Xbox One April system update adds highly requested fan feature

Last week, Microsoft unveiled the new features and improvements coming to the Xbox One in next month's update. Already in testing for preview members, all Xbox One owners next month can expect party chat improvements, as well as updates to Game Hubs and Achievement notifications.

Today, though, Microsoft revealed even more features making their way into the update that will "make it easier to connect to friends and meet new people."

"You may have noticed a few new features that rolled out to preview over the weekend, including game hub links and more detailed achievement notifications. Now this week, we’re bringing even more features to Xbox One in preview, making it easier to keep in touch with friends on Xbox One or Xbox 360," Microsoft's Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb said.

The most notable addition is a new voice messaging system that will allow Xbox One owners to compose and playback voice messages in the messages app when snapped on Xbox One. With this new feature, you'll be able to quickly and easily record audio to send to friends through the snapped messages app. Additionally, voice messages can be exchanged between Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles

Other improvements are being made to Xbox's party chat system. "We’re enhancing party chat with dedicated chat relay servers. This new service will enable Xbox One owners that may have historically had NAT issues to party chat more reliably. Parties where players are unable to form direct peer-to-peer connections for party chat will automatically leverage dedicated server infrastructure to relay traffic," Nelson said.

And lastly, the Xbox engineering team is continuing to expand upon and improve the What's On area, which highlights popular games, movies, TV shows, and game broadcasts. According to Nelson, the "Staff Picks" are now "more personalized based on your recent game activity," and Microsoft is introducing "new experiments with Twitter Trending TV, and Game Clips for subsets of the preview audience."

At this point, the Xbox One April update is only available for those in the Xbox One preview program; however, these features, and the ones detailed last week, will be available for all Xbox One owners in April.