Home Gaming Get the new Xbox One experience on November 12

Get the new Xbox One experience on November 12

4 min read
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X1NXE

Right now, the Xbox One’s user interface is hot garbage; a disparate array of loosely connected apps that are meant to work together, but don’t. Not really. Most of this is because the interface was designed with Kinect in mind. Since the motion and voice-sensing peripheral has found itself extricated from the Xbox One’s base package, most owners have to use their controllers instead of their voices or movements to control the fancy box.

That’s just one of the issues; another principal one is that it’s slow, it’s laggy and it’s just not an especially fluid or intuitive interface to use. That’s changing. The new Xbox One experience has been in testing for ages now, available only to those in Microsoft’s preview program. By all accounts, it’s fast, it’s fluid and its makes using the Xbox One a dream.

It’s coming soon. The rest of us will be able to level up our Xbox Ones in just two weeks. It’ll bring the Xbox One in to the Windows 10 ecosystem, with a zippier interface, new features – and the much celebrated backwards compatibility that people will use once before realising they don’t actually want to pay their old games.

“Take command with the New Xbox One Experience, a completely re-imagined user experience that gives you instant access to everything you want, when you want it — so you can spend more time gaming. With the new guide on Xbox One, never leave full-game mode again to add friends, join parties, or check messages. And with Cortana, a personal gaming assistant that gets smarter with use, you can request critical information when playing and schedule events across your Windows 10 devices.”

You’ll be able to update to the New Xbox One experience on November 12.

Here’s a list of its major and most notable features

  • Xbox 360 games on Xbox One: At launch you’ll be able to play over 100 Xbox 360 games on Xbox One with hundreds more in the months to come. This includes the added benefit of Xbox One features including screenshots, streaming, and game DVR – for your favorite Xbox 360 games. You can even play multiplayer with friends still using their Xbox 360.
  • New Guide: You can access the Guide from Home by pressing left or double tap the Xbox button on your controller to instantly overlay the Guide. You can access Friends, quickly start a Party, get to Settings, see System Notifications, view your Messages, and more from Home or without leaving your game. These are the top tasks Xbox fans do most often, so we focused on making them faster and easier to get to without disrupting your game.
  • Redesigned Home: It’s faster and easier to get to the things you love. We’re introducing a faster and easier interface to provide access to games and apps you’ve recently used. At launch you’ll be able to more easily share your achievements and game clips with the Xbox Live community, see whether your friends are playing the same games and get one-click access to Game Hubs to get news and updates directly from the developers and community themselves.
  • New Community section: Based on your feedback, this section is optimized to help you tap into what other gamers are doing on Xbox Live and directly contribute to the conversation happening within the Xbox Live community. Check out what your friends are up to or keep track of the games you follow in the redesigned Activity Feed. Explore the new Trending section to view the most popular posts from players on Xbox Live.
  • Revamped OneGuide: From OneGuide, you can see a list of current trending live TV shows with the most viewers at that moment on Xbox. TV listings will now come up instantly and in full-screen, and we’ve added a picture-in-picture mode for TV so you can browse for other things to watch without missing what’s happening in your show. We’ll highlight a selection of the most exciting new movies, TV shows and deals from across the apps on Xbox One and the new App Channels area will show you the latest movies, TV shows and videos highlighted by the apps you care about.
  • Store optimization: To the right of OneGuide, you’ll find the new and improved Store with features including four easy to explore areas – Games, Movies & TV, Apps, and Music – and a new vertical gallery view to bring more listings at a glance. Browse through intuitive categories like Staff Picks, New Releases, Top played, Top rated, Coming Soon and Recommendations to discover new games, apps, and entertainment for your Xbox One.

Last Updated: October 27, 2015

29 Comments

  1. WitWolfy

    October 27, 2015 at 07:38

    Being a member of the Preview dash I can confirm the new UI can also a tad confusing at first. Only having 3 slides this time around where the old UI had like it had four or five… As for the smoothness, its alright nothing ground breaking. Still stutters every now and again…

    A lot of things have been removed too.. Or I can’t find it.. where one of them is firends leaderboards…

    But I dont care about that, I jsut bought this baby thanks to the BC option.. LETS THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!!

    Reply

    • Francois Knoetze

      October 27, 2015 at 09:08

      Man I so badly want to be part of the preview program and the last guy I asked to add me did. then a few weeks later MS decided to slow down the amount of users getting in. Still waiting…

      But YAY!! BC in a few weeks!!

      Reply

      • Brady miaau

        October 27, 2015 at 12:16

        Yip, WitWolfy added me as well, but nothing. Then I read an article somewhere that MS said the Preview Program was full.

        Reply

      • WitWolfy

        October 27, 2015 at 13:48

        You’re probably going to hate me for this.. But I never really ever turn my Xbox One on.. Seeing that my PS4 is my primary console.. Only got the Xbox one for its exclusives and BC.

