At the moment, the Xbox One’s social features are a bit of a mess. Compared to the simplicity of the Xbox 360’s Party Chat system, the current system employed by Microsoft in its latest console has seen a number of players reporting that they can’t chat with friends in Parties who are playing different games to them, while others are complaining that they can’t hear friends at all via the new system.
In December, Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb confirmed that these issues “will get better”, though gave no timeline as to when changes would be made. However, speaking to Engadget this week, chief product officer Marc Whitten spoke of an update to the console which will look to consolidate Party Chat, Friends Lists, Avatars and Achievements all in one place, thus making the Xbox One’s messy UI easier to navigate.
Whitten said: “The feedback we’ve gotten is pretty valid. Some of the social stuff is hidden or harder to use than it was on the Xbox 360. So you’re gonna see us come out with an update where, well, we’re going to fix those things.
“As a person who’s been pretty involved in building Xbox Live for the last decade, I take it pretty seriously when people say it’s harder to get into a party, and the defaults aren’t right, and I don’t like the model.
“So what I’m trying to do with the team is kind of theme some stuff up. Let’s take an update and really go through a big list of what we’re hearing from customers, what we know is broken with the architecture, areas that we want to improve or complete. I think that’s a theme you’ll really see us push on that Live experience.”
Again, no date has been set for this update’s release, though we’re hoping it’ll be sooner rather than later. For the time being, you may want to try out the following
- Set your NAT type to “Open” rather than “Strict” in the console’s Network Settings.
- Make sure that you have Party Chat turned on in the Party menu.
