Microsoft has been hyping the media capabilities of the Xbox One for months, and Skype is one of the many entertainment apps featured on the console. Ars Technica paid a visit to Skype’s offices in Stockholm and got a full rundown of everything Skype can do on the Xbox One and some of the functionality that the team plans to add to the app down the road.
For the most part, Skype is identical to its PC and Mac counterparts: You can make a voice or video call, send a text message, and if the people you call are on their computers, they can even share their desktop screen with you. The Xbox One is missing some features of the desktop client, such as file sharing, but what it does, it does well.
There are several Xbox One-specific features in the Skype app to help balance this out. Although the Kinect allows you to make a 1080p video call over Skype, in all likelihood you will still be relatively far away from your television when you use it. This is where Auto Zoom comes into effect, which uses the Kinect sensor’s body-tracking capabilities to find the caller and “[crop] the picture to ensure that they remain visible.”
The company plans to add group favorites, contact filters, and more extensive profile options in the near future. As for the long-term plan, Skype has yet to announce any other new features, but updates are going to start arriving for the chat app very soon.
