Xbox One Gets Home Screen Redesign In Xbox Insiders Update Today

The Xbox One’s Home will get a new look for those enrolled in Microsoft’s Xbox Insiders program. A new console update, available today for those Alpha Skip Ahead Xbox Insiders, will introduce “a streamlined user interface” as well as “further [evolutions]” to voice commands.

An Xbox Wire post reports that the new update will “[deliver] a faster Home experience” and “[evolves] Xbox voice commands to improve the voice experience.” Both features aren’t available to all Xbox Insiders, with the new Home rolling out to the Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead ring and the voice commands heading to the Alpha Skip Ahead ring. Those not enrolled in Xbox Insiders will have to wait, as there’s no confirmation on when the changes will be made public for everyone.

A Streamlined Home

The new Home will “deliver an easy and seamless experience for you to navigate your console,” Xbox Wire writes. The goal here is to get you into your video games faster and keep your content at the front of the Home experience. The new experimental Home design, below, removes the scrolling options from the top for things like Community, Mixer, and Store for dedicated buttons underneath the selected piece of content on the left side of the screen. Things have also been shifted around a little and the tilesets look a little larger than the system’s current Home design.

The experimental Home design will be available this week to Xbox Insiders part of the Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead rings.

Evolving Voice Commands

Voice commands are also changing, with the objective being to “further [evolve] commands on Xbox and [move] away from on-console experiences to cloud-based assistant experiences,” according to Xbox Wire. This means Cortana will be inaccessible via headset, instead shifting to “the Xbox Skill for Cortana via the Cortana app on iOS, Android, and Windows or Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker.” However, Cortana is still reachable via Alexa-enabled devices. Due to the changes in voice commands, this console update will disable the virtual keyboard’s dictation on the system, but Microsoft will share what alternative solutions are in development in the near future.

Similar to the experimental Home design, these new voice command changes will arrive this week and are available to the Alpha Skip Ahead ring. Xbox Wire notes that the new voice commands will “fully rollout to all users this fall,” but it’s unclear if that means the Alpha ring or all of the Xbox Insiders.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-one-gets-home-screen-redesign-in-xbox-insider/1100-6468677/