The April Xbox update is almost upon us and with it comes voice messages, updates to Party Chat, Game Hub awareness and more.

The ability to leave voice messages is one of the most popular requests for Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners to get as a new feature following the general call for screenshots. With voice messages you will now be able to leave little audio snippets for your Xbox Live buddies, no matter which console you're sending it from or which console your friend is using. In the video above, you can see the example of sending a voice message to a friend who's on vacation, letting them know that when they get back you definitely want to catch up with them and play some games. But really, voice messages are pretty self explanatory — it's like sending a voicemail over Xbox.

The update will also add new Party Chat updates in order to try and ease some of the hitches that people are finding while trying to talk to teammates during gameplay. The first problem that many users are coming across is simply that their headset or their Kinect is not plugged in. Now, there will be a pop-up message that will surface on your screen to tell you that you're a dummy and need to plug your input back in. There will also be a pop-up message that will appear if your privacy settings are blocking you from being heard, such as if you have it set so that only friends can chat with you and you're in a party with someone who doesn't have you added. There are also some small tweaks coming up to make game hubs easier to find and to ease navigation.

You can find all this cool new stuff in the April Update that will be coming out for Xbox One very soon. Xbox 360 users should expect voice message functionality added next month as well.

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