When was the last time you enjoyed a chat on Xbox Live? No, we’re not talking about turning the tables on an epithet-chucking adolescent (“Now who’s YOUR daddy?!”); we’re talking about enjoying the actual audio quality of the chat. The answer is likely “never.” But Major Nelson and Microsoft say that’s about to change with the Xbox One.
Two months and change away from the new console’s launch, the company is touting the improvements made to voice chat.
“Thanks to integration with Skype’s audio codec, which has a proven track record of high-quality voice through billions of hours of use within Skype, as well as dedicated audio processing (for Xbox One conversations via Skype and multiplayer party chats), Xbox One offers higher quality voice chat with the Xbox One Chat Headset compared to Xbox 360—whether you’re chatting in-game or through party chat with Skype on Xbox One.”
Major Nelson also offered up this audio taste test.
Major Nelson says the Xbox One wireless controller’s new expansion port “dramatically expands the data transfer rate between the controller and console,” enabling “crystal-clear digital audio” with the Xbox One headset, capturing and rendering speech at 24 KHz PCM, three times the rendering sample rate and a 50 percent capture rate improvement over Xbox 360 headsets.
And in case you’re wondering where Microsoft’s Stance of the Week is on including the headset with the console, the answer is yes, it’ll be in the box.
