Microsoft is rolling out a new feature to Xbox Series X and S consoles today that will make Party Chats a little more bearable. This new Noise Suppression does just as it says on the tin: removes annoying background noises that often hamper the VC experience.
Controller clicks, breathing sounds from a mic that’s a little too close to the mouth, obnoxiously loud music from a set of speakers, and other “background noise” are all a part of this new feature for the Xbox Series family of consoles.
This feature seems to be reminiscent to that of the Nvidia Broadcast app for RTX-enabled cards that uses the processing capabilities of the GPU to allow AI to filter out sounds other than your own voice. The results are pretty impressive on Nvidia’s side, so if this new noise suppression option works similarly, it too should provide a much more tolerable soundscape.
It doesn’t look like you’ll need any special equipment to make use of this feature, either. So, no matter what kind of headset that you use with your Xbox console, you’ll be good to go. That said, this feature is explicitly stated to be coming to the Xbox Series consoles—not the Xbox One family.
Again, similar to Nvidia Broadcast, this more than likely is due to the fact that the advanced processing needed calls for the more modern components that are found in the Series consoles. Similarly, Nvidia Broadcast is only compatible with RTX 20-Series cards or higher, leaving out anything in the GeForce GTX family.
The new noise suppression feature comes part of a new system update for the Xbox Series X|S consoles that also includes another new social feature: game capture jumping.
This other new features allows players to watch their friends’ gameplay captures and then hop into a session of their own via their mobile device or PC using Xbox Cloud Gaming. Interestingly enough, the release notes don’t mention doing the same thing via an Xbox console; perhaps this specific functionality will come later down the line.
This feature is pretty reminiscent to functionality that Google first demonstrated with Stadia’s highly social and “seamless” cloud gaming connectivity.
Google has recently been discovered to be testing a similar new feature that allows players to access cloud-powered titles by means of a simple search query. This includes not just Stadia titles, but even games via Xbox Cloud Gaming , Amazon Luna, and Nvidia GeForce Now. It’s not yet been rolled out as a completely public release, however.
In other recent Xbox news, Microsoft is currently working on expanding the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service with the introduction of a new Family & Friends option. Currently being tested in a limited number of countries, this new tier allows for up to five people to share one Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. The Ultimate tier is what includes access to Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is what you’ll need in order to access the aforementioned game capture jumping feature.
