Xbox May Update Adds New Social Feature and More

Xbox's latest monthly update is out which typically means a couple of new features for users to look forward to as well as some fixes for certain problems and other adjustments. The same is true this month, too, with May's update now out to introduce two main features. One of them is a social feature that'll better allow Xbox users to show what they're up to, and the other is a tagging service which could also be construed as a social feature, too, given that it may help preserve the quality of different social activities players might be participating in.

This console update doesn't come with traditional patch notes like any other update would, but Xbox again published a lengthy post about its contents within the Xbox Wire. There, Xbox talked about the new "stories" feature coming to the Xbox app. It's a feature used within social networks like Facebook and Instagram already, and it'll allow players to create a quick slideshow of sorts for their friends to look at.

"The stories channel is located right on the home screen of the Xbox app," said Kristen Mann, principal group program manager on the Xbox experiences team. "To create a story, click the + button on your gamertag located within the stories channel, and then select the game clip, screenshot, or achievement that you want to post from the gallery. Once selected, you will go to a story preview page where you can choose to add a caption to your post and then click the post button located on the bottom right. The stories channel shows content from the last 72 hours, and anything you share is also posted to your activity feed on your profile."

Another new feature added this time is "Quality of Service Tagging." Through this tagging option, users can flag certain features they value most often so that they'll be prioritized should online congestions become congested. These include things like multiplayer elements as well as party chat with more information found on Xbox's support page.

"Quality of Service (QoS) tagging is a feature that sets priority values on latency-sensitive outbound networking traffic such as party chat, console streaming, and multiplayer (in supported games)," the support article reads. "Under ideal networking circumstances, you shouldn't notice much of a difference between having the traffic tagged versus untagged. But during times of network congestion, supported networks will prioritize tagged traffic over untagged or lower priority tagged traffic to reduce impacts to latency and throughput."

Xbox's May update should be ready to download now for those who don't have these releases set to download automatically.