Ever since the program was introduced, Microsoft has used Xbox Insiders to test out improvements and changes to make sure they work properly before they roll out to the wider audience. The latest such update — dubbed 1905 — is set to add a few different improvements across Game Pass, the friends list and more.
The first of these is the Play Later feature for Xbox Game Pass. With the amount of different games on the service, this new feature will allow subscribers to create a list of games that they want to, well, play later. This collection can be managed either on console or the mobile app and players can then download games in this list when the player wants to.
The next addition is to the Friends List. With Microsoft integrating more platforms like PC and mobile under the wider Xbox gaming umbrella, there will be titles like Minecraft , Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 4 that are playable on more than one platform. This latest feature will add an icon indicating when a friend is playing something on a different platform to the player.
The third new feature is the “Message Requests” feature. This addition will allow players to prioritise messages from friends and other people players may want to communicate with. Other messages from people that the player does not know will then be separated into the “Message Requests” tab so they don’t unnecessarily bother the player. An unfortunate downside of this change is that previous group messages will be lost in this transition, so if the player wants to archive any messages, they will need to do so manually.
The final feature is one that has been prioritised due to feedback from the Xbox community. Sorting in the “My Games and Apps” will no longer use articles such as ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ when using “Sort by A-Z” or “Group by letter” views. As an example, instead of The Witcher being sorted by T — as was the case previously — it will now be sorted by W instead. A smaller change to be sure, but a welcome one that should make finding games even a little bit quicker now there’s no ambiguity as to where they should be.
There are also some more experimental features being rolled out to a smaller subset of insiders in this update, so people may want to keep an eye out for those although the specifics of these features have not been revealed by Microsoft. The 1905 update begins rolling out to Alpha Skip Ahead and Alpha rings today.