New Xbox One Friends App Demonstrated [Video]
The new Xbox One Friends app is demonstrated by Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb in the video above.
In yet another attempt to surpass the console’s capacity for playing video games, Microsoft has gone past the sports and TV talk and is now expanding where Skype would suggest. The Xbox One is being turned into a social media powerhouse as well in Microsoft’s ever ambitious quest to outdo Sony.
The Xbox One Friends app will let you add over 1,000 friends, among which will be the automatically imported friends list from the Xbox 360 version of Xbox Live. However, they don’t all have to be friends now. You can also have followers, so it’s possible that one Xbox One user could end up being the George Takei of the bunch, racking up followers like there’s no tomorrow.
Friends and followers will be given independent privacy settings on the new Xbox One Friends app, so you can share things with your friends that your followers will never see. Also much like Twitter, two users can follow each other, but there is no automatic follow-back. If someone follows you on Xbox One’s Friends app, and you don’t really care what they do, you don’t have to follow them back.
Microsoft reveals new Xbox One Friends app with follower system and real-time feed of status updates http://t.co/Rn5pQLxcYU by @nisummers
— The Next Web (@TheNextWeb) October 14, 2013
In a way, that makes the new Xbox One Friends app a little like Facebook, which allows people to follow you without you having to add them as friends.
The things you can do with the Xbox One Friends app rival what you can do with most social media sites, allowing you to share videos, online status, and achievements with the people following you. There will also be activity tabs, a Twitter-like activity bar you can push to the side while you game, and an improved online keyboard interface, which is easier to navigate than before, as it’s been simplified.
Of course, like all social media sites, there is the matter of security measures, meaning that Microsoft is going to have to start thinking more about hackers and strengthening login procedures.
What do you think of the new Xbox One Friends app?
