New features will be making their way to Xbox Insiders including Killer Instinct tournaments powered by Arena on Xbox LIVE, an option to enable a Party overlay, and improvements to the Looking for Group and Activity Feed features.
Arena has been a work-in-progress since last year with Microsoft working on building and refining this feature ahead of releasing it to all Xbox LIVE users. Select Xbox Insiders have been able to try out Arena and provide the development team with important feedback. Over the next month or so, World of Tanks tournaments on Arena will become available to more Xbox Insiders as well as Killer Instinct tournaments which will also allow for users to create their own tournaments within their Clubs.
Whether you choose to register and play in either official or user-generated tournaments, you will be notified when your match is ready. Once the match is over, check out yours or others results which will be reported automatically and then show off your results on your Activity Feed for your friends and followers to see.
If you’re leaning more towards creating and organising your own tournament, then first of all, you’ll need to be a Club owner or administrator to be able to create and host one. From here, download the Xbox app (beta) on your Windows 10 PC, go to your Club, and then select and click on the “Tournaments” tab to then find the option to “Create tournament”. Fill out the details and then publish the event. Your Club members and any guests that you allow can discover and join the tournament and then out their skills to the test on either their PC or the Xbox One.
As the time and hard work continues on Arena, expect to see more tournaments added from the likes of Halo Wars 2 and SMITE, and there will also be gamer-created tournaments with World of Tanks too.
Select Xbox Insiders will have noticed the option to add the Achievement tracker as an overlay. In the upcoming update, another overlay option will be added that will inform the gamer of who’s speaking in their Xbox LIVE Party without having to constantly open the Guide. While in a Party, open up your Guide and enable the overlay. From here, choose where you want the overlay to appear on screen and also how transparent you want it to be. The Gamertag of whoever is speaking will show but when everyone is silent, the window will be invisible.
Lastly, we have a list of fan-requested feature updates included which are based on feedback and input from the community:
* Share your Looking for Group post on the Activity Feed or through a message.
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Unfollow a Club or Game Hub directly from your Activity Feed. -
Your profile will display your Arena tournament history and upcoming tournaments. -
For Beam and Twitch broadcasts, you will now have an option in the Guide for your Kinect to locate you automatically. -
Captive Portal support for wireless internet is coming to Xbox One, which allows for Wi-Fi authentication through a browser. Great for colleges, hotels, or public Wi-Fi locations. -
Filter posts on your Activity Feed on the Xbox app for iOS and Android. -
On the Xbox app for Windows 10, we’re adding the option to select the audio input and output sources for Party chat.
The latest system update is already being rolled out to Xbox Insiders and will continue to be deployed in the coming weeks.