Microsoft’s Xbox team has been hard at work bringing their new console up to speed with the features that were promised nearly a year ago at the LA-hosted E3 conference. It has been a bit of a bumpy road at the start but the Xbox One has seen smoother sailing over the last couple months, especially since the big push for firmware and OS updates that came along with the release of Titanfall in the middle of March. Still, features are missing that were said to be a core part of the Xbox One experience. Both this week and in the next few weeks a few of those big misses are going to be fulfilled.
First off, Microsoft’s Skype application has finally gotten a huge update that delivers on the demo experience from the early promotional ads where Skype is running as a snapped application. Now you can play Titanfall or Forza while having a video/voice call with a friend in real time without having to completely leave your game. Socialites rejoice, this is a big one for anyone that uses Skype or feels the need to make calls without having to juggle devices to make that happen.
Also getting teed up is a big June update to the Xbox One OS that is set to bring improvements and new programs to Xbox One owners and Xbox Live subscribers. The coveted external hard drive support is said to be a part of the update next month, which will allow users the ability to save content to the drive and use it as an extended media device or backup game save device. In the future, Microsoft claims the Xbox One will be able to support dual external hard drives. In addition, owners of Xbox Ones can copy their games to their external hard drives and bring the drives to a friend’s house and play them on their Xbox. Pretty cool, right? The forums at the official Xbox website have been constantly hit with questions as to when this feature would be released. It shouldn’t be much longer now.
Also slated for the new update is the new Xbox Live Gold subscribers game programs which includes the Games for Gold program originally launched on Xbox 360 last year as well as Deals for Gold. Games for Gold will offer a free game every two weeks (or unless otherwise detailed by Microsoft) so long as you’re a Gold subscriber. The same goes for Deals for Gold, which will offer discounts on games that otherwise wouldn’t be accessible. So while Xbox Live runs you $60/year (but realistically you can get it for 20-30% cheaper depending on the time of year and where you shop), you can make much of your money back in free games and deep discounts. The actual savings advantages are as-yet unknown, but the general idea is that Gold subscribers could save 50% on titles like Forza Motorsport 5 and Ryse: Son of Rome. This could put them at or under the $30 sale price, which is a great deal on higher profile games such as these. We’ll hear all about this at E3 at the latest, where Microsoft is scheduled to give a major press conference the morning of June 9.
Lastly, the June Xbox Live update is said to improve the Friends application and allow for your friends’ names to be displayed. If you’re like us, we have lists with 60-80 Gamertags that have been accumulated over the past several years and it can be hard to remember who is who, especially when people go through Gamertag changes. That’s all we know about the June update at this time. Around a month ago, Larry Hyrb and some other Xbox team members hinted at both June and July being big for new console updates, so we’re keeping our ears to the ground after E3 to hear more about what’s happening over the summer. One has to wonder when the digital sharing system will be implemented on the Xbox One, which was confirmed to be in resurrection mode after Microsoft had to back away from the service upon a handful of policy changes around the E3 time-frame last year when the Xbox One was initially unveiled.
Xbox One Game Source 