Xbox One's June update adds your friends' real names and external drive support

Here are some hard facts: regardless of how proud you are of that Xbox Live handle combining your love for Halo, the Deftones and Arrested Development without subbing in numbers for letters, it's probably hard for online pals to tell you apart from xXC0rtanaSl4ve69Xx. With the June Xbox One update, though, you'll have the option to add a real name to your profile, and thus, friend notifications. Not entirely cool with the rest of your Titanfall squad knowing your given name? No sweat: you can cherry pick who sees the name your parents gave you from who doesn't. And yes, you're right: this is something that the PlayStation 4 has offered since it launched last November. This patch finally allows using external drives for storage too, so long as they're USB 3.0 and are at least 256GB. The update also implements an auto sign-in feature, which should especially come in handy if you pick up a Kinect-less console next month. Previously, you'd either have to manually select a profile and sign in or let Kinect scan you and activate your account.

1 / 4

If you didn't use SmartGlass much before, push notifications when your friends start broadcasting via Twitch, and the ability to watch said streams on your device could change that. What's more, the One Guide's TV listings are coming to the companion app in addition to a universal remote. While it might seem like these updates are happening more and more often, that's all according to plan. Back in January, Microsoft said that frequent patches would roll out to help the console become "better faster," and well, that's what we're seeing.