Xbox One’s smartphone companion app: “SmartGlass”, has also received a rather substantial update.
Xbox One users were dismayed to find that they couldn’t use an external hard drive with their consoles at launch – something that was quickly becoming a problem in this world of 50 GB + game installs. Thankfully, a system update rolling out this week finally adds the ability for users to plug in an external drive to their systems. The update also allows users to see their friends’ real names on Xbox Live, and use streaming apps such as Netflix and Hulu without a gold subscription.
Updated consoles will support up to two external USB 3.0 compatible hard drives, which will automatically become the default installation location for Xbox One games when connected, but have to have more than 256GB storage to be detected by the console. As an added bonus, you can detach your external hard drive, take it to a friend’s place, and use it to play your games on their console.
You can check out the video above, narrated by Microsoft’s Richard Irving, for a more detailed explanation of the update’s features.
Furthermore, there has also been an update to Microsoft’s “SmartGlass” companion app for the console. You can now use your SmartGlass-enabled device to re-order your Xbox One dashboard’s pins, watch Twitch game livestreams on your tablet, and control your TV like a universal remote.
The change to Netflix and Hulu was something that Microsoft promised to do earlier in the month.
Source: Xbox Wire
