During an interview with Engadget , Microsoft’s Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten touched on the upcoming changes to the Xbox One social interface and its “Live experience,” which will be arriving as part of the console’s first (and seemingly big) update coming later this year.
Whitten started off with acknowledging that indeed there are still “seams” in the Xbox One (as well as apparently the Xbox 360) that still need to be sewn up. One of the seams that needs some patchwork is the social interface for the Xbox One, which, as it stands now, is allegedly difficult to navigate for some users of the console–users who are having trouble getting into a party or just generally don’t like what has been done to the system. As he has been working on Xbox Live for the past decade, he has taken the task of rectifying the influx of issues users are having personally (and sounds like he’s really wanting to patch it up good and tight this time too).
“The feedback we’ve gotten is pretty valid; some of the social stuff is hidden or harder to use than it was on the Xbox 360. So you’re gonna see us come out with an update where, well, we’re going to fix those things,” Whitten told Engadget. “As a person who’s been pretty involved in building Xbox Live for the last decade, I take it pretty seriously when people say it’s harder to get into a party, and the defaults aren’t right, and I don’t like the model. So what I’m trying to do with the team is kind of theme some stuff up. Let’s take an update and really go through a big list of what we’re hearing from customers, what we know is broken with the architecture, areas that we want to improve or complete. I think that’s a theme you’ll really see us push on — that Live experience.”
In addition to fixing issues with the Xbox One’s social interface, Whitten also said during the interview that, as well as the occasional big update, there will be smaller updates for the console that’ll be released much faster and on a regular basis, which is due in part of what he has learned while working on the 360.
“The Xbox 360, which I’m still very very proud of, the software architecture was built in 2003. Rethinking [updates] based on everything we learned from 360 was a lot of what went into the Xbox One,” he said. “You’re still gonna see the big, ‘Hey, here’s the cool stuff we’re doing.’ But you’re also gonna see the box just get better faster than you did in the past.”
The first of these smaller updates will be for apps and for the Xbox One’s TV function, Whitten then added, which will be an improvement that’ll be coming out pretty quickly. As for the bigger updates (the social interface update included aswell), Whitten refrained from giving out too much detail about them. His reason being because his general strategy of discussing big updates is to explain what’s going to be happening from one E3 event to the next. Since E3 2014 is yet to arrive, it’s likely more information on the updates will be revealed before June. That, or some of the bigger updates will be out sometime before then.
So, to take away from this, Xbox One users can anticipate the console’s first big update to fix various Xbox Live issues and various other little things too, like the console’s apps and TV functions. We’ll update you on any updates coming to the Xbox One should it reach our ears.
Source: Engadget .