Buried among the myriad of trailers, gameplay, and long Halo 5 esports videos were some interesting announcements about the Xbox One.
First up was new functionality coming to the TV DVR feature. For a while now you’ve been able to watch cable and over the air broadcasts on your Xbox One, however any DVR functions were still handled through a cable box. Sometime in 2016 that will all change. Your Xbox One will now be able to record TV shows from both cable and broadcast, allowing you to record regular TV. In addition, you’ll be able to watch those recordings on your PC through Windows 10. Mircosoft says this will not impact performance, meaning you can hopefully keep playing games while recording Game of Thrones in the background. No word on how this will impact already limited hard drive space, but I imagine the company line will be to link you to the 1 TB Xbox One’s on Amazon.
Microsoft also went into depth about their backwards compatibility program. Though it’s already live for people on the preview program, everyone else will be getting backwards compatibility this November. It will launch with hundreds of games available and going forward every “Games with Gold” Xbox 360 game will also be backwards compatible. No word on if other games from the Games with Gold publishers will be included. I imagine this is something Microsoft started adding to Games with Gold deals just recently to continue to grow that library.
Also in November we’ll see the Xbox One “Windows 10 upgrade”. This is the redesigned OS we’ve been hearing about for awhile now. The more I hear about this redesign, and the more time I spend with Windows 10, the more I get excited. The clunky, slow, interface that’s on the Xbox One now just isn’t working for me. Everything feels too complicated and poorly thought out. Seeing something made more specifically for how users actually use the Xbox should feel much better.
Lastly, Microsoft mentioned a new Xbox chatpad also coming this November. It looks pretty much like the older chatpads and I’m guessing will be priced way too high like those as well.
