Xbox adds startup animation, Gamerscore badges and filters

Microsoft’s Xbox team began rolling out a public system update Wednesday that is available to consoles worldwide. The release brings a new startup animation, Gamerscore milestone badges, refined library filters, a Home entry point for Xbox Rewards and higher-resolution gamerpics and box art. Many features were previously tested in the Xbox Insider program.

Profiles with at least 1,000 Gamerscore now display a Gamerscore badge that evolves as players earn points. Badge tiers start at 1,000 Gamerscore and extend up to 10,000,000 Gamerscore.

Library navigation has been adjusted to make it clearer which titles can be installed and played on a given console. New filters separate games a player owns from those shared with them and add a Game access filter to show installed titles a player no longer has access to. Titles that are incompatible with a device will no longer appear in the Full library; for example, a Kinect-required game will only show on Xbox One consoles that support Kinect.

A refreshed Xbox Rewards view is rolling out to a subset of players, adding a Home entry point to check rewards and point balances. Players can highlight their balance and press A to open the new Rewards view, where they can track progress to the next level, claim points when available and view unlocks tied to progression.

Graphic assets have been updated on Xbox Series X consoles set to 4K resolution: gamerpics and certain achievement and game box art render with increased sharpness. The update also improves how Xbox 360 gamerpics appear on profile pages by preserving pixel blocks when images are upscaled.

The release includes fixes for several installation and interface issues. Microsoft addressed a problem where some game updates could stall in the queue and make the system unresponsive, an issue where the game card opened but could not be interacted with, flashing game tiles during installation or updates, and a recently installed list that did not always refresh on the manage queue page. The company is issuing a separate system update to address saving issues in Forza Horizon 6.

Users who have not yet seen the changes can check for the update manually by going to Settings, then System, then Updates. Microsoft indicates the OS version is available worldwide, though staged rollout means some features may appear to players at different times.