Microsoft has been testing version 2004, or the April Update, for the Xbox One for a while, and now, the company shed light on some of the improvements being made for Xbox Insiders in this update. The changes are likely to come to the general public soon after, seeing as the update is already in the Omega Ring of the Insider program.
One of the changes in the April Update is in the Guide, which now has a simplified layout. The default tab is now the first one in the tab list, rather than being in the middle. Additionally, party, messaging, and invites, have all been converged into the new "Parties & chats" tab, and the settings and audio and power options have been moved into the Profile tab, reducing the total number of tabs to five. The "Looking for group" feature can be found in the People tab, and notifications are grouped with other alerts in the bell icon on the default tab.
Microsoft is also making changes to My games & apps, specifically by bringing back the "Surprise Me!" button, which lets the console choose a random game from the player's library based on certain criteria. The storage management page can also be found in My games & apps now, and it has received a visual update.
Finally, as usual, there are improvements to the mixer viewing experience. Emotes and subscriber badges are now visible in chats, and Ember messages are getting special styling to differentiate them from regular messages. Stream settings, such as stream quality, can also be quickly accessed with the Menu button on the Xbox One controller, and there are a handful of smaller fixes and improvements to the experience.
Microsoft is still listening to Insider feedback on the implementation of these features, and they may look slightly different by the time they make it to the general public.
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