        Reply

        • Francois Knoetze

          October 27, 2015 at 16:17

          You evil evil man…PS4 is my primary console too but I find time to balance both consoles depending on the games. Well I kind of have to choose which system and stick to when i get time. Xbox is for netflix, movies and exclusives and PS4 is for gaming only. STILL WANT TO BE PART OF THE PROGRAM!! cough…what came over me o.O

          Reply

          • WitWolfy

            October 28, 2015 at 07:46

            Waiting for TR 2 and BC.. Bought Halo MCC a while back and TitanFall but I suck ass in it! 😛

    • CaptainNemo42

      October 27, 2015 at 09:09

      At least they’re trying, and there is always room for more improvement.

      Reply

      • WitWolfy

        October 27, 2015 at 13:46

        Dont get me wrong, I’m not knocking the dash.. Just clarifying some things I noticed.

        Reply

  2. RinceThis

    October 27, 2015 at 08:24

    I have to say that backwards compatibility is a big pull.

    Reply

    • WitWolfy

      October 27, 2015 at 08:40

      Got Witcher 2 back in 2012.. But never got the chance to play it… Now I can!

      Reply

  3. Fnuik

    October 27, 2015 at 08:28

    Backwards compatibility is a nice to have, but I really can’t see it being used all that much. How many of you still have your old ps3/xbox 360 standing next to your new consoles, and how many of you have played anything on the old consoles in the last month?

    Reply

    • Spidy Duz It

      October 27, 2015 at 08:32

      ps4 and the xbone have shitty games. it still feels like a new console because there isnt enough good games for the current gen, even though they have been out for 3 years.

      Reply

    • WitWolfy

      October 27, 2015 at 08:37

      My PS3 is standing right next to my PS4.. And played TR on it recently.. Anything to get that trophy count up.. Even if that means tripple dipping!

      Reply

  4. Spidy Duz It

    October 27, 2015 at 08:30

    only good thing is the backwards compatibility… xbone controller is still crap. upgrading the dash wont do much to help boost the sales, everyone knows its still a crap console

    Reply

    • WitWolfy

      October 27, 2015 at 08:39

      I love the Xbone controller. The quality feels much higher than the PS4s’.Bought myself a cronusmax a few months ago and havent used the PS4 controller since!!!

      Reply

    • JHN

      October 27, 2015 at 08:59

      12.6 million consoles sold, id say alot of people dont feel its a crap console.

      Reply

    • CaptainNemo42

      October 27, 2015 at 09:01

      Dude, I prefer the PS4 over the Xbone. But there is nothing wrong with the Xbone controller. Its solid, got great response, and those triggers are a joy.
      As for the console itself, while its not as quick and responsive as the PS4, and the UI is a bit messy, it still works well. So calling it a crap console is a bit harsh.

      Reply

    • Brady miaau

      October 27, 2015 at 11:52

      The console is far from crap. We use it as a media centre, i.e. out TV is only ever on Xbox One. It works extremely well for that purpose, switching seamlessly from YouTube to Netflix or BBC or Whatever. It really, really does that well.

      AND, when the wife and little one go to bed, I can play Witcher 3 and it is loads of fun.

      The UI certainly does need a lot of work, but we are used to and rapidly switch between app or games as we need to, using the home button and a series of pinned apps.

      Reply

      • WitWolfy

        October 27, 2015 at 13:51

        Pffft.. Using a Xbox one as a media player… Kodi says hi 😉

        Reply

        • Brady miaau

          October 27, 2015 at 13:53

          And for games. Kodi is pretty cool, as is ums. We pretty much stream Netflix and BBC.

          Reply

          • WitWolfy

            October 27, 2015 at 13:56

            Netflix… That must obliterate your bandwidth! Sometimes I cant even stream a 480P Youtube video on my 4MB. Hence why I torrent..

          • Brady miaau

            October 27, 2015 at 14:02

            Nah. We stream an estimated 200gig a month, looks great. No idea if full hd or not, but looks like it is. Crystalweb as isp, 10mb line.

          • WitWolfy

            October 27, 2015 at 14:49

            Will give Crystalweb a go sometime.. On Openweb at the moment. They suck ass but they give me full torrents speeds.

          • BillPinkNye

            October 27, 2015 at 20:08

            Lol downloading torrents is way harder on bandwidth than Netflix. When I game I can always tell when someone is downloading torrents. Never notice anything when someone is using Netflix.

          • WitWolfy

            October 28, 2015 at 07:45

            Wish I could say the same when someone is watching youtube vids.

      • Geoffrey Tim

        October 27, 2015 at 15:03

        I’m using my X1 far more than my PS4 at the moment – and it’s largely just because it does media so well. (it also has a better audio DSP, so it does surround sound better)

        Reply

  5. Brady miaau

    October 27, 2015 at 11:49

    “celebrated backwards compatibility that people will use once before realising they don’t actually want to pay their old games”

    My Xbox still reports Perfect Dark Zero as one of the most played games on the Xbox One. So….. That is sort of sad, is it not?

    Reply

    • Geoffrey Tim

      October 27, 2015 at 15:04

      Especially sad, considering what a kak game it is. 🙂 Rare Replay did a nostalgic number, didn’t it?

      Reply

      • Brady miaau

        October 27, 2015 at 15:11

        Totally. I tried the games. Yeah. But no nostalgia for me, so meh

        Reply

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