new-xbox-one-experience

November's big update to the Xbox One operating system looks to be huge. We know about the backwards compatibility, but that's not all that's coming. We've had a good idea since this summer of what we can expect when it hits, but today Microsoft's Director of Program Management, Mike Ybarra, brought us word on some more specifics. The full version is available at the source link below, but here's some of what we can look forward to:

The new Guide layers over the current game so that we can access common features like messages,  friends, and party without having to minimize our game and plow through a bunch of apps and when you do have to go home, it should be much faster than it has been. A new community section with a redesigned activity feed brings the social aspects of the system together more coherently.

If you use your Xbox for television, the One Guide will feature a picture-in-picture mode that allows you to browse channels and app lineups without pausing whatever it is you're watching. The Xbox store should be easier and faster to browse as well, especially compared to the pretty confusing layout in place right now.

Overall, it sounds like it's meant to pull us out of our games as little as possible for as few minutes as it possibly can, and that's a good thing.

If you're in the preview program, you can participate in the preview of this update by opting in, and the most historically vocal members of the preview program will get access first. The preview will start rolling out pretty soon, so we can expect to see feedback from users start filtering out to the greater web before too long.