Xbox hardware update drops 13 fantastic features for your console

Xbox has dropped a phenomenal update for its consoles this week, bringing 13 changes and additions fans have been requesting for quite some time.

The latest business strategy being executed by Xbox is to listen to its fans. CEO Asha Sharma has made it abundantly clear that this new era of the company is all about the gamers.

This has led to several user-friendly decisions being made, such as reducing the cost of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, more focus on exclusive games, and much more.

Xbox’s latest move is a new, free system update for its family of consoles. Xbox Insiders got access to this update first, but it’s finally landing for everyone else.

It brings a grand total of 13 new features, including an extension to gamertag characters, an overhaul to My Games And Apps, and more customisation options.

Idle Sloth has shared the full list of features in a post on X. You’ll find all 13 below in the list below.

• Longer gamertags - from 12 to 15 characters

• Poster-style artwork for your games library

• Choose which icons will appear on game tiles

• New profile — Color options for customisation

• Console update release notes - new & improved

• Service Alerts — Indicator if the Xbox network has an issue

• Mutual friends — find more easily

• Wishlist — Add directly from game cards

• Xbox accessories app — Shows your controller

• Offline Personalization — Console customisation even when offline

• Cloud gaming — Prompt to play via the cloud when games need updates

• Settings change — Reorganized the personalization settings into separate sections in Settings.

• Achievements — Crisp Xbox 360 achievement ar

Overall that’s a solid line-up, and we’re especially pleased to see service alerts be integrated into our consoles.

The Xbox 360 achievement art is also a nice touch. Now we just need the backwards compatibility program to be restarted so we can add more classic games to our libraries…

When will Xbox Positron launch?

The latest update is fantastic, but fans are still waiting for the elusive Xbox Positron system to drop.

No, Xbox Positron is not a secret codename for the next-gen Xbox, which is currently known as Project Helix, it’s much more than that. It's a literal game-changer.

Xbox Positron looks to be Xbox’s answer to the physical vs digital debate, as it’ll supposedly turn your physical Xbox discs into digital licences.

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The benefit of this is it’ll allow you to play your library on more than one platform. So for instance if you have Doom: The Dark Ages on disc, once you’ve installed it to your console Xbox Positron will make it playable on PC or Xbox-supported devices.

On paper it sounds fine, but we need to see how it performs in practice before any judgements are made. It’s at least a better alternative to PlayStation culling physical media entirely.

Xbox Positron was expected to launch sometime this week according to rumours, but clearly plans have either changed or it was never meant to launch at all.