If you're the kind of person who likes to use Xbox Cloud Gaming on a browser, Smart TV or Meta Quest device, then there's some good news incoming! Xbox is making some great improvements to the dashboard on those devices.
Specifically, these are "updated social features" that will allow you to carry out the following via xCloud:
- Find and manage friends
- Start parties outside of playing games and continue party chats between game sessions (currently not available on Smart TVs)
- Send messages
- View user profiles
- View notification inbox and toasts
- View achievements
Note: Users on browser will need to enable Preview features on their browser to gain access to the feature. This is done by clicking on your profile picture at xbox.com/play and then select Settings and then enable “Preview features.”
In the video above, you can see some of this in action courtesy of The Verge's Tom Warren who gives particular attention to the party chat feature, which worked in the past but not once you left a game and swapped to something else. Now, the new dashboard means you can swap at will without losing access to your party chat.
For now, all of these features are exclusive to certain members of the Xbox Insider program, but they'll be rolling out to everyone eventually. Give it a few weeks (or maybe months) and you should spot the updated dashboard on xCloud.