00:06I'm Larry Herb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson.
00:09I'm excited to be joined today by Richard Irving from the Xbox Engineering team
00:12to discuss some of the most anticipated features in the upcoming March update.
00:17Richard, thanks for joining me.
00:18Hey, thank you. It's great to be here.
00:19Richard, your team is responsible for many of the changes coming in March,
00:23specifically the friends list and party experience.
00:25Let's start with parties and get right into the details.
00:28What's the first most obvious change fans will see when starting up a party?
00:33I think we've addressed the number one most requested feature,
00:36which is turning party chat on by default.
00:38That is awesome news.
00:40What about cross-game chat and parties, Richard?
00:42That has always been there, but how have you made it easier?
00:44The UI makes a clearer distinction between the people that you're playing with
00:48and the people that you're chatting with,
00:49and you now have three distinct options for bringing people into your party.
00:53You can invite them just to the party if you want to chat,
00:55you can invite them just to your game, or you can invite them to the party
00:58and to the game simultaneously.
01:00And I see here you can invite party to game as well, which is awesome.
01:03That's right.
01:04Now, if you send me a party and a game invite and I accept it, what's going to happen?
01:08You're going to immediately join the chat.
01:10Again, chat is on by default, so you're going to start chatting with your friends.
01:12and then whether or not you're in the game,
01:15it's going to take you right into the multiplayer setup for that game.
01:19Now, is there anything else you want to make sure that fans know about the updates
01:22to the Xbox One Party system?
01:24Well, there's a lot of refinement to the UI to improve your access
01:27to different features of the system,
01:29and we are actively awaiting more feedback to continue to improve the experience.
01:35The friends list is another area that's receiving a lot of attention,
01:38the March update, Richard.
01:39What new functionality can fans expect to see there?
01:41So the most important thing is it's faster to access your online friends.
01:46Our data and research showed that the majority of people were going
01:49just to check the online status of their friends,
01:51and so now it's three button clicks or one voice command away to see that.
01:56So you get to it really quickly.
01:57That's right.
01:57All right.
01:58I see that favorites are right at the top as well.
02:00That's right.
02:01So favorites, you know, in this world where you can now have a thousand friends on Xbox One,
02:05you need a way to prioritize the people that you care the most about,
02:08and favorites are a way of doing that.
02:10When you mark someone as a favorite friend,
02:13they're going to sort to the top of the list so you always see them first.
02:16Great.
02:17Now I also see here that you've added some new shortcuts to the friends list.
02:21Tell me about that.
02:22That's right.
02:22So we've added a context menu that makes it faster to send a message,
02:26invite your friend to a party, things like that.
02:29Now here I see find someone is now on the top level page.
02:32Tell me about that.
02:32So that's a feature that we introduced at launch that makes it easy to find new people by gamertag.
02:39Again, in this world where you have a thousand friends,
02:41sometimes it's faster to search for them rather than scroll through a list.
02:46So now with find someone at the top level,
02:48you can start typing a friend's gamertag,
02:51and within, I'd say, two to three characters,
02:53you'll get a little autocomplete list of suggestions.
02:57Pick the friend that you want to access and be taken straight to their profile.
03:00And you're on your way.
03:01Now here I see the much requested recent players list.
03:04What does that mean to some players that are new to Xbox One?
03:07What can we do there?
03:08So recent players is where you go to access people that you have played a game with recently
03:13so that you can add them to your friends list
03:15or if you need to report them for griefing or other bad behavior.
03:19Richard, are there any other changes to friends that you want to touch on?
03:22Well, we've added more options on the profile page.
03:26So there's more actions, invite to game, join party, things like that.
03:30What's your hope for the March update?
03:32Well, really my hope is that people pick up Titanfall
03:35and have a great time playing with it,
03:37and I hope the changes that we've made to the multiplayer experience
03:40in support of that gives them an even better experience on Xbox One.
03:44Richard, thanks for showing us some of the features
03:46coming in the March update to Xbox One.
03:48For more news, keep an eye on XboxWire or MajorNelson.com.
03:51Thanks for watching.
03:52Take six to all ground forces.
03:54The situation is under our control.
03:56Well done.
03:56Can you advise?
03:57Pollution forces.
03:59Okay.
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