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Published on February 13th, 2015 | by Admin

Xbox Newsbeat – 13 February 2015

Xbox Shares Tips for Gamers on Safer Internet Day

The top tips from Andreas Holbrook, Senior Program Manager, Xbox and board member for the Gamer Safety Alliance

In observance of Safer Internet Day 2015, today the Merchant Risk Council’s Gamer Safety Alliance (GSA) kicked off the fourth annual Gamer Safety Week. The Gamer Safety Alliance is a coalition of gaming companies that have come together to share best practices around online safety, fraud prevention and other emerging security issues that our gamers and their families may face. Gamer Safety Week is the perfect time to take a step back and review best practices around keeping your account and online presence secure. Here at Xbox, we encourage you and your family to spend some time thinking and talking about what it means to be safe online. Here are links to some important information around online safety:

Parents should consider taking advantage of the robust set of controls offered by the Xbox platform for controlling the online interactions and spending habits of their children. Find out more about the Xbox suite of parental controls here. We hope this brief refresher will be helpful in improving the safety of your online experiences.

For more tips and all the latest Xbox news please visit the Xbox Wire.

Expand Your Minecraft Universe with Star Wars Rebels Skin Pack for Xbox

Join the resistance against the Galactic Empire

Following last November’s release of the Star Wars Classic Skin Pack for Minecraft, Disney, Lucasfilm and Xbox have teamed up to deliver 23 new Minecraft skins featuring characters from Disney Channel’s Star Wars Rebels animated television series on Disney XD. Set five years before the events of Star Wars™: Episode IV: A New Hope™, Star Wars Rebels tells the story of the Rebellion’s beginnings while the Empire spreads tyranny throughout the galaxy. Now, Minecrafters can play as their favourite inhabitants of the starship Ghost, such as Ezra Bridger, Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus and Chopper. Priced at $3.95 AUD, the Star Wars Rebels Skin Pack brings the whole motley crew to the colossal world of Minecraft. A full character list and a range of media assets are available on the Xbox Wire. Stay tuned for more Star Wars Minecraft news soon, and happy mining! STAR WARS © & ™ Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. Used under authorisation.

Xbox One February system update: Enjoy game hubs, updates to controller, party chat and TV

Loads of cool new features to get stuck into with friends in the month ahead

Today, we’re excited to begin rolling out the first system update of 2015. Since Xbox One launched, we made a commitment to listen to feedback from the Xbox Live community and we continue to deliver on that promise. We’re always listening to your thoughts and will continue adding new features and improving existing functionality to enhance your gaming and entertainment experiences on Xbox One. This month, we’re improving the Xbox One controller, enhancing Party Chat and adding new TV features like trending to OneGuide, and bringing “trick play” and live streaming on Windows Phone and Android to Xbox Live members in Europe using the Digital TV Tuner. Additionally, you can discover new content from your favourite games and further personalize your dashboard, among other cool new features. Check out the full list of new features we’re adding to Xbox One this month below and don’t forget to keep sharing your awesome ideas with us.

  • Controller improvements – We’re excited to improve stability and speed on the Xbox One controller in the following ways:
    • Quick Connect – Previously, controller connections to Xbox One took approximately four-to-five seconds when powering on a controller. Now, it will only take about two seconds.
    • Stability improvements – The update also provides a number of fixes that address some of the controller disconnect issues reported by Xbox One owners. To download the update, connect a controller to your Xbox One with a USB cable.  Keep any headsets connected to the controller. Connect to Xbox Live. Press the Menu. Go to Settings > Devices & accessories and select the controller. If you have multiple controllers attached, you can select Buzz – which will cause the selected controller to vibrate. Then select Update to download the new firmware to the controller attached via the USB cable, and the screen will show the Updating controller … progress screen. When you see the Controller updated screen, press ‘B’ to go back to the Devices & accessories main page. Reselect the controller. The Firmware version should now be: 1.2.2236.0
  • Game hubs – These are the go-to centres for interesting content, tips and tricks for your favourite titles. Every Xbox One game will have a game hub where you can see which friends are playing the game, compete with your friends in game leaderboards, dive into the coolest game clips and game broadcasts, and follow the game’s top broadcasters and clip creators. To get to the game hub for your favourite game, find a game in your pins, recently played list, or My games and apps, then press the Menu button and select View game hub. You can also search for any game in the Xbox Store and click on the Game Hub tile from the game’s store page. On the game’s activity feed, game developers can share interesting content with anyone who follows the game. You’ll be the first to get news on upcoming updates and DLC, featured game clips and trailers, behind the scenes content and more. All the news about your favourite games is delivered right to your console. Additionally, you can now choose to Follow a game from a game hub, which will incorporate the game’s activity feed content into your activity feed.
  • Party chat updates – We made several changes to party chat in recent weeks, including:
    • Chat connection status – New icons have been added to let you know the current status of a chat connection in your party. A Clock icon means the connection is being made. A Squawker Ring icon indicates the connection was successful, and actively shows who is speaking. An X icon means that networking limitations (such as a Strict NAT) are preventing the chat connection from completing for specific participants.
    • Improved connectivity between multiple participants with Strict or Moderate NATs – We also made some connectivity improvements to party chat in partial mesh situations when multiple participants are behind moderate or strict NATs with their home gateways/routers.
    • Game and party invitations – To help you more quickly know who is inviting you to what, we made improvements to game and party invitations. Now, you can see which of your friends is inviting you and what party or game the invite is for, without having to wait for the text to scroll on the notification.
    • Performance improvements – We also decreased the time it takes to set up person-to-person (P2P) connectivity for party chat and streamlined the retry logic for setting up party chat sessions.
  • Custom backgrounds and tile transparency – We’ve added tile transparency to the Home tiles to make your background images more visible. As a reminder, to set a custom background, go to Settings > My Xbox > My background. Note: some items can’t be made transparent due to usage rights/restrictions for certain images.
  • TV updates – A number of updates to the live TV experience are available today and new features have been added to additional countries including:
    • TV trending in OneGuide – As you scan the OneGuide TV listings, you can see which shows are trending with a “Trending on Xbox” or “Trending on Twitter” note and icon within the details for each show. Currently, Xbox TV trending is available to all Xbox One owners in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, and Twitter trending is available in the United States.
    • Live TV trending (new countries) – France, Germany, Brazil and Mexico now have the ability to see live TV trending data in Xbox OneGuide.
    • Improved control of TVs, set-top boxes and audio/video receivers – Xbox One works even better with more devices. Updates to the IR blasting database for new models have been added and address issues reported by our fan community.
    • “Trick play” with Xbox One Digital TV Tuner – Xbox One Digital TV Tuner owners in supported countries (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) are now able to see video frames when fast-forwarding or rewinding paused TV on Xbox One consoles.
    • Live TV streaming on Windows Phone and Android – Live TV streaming on Windows Phone and Android devices for Xbox One Digital TV Tuner owners has been added in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
    • OneGuide for the Netherlands – Support for OneGuide is being added for Xbox Live members in the Netherlands.

The passion and enthusiasm we’ve seen from the Xbox Live community in helping Xbox deliver the best gaming experience possible has been amazing and we can’t wait to see what other ideas are in store for us. Thanks so much for your feedback and stay tuned for more Xbox One system updates.

For a video preview of the latest update and all the latest Xbox news, please visit the Xbox Wire.


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andrew@impulsegamer.com'


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