Community Update January 2024 – First Month Accounts

Passages

I hope this Community Update finds you as well as all those emails, meeting invites, and “let’s start the year strong” messages you marked all as read have in your Inbox. We’re only a week into 2024 and so much has happened already. We saw a real-life “Getting Over It” cosplay at a New Year’s party, the Internet™ collectively decided that Leon Kennedy would absolutely smoke Joel, and these are the streets I grew up in.

Over here at Xbox Insider HQ, we’ve also been busy chasing the hamsters back on their wheels (read: we are the hamsters) and getting back into the swing of things. It’s going to be a bit of a lighter January before we really kick it into high gear for the 10th Anniversary in February. So, let’s take a look at some of what we’ve been working on:

Connections

You might have noticed some changes to the layout, design, and overall look/feel of our lovely Xbox Wire pages over the last few months. As part of our strategy shift, we’ve been looking at different ways we can utilize the space we have here on the Xbox Wire and we think this redesign (as well as more interesting changes coming soon™!) is a great way to kick things off.

We’ve also been working to make our current content even better. It turns out, our resident Release Notes Virtuoso, Joshua, never got off his wheel. In fact, he’s been secretly whipping up some improvements and updates to Release Notes across all categories. We think you’ll agree these changes will make getting details on new builds easier and faster than ever!

Why Becomes How

I know, I know. Another one for the collage. I had hoped I wouldn’t have to use this joke for a while, but it’s taking longer than we initially thought for this process to happen. Apologies for this continued delay. I’ll take this one firmly on the chin though. I didn’t foresee the additional investments we’re now making, but I’m glad we’re making them nonetheless!

Full Tilt

That being said, we’re actually sprinting ahead with some of our other initiatives, specifically those tied to the 10th Anniversary. One thing I’m excited to share is that we’ll be publishing an absolute glut of content in February to the Xbox Wire. Interviews from past, present, (and future?!) Xbox Insider team members, an oral history of the program, and more will all be coming out to celebrate ten years of wonderful Xbox Insider Program accomplishments and highlights. This is something we’re super stoked about and we can’t wait for everyone to learn more.

Bright Future

We’ve also been working under the proverbial hood on a few items that aren’t quite ready to be fully revealed yet. These items are being worked on “in-house” within XIP, and I think it’s some of the coolest stuff we have cooking. We’ll be talking more about this in February, so stay tuned! In the meantime, please enjoy an updated/modified content roadmap.

As always, I hope everyone enjoyed this installment of the Xbox Insider Program Community Update. If you want to chat about this—and everything else XIP—hop on over to the r/XboxInsiders subreddit or throw us a follow @xboxinsider.