Xbox One Experience: November 12

It’s been a busy few weeks for Microsoft … one of the most anticipated games of 2015 – Halo 5: Guardians – released on October 27, soon to be followed by the timed exclusive – Rise of the Tomb Raider – out November 10. Tomb Raider will share its release date with the announcement of the first 100 backwards compatible Xbox 360 games. Now Microsoft are making a redesigned user experience for the Xbox One available to users from November 12.

The new home screen will enable vertical scrolling, displaying first your most recently played games and apps, followed by your pinned content. To save you from scrolling, the update also enables a shortcut (right trigger and A) to quickly zip to your entire libraries.

Some of the popular features previously on the Xbox 360 have been reimagined for the Xbox One. Microsoft detailed these in a press release, which you can read below.

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:

1. Profile: You can add and manage profiles on your console, switch users, view your profile, and view your achievements here.
2. 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 up to ten times faster.
3. Party: You can easily start or manage a Party, which can now include 12 active participants, making it three times as fast to start a party and six times faster to join a party while playing a game.  
4. Messages: Easily access all your messages and access group text chats, which is a new feature we are adding on November 12.
5. 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.
6. Settings: We’ve redesigned Settings based on feedback to make the most commonly used items easy to access.
7. Snap: Easily snap an application, like achievements, from the guide.

For a full breakdown of the changes and to take in the splendour that is the redesigned user experience check out the video below:

Wondering whether Halo 5 is for you? Josh Thomas spent some time with the game, you can find his review here.

Counting down the days until Rise of the Tomb Raider releases? Why not brush up on some of the basics and check out the Woman Vs. Wild series.