UPDATED: Acey Bongos and one of the lead engineers on Xbox, Ashley Speicher, demoed some the new Xbox One features announced earlier today. The full demo has been added.



Ahead of our Gamescom briefing live from Cologne, Germany at 2:00 p.m. CEST – that’s 8:00 a.m. ET and 5:00 a.m. PT – I’m excited to announce new and exciting features coming to Xbox One within the next few months.

We’ve been bringing tons of new features to Xbox One fans worldwide throughout the year. Thanks to our recently launched Xbox Feedback, our fans have played a huge role in shaping these updates. In fact, we’ve received thousands of posts and more than 400,000 votes to date.

Starting in the early access program later this month, new social features making it easier for gamers to connect with their friends and new ways to access their TV and entertainment throughout their homes will be coming to Xbox One. The updates include:

New “Friends” section – The new Friends section has been available for a few early access Preview members and we’re expanding it to everyone enrolled in the Preview program. The new Friends section enables users to see at a glance what’s going on with their friends. They can stay up-to-date with their current activities, the most popular games their friends are playing, and a Gamerscore leaderboard to see who has improved their Gamerscore over the last 30 days.

Snap Center – Some of gamers’ favorite features in the Xbox 360 guide, are coming to Xbox One in a way that’s now truly be side-by-side with games. Messages, friends, parties, and achievements will all be available in the new Snap Center, providing a seamless way to switch back and forth without having to leave a game.

Threaded Messages – Keeping gamers in their games while they multitask has been a huge focus. The new Messages app features threaded messages with the full conversation history – including embedded links to Game DVR clips – that can be viewed without interrupting gameplay.

Media Player – A new app will be available soon that enables users to play media files from either an attached USB device or from a network connected home media server that supports DLNA protocols. The preview version of the Media Player app will initially only support USB devices, with DLNA support coming soon. Xbox One will support more formats than Xbox 360, including support for dozens of new file formats like mpeg 2 TS, animated gifs and mkv which will be added by the end of the year. See below for additional file formKats.

Xbox One Digital TV Tuner – Announced last week, this new accessory will enter a limited preview program in Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), in advance of its retail launch beginning in October.

Stream TV to SmartGlass – Launching first in markets receiving the Xbox Digital TV Tuner, Xbox One owners will be able to stream their TV across their home network to their smartphones and tablets using the Xbox SmartGlass app. They can also pause, play and rewind as well as change channels, without interrupting gameplay on the Xbox One. This will work for SmartGlass apps on Windows, iOS, and Android.

Boot to TV – Now Xbox One owners will be able to set their console to boot directly to television when coming out of connected standby.

Live TV mini guide – For markets where OneGuide is available, a new mini guide on the bottom of the screen will display details about the TV content that is currently playing. Users can quickly change channels and see what’s on other channels, while still watching TV.

Country Expansion – We’re doing a lot of work on the backend to prepare for Xbox One to launch in 29 new markets in the coming weeks.

As with previous updates, these may be rolling out in general availability to Xbox One owners at different stages in the coming months. We continue to be amazed by our fans’ enthusiasm for our Xbox One system updates and their fantastic input. We’re working hard to make Xbox One more social and the best place for all your games and entertainment, and we can’t wait to roll out these new features, and more, in the coming months.

Later today, my Gamescom co-host Acey Bongos, and one of the lead engineers on Xbox, Ashley Speicher, are demoing the new features. Stay tuned and we’ll post that demo a little later.

Here’s to a great Gamescom 2014. Auf wiedersehen for now.

Xbox One compatible file types:

3gp audio

3gp video

3gp2

aac

adts

animated gif

asf

avi divx

avi dv

avi uncompressed

avi xvid

bmp

jpg

gif

h264 avchd

mjpeg

mkv

mov

mp3

mpeg 1 ps

mpeg 2

mpeg 2 hd

mpeg 2 ts

mpeg 4 h264 aac

mpeg 4 sp

png

tiff

wav

wma

wma lossless

wma pro

wma voice

wmv

wmv hd