On Wednesday, Xbox announced a makeover to Xbox home, which will be rolled out to select Xbox Insiders this week. Their goal is to make the home screen a more seamless and accessible feature, as it is the first thing Xbox gamers see when they power up their consoles.
New features include more room for recently played games, allowing gamers to have quicker access to the games that they have play the most. Twists have also been deleted, replacing them with button commands that instantly open up certain applications including Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, Xbox Community, and the Microsoft Store. The primary goal here is to allow gamers to go where they want to on their console as quickly and as seamlessly as possible.
Xbox is encouraging feedback from Xbox Insiders, hoping to make Xbox Home as user friendly as it possibly can. The company emphasizes that it's listening to its customers, and will continue to tweak Xbox Home based on the feedback that is submitted. Xbox Home will continue to evolve, and Xbox encourages gamers to share their thoughts on new features via the Xbox Ideas Hub.
Along with updates to Xbox Home, the company also announced that they're evolving the capabilities of the console's voice commands, transitioning from an on-console experience to cloud-based assistant experiences. Unfortunately, this means that you'll no longer be able to talk to Cortana via your Xbox headset. Instead, you'll be able to utilize Xbox Skill via the Cortana app, which is available on iOS, Android, and Windows, or through the Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker. Xbox promises to continue to expand its voice capabilities, as well as improving Xbox Skill based off of user feedback.
In the announcement, Xbox emphasized how seriously they take user feedback as they aim to make their customers as happy as possible. The Xbox One is still in third place in terms of console sales, behind the PS4 and Nintendo Switch, so the company is surely aiming to be more receptive to their users in order to separate themselves from their competitors. It will be interesting to see how the company continues to evolve their platform with their release of their next-gen console, Project Scarlett, which is expected to his shelves during the 2020 Holiday season.