Microsoft has announced that the Xbox One, which was rumored to be released on November 8 (which is now false according to Kotaku’s sources) will have a better audio chatting experience thanks to Skype’s audio codec. The difference is quite noticeable.
Major Nelson made this announcement on his blog stating, “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.
But the improvements don’t stop there. The Xbox One Wireless Controller’s new expansion port dramatically expands the data transfer rate between the controller and console. Combined with Skype’s audio codec, this enables crystal-clear digital audio with the Xbox One Chat Headset, both capturing and rendering speech at 24 KHz PCM, which is triple the rendering sample rate and a 50 percent capture rate improvement over Xbox 360 headsets. And, as we shared before, the Xbox One Chat Headset comes with every Xbox One console,” Major Nelson explains.
To make things clear for everyone and to give you a first hand example, he compared the Xbox 360 audio chat quality with the new Xbox One audio chat quality. We’ve embedded the example below for your listening pleasure.
This updated feature will be available immediately to any Xbox One owner since it will come with the official bundled headset. This technology will be used in a Skype call or when you’re in a game session, or anywhere system-wide.
