New Xbox One Update Will Make Some Functionality 50 Percent Faster

The upcoming New Xbox One Experience update landing in November will make some system functionality up to 50 percent faster. That's according to Xbox engineering boss Mike Ybarra, who talked more about the upcoming update during an appearance on the latest episode of "Major Nelson Radio."

Ybarra said Microsoft tracks load time data for Xbox 360, Xbox One, and the New Xbox One Experience (available now to some testers), and in some cases, executing tasks is quite a bit faster. "Popular gaming features" will load up to 50 percent faster, but he didn't say which exactly these will be. But overall, Ybarra said fans can look forward to a "new level of speed and responsiveness."

The New Xbox One Experience will be available to everyone in November. Also included with the update is backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 titles, a new Guide, a redesigned Home, and a new Community section. Ybarra also teased that the update will introduce new "accessibility" features to ensure that the Xbox One can appeal to the widest possible market. These features will be announced later.

For everything we know about the New Xbox One Experience so far, check out this post.

Also during the podcast, Ybarra talked about Windows 10's forthcoming integration with Xbox One. Bringing the OS to Xbox One is not as simple as you might think, he said, noting that it involved the team creating a highly customized version of Windows 10 built specifically for Xbox One. This is called OneCore.

"Windows 10 for desktop PCs has incredible momentum right now," Ybarra said. "We're going to bring all of that efficiency to Xbox One."

As of the end of August 10, Windows 10 had reached 75 million installs. Overall, Microsoft is aiming to hit 1 billion Windows 10 devices by 2018. In other recent Xbox/Windows news, a top Microsoft executive said the Xbox One is "literally a Windows device."