where we get those frequently enough inline with Fast Ring
  • Maybe, hope they fix UWA safe screen area ui bug, and some other bugs related to visual studio, don't know why i got so many dislikes lol
  • "Last November, we transformed Xbox One to make it faster". So they say. I find NXOE to be more sluggish than the OandBXOE.
  • I agree and told them that when I met with them recently. Also told them to make a better UFC app, because sometimes...it's about what I want lol.
  • Glad you mentioned it to them, because it has been slow!  Additionally, the removal of gestures from Kinect was one of the worst "lets remove something, instead of offering a toggle switch" type of back peddles I've come across (that and placeholders, LOL) - Since the update my Kinect continuously powers off and on, randomly, and just feels like a useless add-on.  I had the whole family going controller-less at one time and you dont realize how useful it was until 50% of its abilities are gone. Hopefully, the intro of Cortana helps Kinect mature even more...  
  • Oh, I thought the Kinect turning off and on like that all the time meant mine was going bad. Sort of glad it's not just me.
  • It may very well be.  I replaced mine once, but it legit says "kinect not connected"  and never came back on.  The "fix" for this type of behavior seems to be, pull the power and kinect from the xb1 and let it sit for 2-10min then plug everything back in.  It works for me and can go 1 day or a few weeks without turning off again.  Very frusterating!  Its all happened since the new experience was released...
  • @DannyGT, mine has never done that, so I don't think that's the result of the software update. I do find that it is much worse at understanding when I say "XBOX ON" or "XBOX TURN OFF." It used to get those nearly 100% of the time, even if I shouted at it from another room (great way to turn the TV off on the kids). However, I also find that if I talk in a high ptiched voice like my wife, it usually works. It's like the New Experience made it sexist against men. I've seen others report the same pitch-dependent XBox problem.
  • I agree.  Not trying to blame it 100% on the update. I experienced those issues too where it used to know our voices so well.  Its funny you mention that, because my wife continuously has to pretend to speak like me in order to get it too work properly, and thats not high-pitch.  Very odd.  Either way, feels like it all fell apart after NXOE.
  • Ah, well that's encouraging that it's not just men. :-) But yeah, sad that it used to work and got so much worse after the update. Mind you, I have no complaints when it comes to game play, just for using it as a media hub, which is part of how I convinced my wife we should have one in the first place.
  • The Kinect is losing it's value since voice commands are coming to headsets anyway, so now it's mostly a convenience to not have to grab a controller/headset - So it's still better using Kinect than a headset, but less exclusive features. I feel as though they are going to re-introduce some gesture features because haven't they said that Kinect on PC will be getting better integration with the OS as as input device? Hope I didn't imagine that, but if it's true then using Kinect to control UWP apps on PC AND Xbox would be cool
  • Lol ruined the experience for elite owners(though can/'t blame them if they did/n't think of this when they were choosing the hybrid drive that had little to no space for the os on the ssd portion of the drive)
  • I concur. Groove Music is EXTREMELY sluggish. Netflix sucks. Which might be Netflix fault, but MS should force them to fix their controller issues.
  • It's Netflix. Check out HBO Go/Now, brilliant and fast apps.
  • HBO Go? I find that to be one of the slowest apps.
  • Netflix is faster than HBO Go. Groove is the worst app in terms of slowness
  • Hope we get the UWP app sooner rather than later, and maybe it will allow the Xbox to be a device for offline music too. Would miss the music video option if they switched but worth it for a better overall music experience
  • HBO Go sucks on just about every platform.
  • no hbo go here ugg. darn CRTC in canada.
  • No mention of background music, the only thing I've really been asking for. Do much fit bringing features we asked fit. Instead, spyware Cortana is at the forefront, followed by making the experience more of a gaming Twitter feed.
  • Bg music is one of the biggest gaps with 360 imo. It is ludicrous that it hasn't been included yet. Posted via the Windows Central App for Android
  • Considering the summer update is supposed to bring UWP apps compatibility, and background audio was introduced in UWP 1.0 (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/audio-video-camera/backgrou...), every music app should soon be able to play background music on the Xbox One.
  • Excellent point....Now to find time to try this - The main thing that has stopped me running any of my code on my Xbox is that it looks like it takes me out of the preview programme and I don't have a need for a dedicated Xbox One for testing app right now
  • I just hope they make controllers more stable. Every few days I have to do a hard reset of both my console and my controllers to get the controller to connect
  • I experience the same issue as well.
  • I had this recently and had to re-pair controller but then it went away, only thing I did was unplug power brick for at least a minute. When it did happen it affected all controllers..
  • I've not noticed this personally, using standard controllers and a Lunar white controller on preview builds (not the one released last night)
  • Looks like a good update, looking forward to it hitting. With any luck it might improve bootup times. On another note, it's genuinely amusing how there's somebody that has nothing better to do than downvote every comment...
  • announce it just push it out the same day. but hey this way you get 3 articles to announce. and a later update its rolling out then reminder articles one what the update is about ;) then break up the update into parts so that there are even more articles to write for us to comment on. lol  
  • Tv dvr????
  • Been wanting this since they announced it - Sounds like maybe it's taking a back seat to focus on gaming and integration across Windows 10 and Xbox, but DVR would benefit from that integration too, if we can access our recordings from any W10 PC or Phone.
  • Cool cool cool! Bring the good stuff on!
  • Is Cortana in this first preview release that just rolled out? Not had a chance to download it yet.