Skype has announced an update for Skype for Xbox One which adds better synchronized chats, push notifications, and bug fixes – among other things, here’s the exact list from Skype’s blog post:
- Improved Chat
- Marvel’s Captain America
- Contact Filtering
- First Time Tutorial
- Swatting Bugs
To me, the most important ones are the improved chat and the contact filtering. I have been less than pleased with the “Metro” version of Skype, and other full screen versions of the apps. The space was typically not very well managed, the conversation sync was slow and if you have a lot of contacts, browsing them was not very nice.
Skype seems to have improved the conversation sync and now, the last 1000 messages should be automatically synchronized, so when you go from one device to the other, you can get more context, links and other important things from your conversation.
The contact filtering really helps when you have a lot of contacts since it can be very frustrating to scroll up and down to find someone. Skype has improved this pain point, and it will hopefully make your life better.
The good thing with Skype for Xbox One is that it is yet the best living room experience since the machine is quite powerful. If I compare that to the next best thing which is the Logitech TV Cam, I would say that the Xbox One experience is noticeably better, and it is hands-down better than Skype for Metro on tablets.
Skype for Xbox One is only available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers. It will deliver group video chat which is a paid feature on the PC version (Google Hangout offers that for free).