Xbox has been on a bit of a tear when it comes to new platform features lately.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced the latest build for the Xbox Insider Program, with a variety of new features big and small. The features included better management for Xbox cloud saves, better sorting of your games library, and other bits and pieces. The headline act, however, is voice clip recording on the Xbox Game DVR. This is a feature people have been asking Microsoft to add for over a decade, all the way back to the Xbox One era.
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When you have an epic gameplay moment with friends, it would be awesome if you could also capture their reactions without having to use a complex capture rig. You'd need to use a streaming PC with StreamLabs OBS or a capture card like the Elgato 4K S to extract the audio alongside your Xbox gameplay. But yesterday's update has made it a million times easier.
Here's a clip from a quick gameplay session on Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 I had this morning, showing how the first iteration works.
Here's an example of Xbox's new voice capture in the Game DVR. It's early days yet (available on the Insider ring). It seems to freeze the game for a split second when you hit capture. Also as far as I can tell, there's no way to adjust audio levels. You can barely hear me in… pic.twitter.com/0wmR5id4KVAugust 6, 2026
As you can see (or ... well, hear) the audio levels aren't ideal out of the box. You can barely hear me in this capture over the audio of the game. You would have to lower the gameplay sound a fair bit in order to be able to hear me, but it would be ideal if Microsoft would add settings for this.
In order for this feature to work, users have to enable it in the settings. Only users who have enabled game or party chat audio capture will appear in the sound mix, giving you total control over whether or not your reactions are captured (potentially saving your more embarrassing gameplay moments from going viral.)
You can also set whether your voice is clippable in public audio settings too, such as lobby chat on Call of Duty (oh boy) or in proximity chat games like Arc Raiders and the like.
Hopefully, Microsoft will add audio mix granularity sliders in the future, as it's far too quiet in my opinion as of writing. Additionally, capturing a clip seems to temporarily freeze a game for 0.2 seconds when you have voice capture turned on. I'm not sure if that's a consequence of the feature or an instability in the latest Alpha build, but I'm sure the experience will be improved before hitting general availability.
It's potentially exciting how this feature could evolve in the future. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is a former Meta executive, and likely has thoughts on how to leverage social media virality as a vector for growing Xbox's footprint. Perhaps there's a future where Xbox supports webcam picture-in-picture clipping too, and maybe we'll even get direct sharing to social networks back again some day on top. Perhaps even native Xbox Series X|S video editing tools will return as well, who knows?!
Microsoft has been listening to user feature ideas more aggressively lately via the Xbox Player Voice portal over here. The top most requested feedback is still "Xbox exclusive games," which Xbox has delivered in the form of Clockwork Revolution and Gears of War: E-Day. Xbox also confirmed it will deliver "Platinum" completion achievements later in 2026.
What features would YOU like to see Xbox deliver? Let us know in the comments.
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Macro shot of the circular Xbox logo power button on the corner of the console, under a purple metallic sheen.
NEW features are cool. Here's a quick look at the latest.
Xbox has just announced on its website that it is rolling out new Xbox Series X|S console features for Xbox Insiders before sending them out to the general public, one of which has been requested by many Xbox players since the days of the Xbox One.
These new features include being able to have voice chat included in game captures, more options for viewing achievements, more control over Cloud save data, and improvements to Xbox wishlists.
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The first and possibly biggest new feature of this bunch is allowing gameplay captures to include your voice and those of your chat party instead of just the gameplay audio alone.
Each player can choose if they want to have their voice included in the clip, and you can also choose to include in-game chat audio in your captures if you're not using the Xbox app's voice chat party feature.
This feature is now available for Xbox Insider users in the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring.
Keeping track of your Xbox Achievements has now been made less of a hassle for Xbox Insider users in the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring.
In addition to the 'last played' view option, players can now sort games by title, completion percentage, Gamerscore earned, and the number of Achievements unlocked.
These options can also be sorted in ascending or descending order, whichever a user prefers.
This feature will no doubt be super useful for those hunting for the newly announced Xbox Platinum Achievements coming soon.
This feature is already available for Xbox Insiders, but starting next week, more Xbox players will have the option to restore previously synced cloud save data directly from their Xbox console with games that support it, starting with Forza Horizon 6.
This means that if you need to recover a precious version of your save, you can browse cloud save versions and restore it to an easier save file directly from your console instead of just the Cloud.
You can access this feature for Forza Horizon 6 by going into the Xbox console's 'Manage game & add-ons' options menu, going to 'Saved data', and then clicking 'Restore saved data'.
More Xbox games will support this feature in future updates.
The final new feature announced is available for all Xbox users and it's a simple one.
Starting today, you can now add up to 1,000 Xbox games to your wishlist, instead of only 301, allowing you to keep track of more upcoming Xbox you're interested in playing and when they'll go on sale.
New console features are rolling out to XBOX insiders!💬Voice chat in game captures🏆 New ways to view achievements☁️ More control over cloud saves🎮 More games on wishlistRead more about these upcoming features: https://t.co/eBIUKNYxkoAugust 5, 2026
All these features are all fine and dandy, but the one me and my friends are hyped about mostly is the voice chat becoming available to be included in game captures.
Some of my favorite gaming moments have been listening to my friends freaking out being mauled by monsters in Monster Hunter, or screaming triumphantly after killing a boss I've been stuck on for hours in Elden Ring.
Yes, you can do this already if you're a livestreamer, but that usually requires going out of your way to purchase recording capture cards and learning how to stream, which can be expensive and time-consuming.
With this new feature, you can have your voice in gameplay clips with just your Xbox console alone; no capture gear or streaming knowledge needed, which is good for me, as I never want to become a streamer anytime soon due to stage fright.
But what about you? Are you happy that voice chat in recorded game clips is now possible? Are there any other features you want Xbox consoles to include?
If you have any thoughts on the matter, please let us know through the poll, the comments section, or our Reddit page.
Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.
An Xbox interface showing a central profile with three circular icons, a sound wave visualizer, and side menus for game lists and wishlist settings.
Voice chat in recorded gameplay clips is finally on Xbox.
Xbox is back with a flurry of updates for the Xbox Series X|S, including one headline act that I think will make many people very happy.
Today, Xbox revealed that it has acted on some of the top feedback requests from the Xbox Feedback site, including voice clip and party chat recording inside the Xbox game DVR. Recordings will now also capture your team mates' cries of valor or wails of defeat (if you enable it, that is), alongside other various Xbox system improvements.
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Microsoft has been on a bit of a tear with regards to fan feedback through 2026. It started delivering Xbox exclusives again, added the Xbox backward compatibility emulator to PC, and also reverted the much-hated Xbox Game Pass price hike from last year. And now, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma just confirmed one of the most-requested features for "later this year."
Team is working on something for later this year!August 5, 2026
Speaking on X (Twitter), Xbox CEO Asha Sharma replied to a fan "team is working on something for later this year," when asked if Microsoft would implement "Platinum"-styled completion achievements.
Players have been pining for an answer to PlayStation's platinum trophy system, which rewards players with a trophy for achieving 100% completion rates in games. Xbox games typically come with 1000 gamer score to earn per title, but there's no reward for acquiring all of the achievements.
I suspect Xbox was probably working out some of the finer details about how it would work in continuity with gamer score. Many games receive extra achievements post-launch, which would obviously remove your "100%" completion status. Perhaps you get the platinum achievement simply for hitting the base 1000 gamer score in the title? Who knows. Either way, it seems that Xbox will have an answer for it later this year!
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Xbox achievement banner saying "Finally, we're getting platinum achievements"
It's been 84 years ...
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