New Year, New Previews for Insiders: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/01/08/new-year-new-xbox-one-features/ Next Achievements, view and sort a cross-games list of upcoming Achievements. Mini Game Hubs “Do not disturb” online status Easier Comments view on community feed Additional inactivity shutdown options Alongside the updates listed above, which will work their way naturally through the Xbox One Update Preview rings, a subset of users may also see additional experimental features. These features are only enabled for a portion of the Xbox Insider audience to gauge interest and collect feedback. Your participation in the Xbox Insider Program helps us make the work-in-progress content and features coming to Xbox even better.
A new Career system might be coming with the new Avatar system... https://m.windowscentral.com/xbox-career-system Tommy McClain
Insider Alpha Build has some new frosting... • Scheduled Themes You asked—we listened! We're excited to announce that we've added the ability to put your themes on a schedule. In addition to choosing either the light or dark theme, you can now schedule a time to automatically switch between them. Simply follow these steps: Navigate to Settings > Personalization > Theme & motion. Select Scheduled from the "System theme" dropdown. Select the times at which you want the light theme to start and end. • Guide Enhancements A new icon will appear in the Guide. The Guide Game Pass Discovery Tile (the “Surprise me with a random Game Pass Game tile”), now shows in Guide.
Meh. Tried out the scheduled theme. Just rather them bring back Snap. Nothing since they took that away has excited me in the Preview. Get super depressed every time I check out the Preview app. Tommy McClain
I'm running a google home mini right now, came with a camera. I really feel like xbox is missing something here. This little device is super quick and fast to recognizing voice commands and following through on them. I agree that more can be done, they just need it to be a better service.
I got the Cortana-powered Harman Kardon Invoke for Christmas. Really, really, nice, but there's lots of room for improvement in Cortana's skills. Hoping that the Cortana-Alexa partnership will some bear fruit. But I will agree that Kinect seems a bit behind the Invoke in quickness & it's ability to understand my speech. Not sure if it's a hardware or software issue though. But it could just be my southern accent too. LOL Anyway, still pretty cool that I can use both devices to control my Philips Hue lights. Bad thing about going down this rabbit hole is I'm going to want Cortana microphones everywhere. LOL Tommy McClain
omg, they fixed the buttons in the checklist view of the manage screenshots section so that they don't go off-screen. They also added the ability to upload multiple files en masse to OneDrive! ...but if you have a fast enough upload, files can overwrite one another because the filenames are based on the upload time despite the distinction being down to the second. I have no comment on why this is important.
Variable refresh rate and auto-low latency mode are now available to alpha users. Tempted to get an LG monitor with freesync over hdmi, but it's probably not worth it for a 1080p screen. Now, if I could find a 1440p monitor with freesync over hdmi, then I'd be tempted. One of the LGs even supports backlight strobing at 60Hz, which would be pretty ineteresting (though it disables freesync). Low motion blur on a console?
Very minor change but glad they seem to be making adjustments nonetheless, letting users adjust theme selection based on sunrise and sunset.
What's this? Finally a way to create your own Folders (Groups) in My Games & Apps? It only took a year of me (and many others) sending feedback every chance we could about that capability! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2018/04/20/may-xbox-update/ Group Your Games and Apps Our fans asked for new ways to organize their library of games and apps. In response, we’re introducing a powerful new enhancement to Pins which we call “Groups.” With Groups, you can create multiple collections of content made up of anything from within My games & apps. You can also assign custom names to each Group, organize and order them, and add individual Groups to Home. Groups will appear across My games & apps, Home, and Guide, so you’ll be able to access your Groups at a moment’s notice. Best of all, Groups are tied to your account, so they will automatically sync across multiple Xbox One consoles. We’ve started you off with a Group that should look very familiar — your Pins! We’re doing something a little different with the rollout of this feature: Groups will not initially be enabled for everyone in the Alpha ring. In order to gauge interest and collect feedback, we will instead gradually roll out Groups over time within Alpha.
And in typical fashion, they're rolling it out SLOWLY to a very limited subset of users to see engagement usage ... sure, don't give it to users who have been hammering about needing this for a long time, instead give it to those who might not care about it at all then come to false conclusions about the usefulness of it. Yes, I dont have that feature (yet) and I've been vocal about it in the past. If they decide to not roll it out, many are going to flip-their-shit at them for being so stupid.
Alexa & Google Assistant coming to Xbox? https://m.windowscentral.com/amazon-alexa-and-google-assistant-are-coming-xbox-one Tommy McClain
Most likely. Rumors are that Cortana will be refocused on business & productivity. They will give up consumer(personal & home automation) to Amazon & Alexa. No sense in the partnership if there's a lot of overlap of functionality. Guess we will see. What's interesting is Albert Penello, Microsoft's former Xbox marketing guy left for Amazon. Supposedly he's heading up their efforts to shore up Alexa's gaming support. Tommy McClain
I had always wondered how long it would be before they jumped in. Maybe an Amazon badged Xbox Two with a built-in Alexa in the controller? Sign up for a year of Amazon Prime & Xbox Game Pass & get the Xbox Two free? :/ Tommy McClain