Xbox One won't get background music until summer at the earliest

By Connor Sheridan
published

Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, is still lacking in one handy way to bring you both games and entertainment: playing background music. And though Xbox 360 has allowed you to play music from an mp3 player or the system's hard drive while in-game for years, Xbox boss Phil Spencer told a fan on Twitter that it will be months at least before Xbox One catches up.

See more

Xbox director of program management Mike Ybarra told The Inner Circle Podcast in November that Microsoft wants to deliver background music "in a way that surprises fans," rather than simply patching in a barebones version. Ooh, maybe it could make a little disco ball roll down from the top of the screen! Or something more useful, I guess.

Microsoft added a bundle of new features to Xbox One in November via the "New Xbox One Experience," including backwards compatibility and an underlying operating system upgrade to Windows 10. The company still has a slate of suggested features up for vote on its official user voice page, such as support for playing games with mouse and keyboard.

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.