Xbox One Update Brings Beam Streaming, Updated Home, and More

Microsoft is rolling out a big update for the Xbox One, which features an updated dashboard, the new Xbox Guide, and the Beam streaming service.

First revealed back in January, the UI changes are meant to overhaul an experience that suffered with buried controls, and not-so-great performance. And Microsoft said as much in its announcement: “One of the first things you’ll notice with this update is a new look for Home on Xbox One. We made these changes to simplify the UI and increase overall system performance.”

The new dashboard puts your games and apps right where you need them, and uses hero art from the game you’re currently playing for the home screen background, unless you’ve a custom one set already.

You can bring up the Guide with a single press of the Xbox button on your controller, and it shows up as an overlay from the left-end of the display. Again, the first page gives you access to games, apps, and recently launched applications. Below that, you’ll also have easy access to music controls, to pause/resume background apps, or change volume.

With the update, Microsoft is also making taking screenshots, and recording video a straightforward task. Hitting the ‘Y’ button does the former, while ‘X’ button captures the game moment you just witnessed – the length of it depending on the setting in GameDVR menu.

Lastly, Beam – which has been available for Xbox Insiders since a while – is now rolling out to all Xbox users today. It’s just like Twitch, in the sense that you can use it to live-stream games to the world, or watch people play. But unlike the Amazon rival, there’s no need of extra hardware.

Along with the big changes, Microsoft has also worked to integrate accessibility options such as Copilot, which lets two controllers act like one, hence bringing cooperative play to any game. You can also now set screen time limits for your children, to keep a check on their gaming habits.