Xbox Insiders to see Killer Instinct arena tournaments, fan requested features rolling out this month

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by Radu Tyrsina 

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Xbox fans have been excited about the new Arena feature since last year at E3. Today, Xbox Wire announced that select Insiders will be seeing the next installment of Arena on Xbox Live.

Starting sometime this month, Xbox Insiders will be seeing more and more tournaments cropping up. Club owners and admins will be able to create, host, and register Arena tournaments through the beta Xbox Live app on Windows 10. These will also include an invitation to guests of the club, making open public tournaments for available games.

Currently, this list of games is extremely limited. However, Killer Instinct, Halo Wars 2, Smite, and World of Tanks look to be on the rollout for participating titles. In fact, the first public arena-powered prized tournament will be hosted at the Microsoft Store in New York. The Killer Instinct Battle for New York will pit eight players against each other for cash and prizes valued at $10k.

Of course, the Arena feature isn’t the only interesting addition of note. Xbox Wire also mentions the new Party Overlay, a transparent view of who is using voice chat in the party. It can be placed anywhere on the screen and conveniently altered how visible it is.

Other features coming to Xbox Live include:

  • Share your Looking for Group post on the Activity Feed or through a message.
  • Unfollow a Club or Game Hub directly from your Activity Feed.
  • Your profile will display your Arena tournament history and upcoming tournaments.
  • For Beam and Twitch broadcasts, you will now have an option in the Guide for your Kinect to locate you automatically.
  • Captive Portal support for wireless internet is coming to Xbox One, which allows for Wi-Fi authentication through a browser. Great for colleges, hotels, or public Wi-Fi locations.
  • Filter posts on your Activity Feed on the Xbox app for iOS and Android.
  • On the Xbox app for Windows 10, we’re adding the option to select the audio input and output sources for Party chat.

To check out these features in action, you’ll need to be an Xbox Insider. Even then, some features are restricted to select participants. To opt-in, download the Xbox Insider Hub and enable the preview ring that you want.

Let us know what you think about the upcoming Xbox Live features in the comments below, or tweet us @OnMSFT what you’d like to see next.

Radu Tyrsina

Radu Tyrsina Shield

Radu Tyrsina has been a Windows fan ever since he got his first PC, a Pentium III (a monster at that time). For most of the kids of his age, the Internet was an amazing way to play and communicate with others, but he was deeply impressed by the flow of information and how easily you can find anything on the web. Prior to founding Windows Report, this particular curiosity about digital content enabled him to grow a number of sites that helped hundreds of millions reach faster the answer they're looking for.