Xbox One May Update is being sent out to Preview Program members

Written by Brandon Hofer on May 02, 2014

News: Microsoft has revealed that preview program members will begin receiving the May firmware update over the next couple of days.

Major Nelson has revealed that people in the early preview program for Xbox One should start seeing a new update hitting their console over the next few days. Some of the highlights in the next update for Xbox One include a new sound mixer for snapped apps, chat volume controls when using Kinect and the option to help Microsoft improve speech recognition.

Once the new sound mixer is available you will see it under Settings where you will find two new features for controlling your audio. You will be able to control the volume levels of two apps when you’re using Snap letting you decide which app is louder. You will also be able to control volume levels for when you are using Kinect for chat.

Another feature of the upcoming update is the option to “opt-in” to help improve speech recognition. It goes without saying that the more voice samples that Microsoft has to input into their algorithms, the better and more responsive Xbox One and Kinect will be. If you choose to do so you can opt-into a speech data collection. It can be found under Settings - Privacy & Online - Customizing Privacy - Online Safety. This is, of course, completely optional and if you don’t want to have anything to do with it then you can just ignore it altogether.

This update will also be the first one where you can download it when you want. As soon as the update is available in your area you can go under your system settings and you will see “System Update.” Simply select that option to force your Xbox One to update at that very moment instead of waiting for it to do it automatically during the night, for example.

Those in the early preview program will begin seeing this new update arrive on their console in the next couple days. Everyone else will receive this update later this month. What feature do you want to see in a future update? Let us know what you think below.

source: Major Nelson