Answering the call: Voice messaging (finally) comes to Xbox One

By Kris Wouk March 27, 2015

microsoft xbox one review system — Image used with permission by copyright holder

And you thought the wait at the DMV took forever.

On Monday we reported that an update is coming to the Xbox One in April bringing a number of improvements, but not all of the changes had been announced yet. Now a few more features have become available to members of the Xbox One Preview program, including one users have been waiting for since the launch of the console: voice messaging.

Voice messaging was present on the Xbox 360, so Xbox One owners were surprised that the feature didn’t make its way to the new console. Now, nearly a year and a half after the launch of the Xbox One, the feature has finally come. “Quickly and easily record audio to send to your friends or others through your snapped messages app accessed through a simple quick double tap of the Xbox button,” writes Larry Hryb, aka. Xbox Live’s Major Nelson.

As if to prove that this is indeed the same voice messaging you remember, voice messages can even be exchanged between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Oh and the voice messaging is going to be cross platform (Xbox One <—> Xbox 360)

— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) March 27, 2015

In addition to the voice messaging, a few more features were announced. The “What’s On” area, which highlights TV, movies, live-streams, and more, has seen some tweaks, and the team will continue to “test different experiences” for preview members.

Party chat should now be more robust as well. “We’re enhancing party chat with dedicated chat relay servers that will enable Xbox One owners that may have historically had NAT issues to party chat more reliably. Parties where players are unable to form direct peer-to-peer connections for party chat will automatically leverage dedicated server infrastructure to relay traffic,” Hyrb writes. Until the update goes live to the public, all parties must be previewing the April system update.

A date hasn’t been announced for when the general gaming public will see the update, but given the name of the update, it isn’t likely we’ll have to wait until May.

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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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