Throughout the course of the weekend, Microsoft begun rolling out its extensive May update for the Xbox One, which adds a new sound mixer while also fine-tuning overall speech recognition.
The patch, which initially entered a beta phase at the beginning of the month to allow users to preview and indeed voice their opinions, also adds a series of fixes to the system itself. Taking to his official blog, the company’s spokesperson Larry Hryb outlined the targeted features, including Party Chat and improving the rather handy Snap ability.
Specifically, users will be able to control the volume output for each respective window through the aforementioned sound mixer, meaning you can dial back the in-game audio to focus on Netflix or vice versa. Morerover, this improvement also extends to the console’s Party Chat application, with users now having the ability to adjust the output of the app whether it is snapped or not.
Elsewhere, in order to improve the Xbox One’s ability to recognize and understand speech, Microsoft is rolling out a campaign that will offer console owners the opportunity to opt-in to data collection with confidence. According to the official statement, “all voice data shared via this setting will be used for product improvement only,” and that this voluntary program will ultimately allow the company to enhance the Kinect’s responsiveness.
Much like previous monthly updates for the Xbox One, Microsoft intends to increment these improvements gradually; though Hryb reassured fans that the patch would be available to all users by the end of this week.
