00:00Hi, it's Larry Herb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson here with Scott Henson from the Xbox Engineering Team.
00:04Scott, thank you for joining me.
00:05Hey, great to be here to talk about some of the great features coming out this holiday on Xbox One,
00:10as well as the Xbox app on PC and mobile devices today.
00:14Scott, I want to talk about what gamers can expect from this holiday update.
00:18It went to preview in September, and of course we talked about some of these features earlier in the year
00:22at E3,
00:22but let's remind folks what they can expect.
00:24Well, the two big features that are really cool are clubs and looking for group, which we'll talk about.
00:29We also have a host of other features as well, including achievement rarity, group messaging, and a whole lot more.
00:35This release is really about making it easier for people to connect with one another across all these devices,
00:40no matter how they like to game or who they like to game with.
00:43All right, Scott, let's talk about features. Let's kick things off with clubs.
00:46So clubs on Xbox Live are created by gamers, and they're managed groups that help you find gamers
00:52no matter what kind of community you want to be a member of.
00:55We have private clubs, public clubs, and hidden.
00:57So no matter what kind of club, we've got something for you.
01:00You know, two of my favorite clubs out there, or two clubs I follow that might be unexpected,
01:05would be the Anime Club, which is all things anime, and the Awesome Screenshots Club.
01:09But there's really clubs for every kind of game or every type of way that you want to play,
01:14including if you're an achievement hunter, if you like TV shows, movie genres, really everything.
01:18Anything that interests you, there's something out there for you.
01:20So no, I created a major Nelson club that's open to everybody.
01:23I created that in preview, and it's certainly available right now for everybody.
01:26But just to give an example, if I want to play Gears of War and annihilate some of the swarm
01:30of DBs,
01:30I can create a club for other Gears lovers, right?
01:32Absolutely. And if you want to find a club as well, you can go into your game hub for Gears
01:37of War
01:37or those clubs and find people that like to play Gears of War.
01:41Now, I want to point out what can club members do once they're part of a club?
01:44So a couple of different things.
01:46When you're a member of the club, it's really about contributing to the club, right?
01:49So you'll be able to find them on the community tab up at the top, right?
01:53So you go into the top of the community tab.
01:55At the very top, you'll enter clubs there.
01:58And then you'll be able to go in and chat with people.
02:02You'll be able to start games and interact with other folks that are members of the club.
02:07I also want to point out that it's not just on the console.
02:10It also clubs exist in the Xbox app on Windows 10, right?
02:13That's right. On Windows 10 as well as on mobile devices, you can interact with people there as well
02:18just the same way that you can on the console.
02:20Now, another great way to connect with people is one of the new features, looking for group.
02:24Tell us about that and how that works.
02:25I think the easiest way to describe looking for group is that it's really about a want ad for gamers
02:30for each other.
02:31You can post your want ad, if you will, and let people know that the game that you want to
02:37look for
02:37and the type of game, we have a whole bunch of custom tags that allow you to make that specific
02:41to the kind of game that you want to play.
02:43And we're bringing that functionality to the mobile device as well as PC and console.
02:49So the cool thing about that is if I'm on the mobile device, I can quickly and easily send that
02:53while I'm on the go to all of my friends and set up my LFG.
02:56You mentioned the tags, but also one of the key parts of the Xbox world is achievement.
03:02So I can kind of set, hey, I want to look for this achievement, and it will go up there,
03:05and anybody that wants to join me in trying to get that achievement can participate, right?
03:09Yeah, so similar to clubs where if you want to have a club that's about achievement hunting,
03:12you can certainly do LFGs the same way, and you can say the specific type of achievement that you want
03:16to go find with other people,
03:18either in your club or out in Xbox Live in general.
03:21Let's give an example of how LFG will work.
03:23Yeah, so everything really starts with the game hub, and in this case it would be the game hub for
03:26Gears of War 4.
03:27And I'd go into the game hub, into the looking for group section, and I would post up an LFG
03:32and invite, let's say, the community at large.
03:36Let's say we needed three people.
03:37So I'd set it up.
03:38I'd say we want to play now because you and I are ready to play.
03:41You would then express your interest, and then I'd wait for two to three other people to express their interest
03:46as well.
03:47We'd get into a party, and then we'd go off and play Horde Mode.
03:49Pretty straightforward.
03:50Pretty straightforward.
03:51I also want to point out that this will work for Windows 10 games as well.
03:54That's right.
03:55Your favorite PC games will work.
03:56You'll be able to set up LFGs for things like League of Legends or Dota or whatever your favorite multiplayer
04:01game is on Windows 10.
04:03Of course, all of our Play Anywhere titles, Gears of War 4, Forks of Horizon 3.
04:06It's a great feature for gamers no matter what platform they want to play on and no matter what game
04:12they want to play with.
04:13Scott, another part of this release is Achievement Rarity.
04:15We talked about that again during preview, but let's go into that a little bit further.
04:19Yeah, this was a huge fan request on Xbox Feedback.
04:22People really wanted to know how many other people have gotten these achievements.
04:25and what Achievement Rarity does is it lets you know really how unique that achievement is amongst the players of
04:30a given game.
04:31So when you earn an achievement, you'll get a special notification and a diamond icon highlighting it.
04:36How do you determine if an achievement is actually rare?
04:39So it's pretty simple. We calculate it based on the number of people who've played the game and how many
04:45people have unlocked the achievement.
04:47So it's really how many people have unlocked the achievement over the number of people who've played the game.
04:51And then we show achievements that are rare for 10% or less in the user interface.
04:57So when you go in, you'll see a little diamond next to the achievement if it's rare.
05:01Now, if I look in my achievement list and I see some of my achievements are rare, but they're not
05:06rare anymore, what does that mean?
05:08Well, over time, you know, of course, more and more people are going to play the game and more and
05:11more people are going to unlock it.
05:12So this is dynamically updated frequently.
05:14So you can always see how rare a particular achievement is.
05:18Achievement Rarity is great, but it's also tied to Gamerscore.
05:22You've done some work around the Gamerscore leaderboard. Tell us what's new there.
05:24The big thing that's new with the Gamerscore leaderboard is that you can now look each month and determine how
05:30you're comparing against your friends.
05:32So you can look at this month and see how you're doing and, of course, last month and see how
05:35you did.
05:36And it keeps the competition going each month.
05:38So I can just go to a little drop down and kind of go back in time and figure out
05:41how I did and where I need to do better.
05:43That's right.
05:44Pretty cool. Now let's talk about group messaging. This is a feature that's been highly requested. How will it work?
05:49So group messaging allows you to send messages to multiple people in the same conversation.
05:53You can dynamically add them, and you can also change the conversation topic.
05:57It works on Xbox One as well as in the Xbox app.
06:00And on the console on Xbox One, we've added a predictive dictionary to make typing a lot easier.
06:04So as you type, similar to your smartphone, it will give you suggested words, and with your right thumbstick, you
06:08can go select those.
06:09And, of course, the other thing is with group messaging, you can include another new feature, which is emojis.
06:15That's right. And emojis are in our virtual keyboard.
06:17You just hit the left trigger and get right to them.
06:20It allows you, in all of our communication, chats, posts, comments, etc., to be able to express yourself the way
06:25you want with emojis.
06:26The team's worked incredibly hard for this release, for these new features for gamers on Xbox Live.
06:31I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks.
06:32For more details, hit up XboxWire at news.xbox.com or my blog at majornelson.com.
06:38Thanks for watching.
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