Xbox One July Update Brings Custom Gamerpics, Co-Streaming, and Much More

Earlier this morning, Microsoft’s Major Nelson dropped a bunch of details  on the new update for Xbox One.

First up, we’ve finally gotten custom gamerpics. This has been a heavily requested feature for Xbox Live even since last generation. Originally, you could kind of make your own custom picture, but it was severely limited and only worked through the Microsoft site. This new update allows you to upload “an image from your console, Windows 10 PC, or mobile phone for your Gamerpic.” This new feature is accompanied by further customization options for clubs, allowing you to add custom club profile pics and backgrounds as well.

The next big feature is console co-streaming. For those who don’t know what this is, “With co-streaming, you and up to three of your friends can broadcast together to create a shared, multi-view experience on Mixer.” This is Major Nelson’s description of the feature as it applies to Xbox One, which means that, minus the friend cap and Mixer usage, this is what co-streaming means. They’ve made this functionality easier to use by adding “invite to co-stream” actions and a Mixer tab when you press the home button on your controller. All of this makes streaming content with your friends significantly easier.

Another very helpful new feature is further customization options for controllers. You can now assign an account to a controller of your choice, allowing you to immediately sign in when you activate a linked controller. This addition allows for more seamless transitioning between accounts on the same Xbox. If you and others consistently use the same Xbox, this is very beneficial as there is no need to worry about account passwords, auto-sign in features, etc. That is, just so long as you remember whose controller belongs to who.

There are also further updates to the arena system for clubs on Xbox Live. Now you can much more easily create tournaments for you and your friends/club mates to compete it, doing so through the console itself rather than the Xbox app. It works exactly as it did on the app now where you “Give it a name, determine the rules, start time, and a description if you’d like.” The update allows you to track various arena matches more closely and efficiently as well.

Finally, there are some updates headed to the app on iOS and Android as well. “Looking-for-Group requests are getting more exposure in this release with the ability to share them to the Activity Feed and Messages.” For Destiny players especially, this is a very useful new feature. You can now also browse the Game Pass content through the app and “install these games to your console directly from the app.” There are new customization options for people whose phones are set to a different region than their Xbox. Another new feature is “Chat Bubbles” that “lets your use your mobile games and apps while keeping your Xbox conversations within reach.”

All of these updates are now live for Xbox One users to download.