From November 12, Xbox One users will get a major update which will bring a better Xbox One gaming and social experience. Microsoft today detailed the new Xbox One Home experience that will be part of this update. The new design will populate the home page with your recent items and you can scroll vertically for more content. You can see the list of your most recently played games and apps, and each tile has contextual items that allow you to easily see messages straight from the developer, see which friends are playing games, and share your latest game clips and screenshots. Of course, you can also pin your favorite ones. Another import part of this new Home experience in the Guide. To access the new guide, you can tap left from the Home screen with the d-pad or left thumbstick to bring it up as an overlay. You can also get to the guide easily while you’re playing a game by just double tapping the Xbox button on your controller. The guide will load instantly as an overlay on the left side of your screen and won’t disrupt your gameplay.
The guide gives you instant access to several important things:
- Profile: You can add and manage profiles on your console, switch users, view your profile, and view your achievements here.
- Friends: You can easily see which friends are online, see the games they are playing, and invite them to join your game. This is the default section of guide that first opens. In game, you will be able to check your friends’ status up to 10x faster.
- Party: You can easily start or manage a Party, which can now include 12 active participants, making it 3x as fast to start a party and 6x faster to join a party while playing a game.
- Messages: Easily access all of your messages and group text chats via the new guide – starting November 12.
- Notifications: Your Notifications will also be included in the guide and we made improvements to group your Notifications together by type, separating social notifications from game-related notifications from the developers.
- Settings: We’ve redesigned Settings based on feedback to make the most commonly used items easy to access.
- Snap: Easily snap an application, like achievements, from the guide.