The Xbox Series X isn’t the only thing Microsoft is unveiling this holiday season. In a trailer posted on Aug. 19, Xbox Head of Research and Design Chris Novak and his team revealed Xbox is currently designing a “new, connected ecosystem” to be implemented across all devices, releasing simultaneously with the Xbox Series X.
At its core, this new ecosystem aspires to “streamline every aspect of getting into your games.” Jonathan Hildebrandt, the principal program manager for the Xbox Experience, stated the Xbox home now loads 15% faster when booting up your Xbox and up to a third faster when returning to it from a game. Additionally, the systems most visited pages—home, guide and store—have been optimized to “reduce their footprint and maximize console horsepower.” Furthermore, all of these improvements come with up to a 40% drop in memory usage, Hildebrandt said.
Catarina Macedo, a program manager on the Xbox Live social team, also unveiled a new feature aimed to improve social connection. Starting with the launch of the Xbox Series X, players can elect to have their gameplay capture sent instantly to their phones. Macedo said it’s Xbox’s goal to make sharing footage on social networks as easy as possible. This improvement reduces the time players are away from games and makes text input more efficient, Novak added.
With these improvements, Xbox strives to better connect players and make the gaming experience more seamless. While this new user interface is launching with the Xbox Series X, Hildebrandt confirmed these changes will also be applied to the Xbox One, “bringing everyone into the new experience.”
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