Following a few teases here and there, Major Nelson has announced that the Xbox One will be receiving a new update in its Preview program later today which should help prep it for its eventual roll-out in the near future.

Some of the features include the ability to see Party members before joining; a leaderboard for Gamerscore so you can compare your score to friends; the Activity Feed informing users when new news items emerge; the ability to join Twitch broadcasts; hiding titles like betas, trials, games and apps which are “Ready to Install”; and a New Friend Suggestions area in Community and a Friends list in the Xbox One Guide. Other updates will include the Avatar Store, improvements to Trending, a compact mode for the Xbox app and Xbox News.

It remains to be seen when the update rolls out for everyone but February doesn’t sound unreasonable. What are your thoughts on the new features for Xbox One? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.

ARK: Survival Evolved has succeeded very quickly on the Xbox One despite launching just last month through the Game Preview Program. Along with reaching one million downloads is less than a week, there are currently more daily players on the Xbox One than PC.

Studio Wildcard’s Jesse Rapczak stated on Xbox Wire that, “There’s no question that survival games have taken the PC world by storm lately. And as the only true large-scale multiplayer survival game available on console, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Ark’s daily Xbox One player count is already bigger than on PC.”

He further added that Xbox One players will have numerous updates to look forward to in the coming months. “This will eventually include highly demanded features like split-screen support, gamepad customization, UI improvements, tweaks to current game modes, balancing improvements, and all the new content that is going into the PC version. That’s awesome considering there is already three times as much content in the game today compared to the PC launch 7 months ago.”

Players can expect the full version ARK: Survival Evolved will be releasing in June for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

The Xbox One release of the surprise hit (and subsequent viral sensation) of the year on PC, ARK: Survival Evolved, is almost here. The developer has confirmed that a version for the Xbox, which will be launching on the Xbox Preview Program (the equivalent of the Steam Early Access program for the Xbox One) some time pretty soon.

How much of the PC hit has made it over to the console remains to be seen- of special interest here will be the game adapts it control scheme to the Xbox One controller.

Of course, this does not represent the final console release for this game by any measure- ARK: Survival Evolved is due to get a full console release some time in 2016, and it will be launching then not just on the Xbox One, but also on the PlayStation 4.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage and information on the game.

Like with everything else that is DayZ, the Xbox One version of the game has seen a bit of a delay- it will not be hitting the console via the Xbox Preview Program (which is the Xbox equivalent of the Steam Early Access program) in 2015, as Microsoft originally announced at E3. Instead it seems to have slipped off into next year.

The developer confirmed this on Twitter, stating that they are at least as of right now more focused on bringing the PC version up to scratch; they also did promise, however, that a prototype of the console version should be up and running by early next year. Of course, with DayZ, deadlines are about as ephemeral as the weather, so who knows what will really happen.

If you really do want to play the game, you can do so right now on PC (though it’s still not completed there, either- it’s in Early Access). That, or really, there’s a whole host of clones that you could look into trying out.