Xbox One To Receive Cortana And Ability To Play Background Music, New Features To Be Announced This E3

During the on going Live Build 2016 conference, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer revealed a number of changes and features that are coming to the Xbox One and Windows 10 in the near future. Spencer revealed that they will be adding a single unified store across all devices thereby “giving developers new features and consumers new experiences”. This update will be a part of Windows 10 Anniversary Update which will go live later this year. Spencer did not revealed more details about this unified store but did stated that it will support the usual bundles, season passes and more.

He also revealed that the Xbox One will be receiving Cortana in the future, “who will be the player’s personal assistant”. Cortana will help players with game recommendations, challenges along with providing them with tips and tricks. New features such as background music are also coming with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Spencer revealed that Microsoft will be showing off more new Windows 10 Anniversary Update features at E3, both for Windows 10 and Xbox One.

Furthermore, UWP will be receiving updates too. Players will be able to disable v-sync and adding the ability for G-sync and FreeSync in May along with support for modding and overlays.. Microsoft also demonstrated Age of Empires II HD and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as modern desktop applications although this is an on going research at this point. (Update: This is actually a converter which converts a package from a platform such as Steam into a modern desktop application whilst taking advantage of Windows 10 features such as notifications.)

It looks like Microsoft is listening to its fans and it will be interesting to see what new features Xbox One and Windows 10 will receive in the future.