Xbox One April update preview brings voice messaging and more

It's time for a new update to roll out to Xbox One consoles around the world, and April's offering has some key changes that are sure to go down well. The headline addition sees the reappearance of a feature that Xbox 360 owners will remember from the previous generation of Microsoft's console -- voice messaging.

Forget time-consuming typing, now a quick double-tap of the Xbox button is all that's needed provided you have the messages app snapped into place. This week's rollout builds on the features that were added to the version that Preview program members gained access to a week ago.

Last week, Microsoft brought a number of improvements to Party Chat, making it easier to get things set up, including configuring privacy options. The latest update makes further improvement with the introduction of dedicated servers for Party Chat, to help overcome the NAT issues that have plagued some users.

Changes have also been made to the What’s On area so that videos, movies, TV shows and game broadcasts are now highlighted. To start with this feature will be available in the US, but it will then expand to Xbox One owners in the UK and Canada. Tweaks to achievement notifications mean that you can now see just what you did to unlock an achievement -- no need to skip back and forth between your game and the achievements app.

Preview users can expect the update any time now, but everyone else will have to wait a little bit longer -- although Microsoft is yet to pin down a release date.

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