Xbox One April update improves party chat, Achievement notifications

By Kris Wouk March 23, 2015

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Xbox One users who can never seem to get party chat working perfectly will soon have an easier time of it. An update to the console, coming this April, enhances the party chat system, and we have the goods on its other tweaks and fixes as well.

This is the first of two updates rolling out this month to members of the Xbox One Preview program, according to Major Nelson. Another update with further enhancements will be released next week, though what this second update will address has not yet been revealed.

The most significant changes in the announced update are coming to the Party App. The app will now include a troubleshooting mode, which will help users confirm that their mics are enabled and that no networking issues or privacy settings are interfering with party chat.

Game Hubs, introduced in last month’s system update, are seeing new features and fixes as well. A game’s Hub is now linked from the game’s page in the Achievements App, and users will now see a notification when their friends follow a game. Additionally, any items in the main activity feed related to a given game will now link back to the game’s Hub.

The final batch of improvements in this update all relate to Achievements. Achievement notifications will now show the Achievement’s description in the notification so that users can see what exactly they did to trigger it without having to open the Achievements App. Performance updates have also been added to make opening the Achievements App from a notification faster.

This first half of the updates will begin rolling out to Xbox One Preview program members as early as today and will be released to the public next month.

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Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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