Starting Monday, Alpha Ring members of the Insider program can download the latest Xbox One Insider update. With it, players can create a more personalized gaming experience that is easier to navigate. Fans can now personalize the Home page to their liking and get to the fun faster.
After powering on the Xbox One, the first thing players will notice is the completely reworked Home screen. With the update, users get to decide what they see when they first power on. Using a design system called Microsoft Fluent Design, the dashboard has been updated to focus on speed and expression. From favorite games to best friends, they can all be added to the home screen. This creates blocks of content than can be moved around or deleted altogether. That way, it always matched a player’s current interests or habits.
By putting Home, Social, and My Games and Apps into one dashboard, the long splash screens between the pages becomes nonexistent. This speeds everything up, making it fast and easy to get to the fun stuff.
Additionally, the new tab flyouts help speed things up in the Xbox One Insider update. These allow players to quickly jump between apps, join friends, broadcast, and more. Signing in, achievements, multiplayer, people, home and recent, messages, broadcasts and captures, and a new action center have their own tab.
For those who enjoy connecting with friends and clubs, connecting with the community is better than ever. The community section now shows more content at a glance. Looking at items in the activity feed brings them into a full-screen view. Even the comments window can be expanded to fill the screen.
The Xbox One is not the only one getting updated. On Windows 10, the Game Bar is getting even better. Switching a PC to Game Mode is as easy as clicking a switch directly in the Game Bar. Additionally, broadcasting with Mixer through the bar will allow users to make more choices about the audio. Options include game-only audio, or system-wide audio. For those with connectivity issues, a new Xbox Live Network Troubleshooting option in the Settings menu of Windows 10 allows users to track down the source of the issue.
This is just the beginning of several major updates coming later this year. Check back in the coming months for details on later additions.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.