Xbox One July Update Going Live, Brand New Console Features Included

Just because it's the week of a major holiday doesn't mean the Xbox team is taking it easy. It's introducing a huge update that's set to take effect for all Xbox One and Xbox One X owners starting today.

Detailed in its latest Xbox Wire blog post, Xbox platform marketing guru Patrick Perkins broke down the features that owners can look forward to with the new update. And there's a lot to take in.

First off, a new feature called FastStart is being introduced for select games. "FastStart is a new innovation from our Xbox Platform team that allows you to jump into your games twice as fast and play after downloading just a fraction of it. FastStart works by identifying which files are needed to begin playing and prioritizes the download of those files first, enabling you to quickly jump into full-fidelity gameplay while the remainder of your title downloads in the background." Keep in mind it's not supported for all games yet but it's certainly worth a try.

Next up, you can now group games and apps together into particular places on your system. So that way you can put all racing games together, all fighting games in one place and so forth. You'll be able to see one group right off the bat with your Pins and go from there.

More Search options are also being introduced which will make it easier to find content within the store and on Marketplace in general in case you're looking for a particular piece of content or game.

Some new features have also been introduced in the Mixer department including improvements to the Share Controller feature (with multi-touch support and full mouse and keyboard support for PC users) as well as the ability to broadcast in full-screen if that's your forte. For those of you seeking camera support, these peripherals now provide it:

• Microsoft LifeCam Studio
• Logitech HD Pro Webcam C922
• Logitech Webcam C930e
• Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000

Console broadcasting will also be greatly improved, along with bits of stability. You can read more about that here.

In general, it's a pretty big update with a number of new features set to make things easier for Xbox users. An exact time hasn't been given for the rollout but expect it to take effect sometime today!