Xbox Live is getting a new look.
Microsoft is rolling out a redesigned homepage for Xbox Live that gives users more control over what they see. It follows “Microsoft Fluent Design,” a new company-wide design approach Microsoft announced at Build in May that follows principles based on five core tenets: light, depth, motion, material, and scale.
“This update is all about personalization; we’re putting the control in your hands, so that you can decide what to see when you turn on your console,” Xbox exec Mike Ybarra wrote in a blog post.
With the new design, the new Xbox Live homepage can be customized with a variety of “content blocks” that let users easily launch games or apps. Xbox will show you related information based on those content blocks — for example, “adding a game to your Home screen may pull in an Activity Feed post from the developer, show when your friends are playing that game online, suggest your next Achievement, and provide a quick shortcut to the Game Hub for that title.”
“In this release, we’ve eliminated the wait between Home, Social, and My Games and Apps by consolidating them into one dashboard experience,” Ybarra wrote. “No more splash screens means you get to fun even faster.”
Microsoft also added new ways to quickly switch between tabs in the Guide; a new layout for the Community page; and an updated Game bar for those streaming with Mixer, Microsoft’s Twitch rival that is seeing big growth.
The update is available now to Xbox Insiders and to other users later this year.
Spotify on Xbox One
On a related note, Spotify is coming to Xbox Live today, according to Aaron Greenberg, head of Xbox Games Marketing.
Excited to see @Spotify coming to @Xbox today! ???????? pic.twitter.com/Tqs40qTlf8
— ✖️Aaron Greenberg✖️ (@aarongreenberg) August 8, 2017
Spotify, which has 140 million users, also announced its new Xbox One app on Tuesday, noting that it is available in 34 countries. You can download the app from the Xbox Store and play while you game; there is a “Gaming” hub with pre-curated gaming playlists. The Xbox Spotify app, which works with both free and paid accounts, can also be controlled with your phone, tablet, or laptop via Spotify Connect.
The Verge’s Tom Warren, who also spotted the release on Tuesday, previously reported that Microsoft was testing a Spotify app for the Xbox One. This comes two years after Spotify debuted on rival PlayStation consoles. In June, a Spotify app came to the Windows Store for Windows 10 devices, but not as a Universal Windows App available to other devices like the Xbox.
Microsoft also has its own music streaming service available on Xbox called Groove; it was previously known as Xbox Music.
Update: Microsoft published its own blog post about the new Spotify app, along with some screenshots.
