The new Xbox One Fall dashboard update has been available, in some form at least, for the past few months. Now, Microsoft has concluded the pre-release testing phase and is ready to roll it out worldwide, beginning today.
The focus of the Fall update is personalization.
One of the biggest new things you will notice is that the Home screen is changed significantly with the introduction of content “blocks.” Anyone who has used the Xbox One dashboard knows well that it can be difficult at times to find what you’re looking for. With the blocks, you can select what content–games or apps–show up where you want them to.
Additionally, things like friend activities, leaderboards, Looking For Group messages, and more now show up at the top of the revamped Home screen. Another new feature in this update is the option to choose between dark, light, and high-contrast themes for your dashboard from the Settings tab.
There are quite a few other notable new additions and changes with the Xbox One Fall update. There are a few of these listed below, but be sure to go to the Xbox Wire to see a full rundown of what’s changing, with commentary from Xbox engineering lead Mike Ybarra.
- It should now be “faster and easier” to move left and right through the horizontal tabs by flicking the left thumb stick or bumpers.
- A new “Friends in games” notification shows you if a friend is playing the same game
- Invites now appear in the multiplayer tab of the Guide.
- The Game Hub for a particular title now shows more information.
- The Community feed screen now offers a full-screen option to help display more content such as screenshots and gameplay clips.
- Right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are now available.
- A new Microsoft Store logo will replace the old one.
- The Mixer tab now has previews so you can see more before joining.
- Broadcasts at 1080p will now happen automatically if your network can support it.
- On Xbox One X, Mixer can capture gameplay and screenshots in 4K/HDR.
Additionally, this Xbox One Fall update lays the groundwork for the launch of the Xbox One X in November. It adds a page that lets you know how to do things like transfer your games to an external hard drive or copy them over your home network to Xbox One X. You can also start to download 4K content for existing games so you’ll hit the ground running if you buy an Xbox One X right at launch. What’s more, the store adds a tab that lets you sort by Xbox One X-enhanced games.
