Lawrence "Larry" Hyrb, A.K.A. Major Nelson announced on his official Twitter account that The New Xbox One Experience (NXOE) and backward compatibility will launch 12th November of this year. Major Nelson is the Director of Programming for Xbox Live.
Techno Buffalo reporter Eric Frederiksen said that the update will now ship after all the previous upgrades. "Microsoft’s big overhaul for their console has been in the works for some time, with the system’s steady stream of updates slowing to a trickle as focus shifted to the upgrade. The update will give the system a new interface that should improve controller navigation while speeding navigation and loading of the operating system significantly."
Frederiksen also argued that this update is crucial to the long-term success of the console. He said that games (with almost the same release window) like Halo 5: Guardians and Rise of the Tomb Raider will feel the the full brunt if ever the upgrade is messed up somehow. He added that a smooth upgrade will help the console's image and help prepare it for the holiday rush.
The update will have an improved UI that will make navigation and discovery faster and easier. That said, the most anticipated improvement in the update is the backward compatibility feature. According to Venture Beat reporter Jeff Grubb, the Xbox One will be backward compatible with around 100 Xbox 360 games.
Grubb said that the update is long overdue because customers were always complaining about the sluggish UI of the console. He said that since launching in 2013, Microsoft was criticized heavily for the lagging and confusing interface of the Xbox One.
The same Venture Beat article showed the demo video of the NXOE UI. From the video, the new UI looks like a fancy tile interface very similar to the Windows 10 tablet mode UI. The friends list is just one left button away from access. More important is that the slide-over animations and other movements look to be smooth and very fast.
The NXOE UI demo in the Venture Beat website is not the final release code. Microsoft is still improving and tweaking the UI up until release time on November 12.
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