If you haven’t snapped an app on Xbox One in awhile, you might want to spend some time with it this week: Mike Ybarra, Director of Program Management, Xbox and Windows Platform at Microsoft, announced via Twitter that Snap won’t exist much longer.
“We replaced Snap to improve multitasking, reduce memory use, improve overall speed, and free up resources going forward for bigger things,” Ybarra tweeted on January 24.
The replacement Ybarra is referring to is the updated Guide and Home features that were included in the latest Creators Update that came to members of Microsoft’s Insiders program earlier this week.
In effect, however, it’s not a one-to-one replacement – it doesn’t appear as though you’re able to split the screen with any app, only certain apps are able to take over part of the screen. And, so far, that list only appears to include the achievements and party apps.
So does that mean you won’t be able to watch TV and playing games at the same time? So far, it looks like that’s the case. That said, we’ve reached out to Microsoft for additional details and will update this story when we hear back.
Snap back
The decision to dismiss Snap is interesting. At one time, Microsoft used the system’s ability to multi-task to differentiate itself from its competitor, the PlayStation 4. Now, without Snap and the continued push to decommission Kinect, those differences are starting to disappear.
For the time being Microsoft hasn’t said what it’s going to do to replace some of those key Snap functions, if they decide to replace them at all, causing some Xbox gamers to express their anger via Twitter.
But hey, at least Xbox One owners still have HDMI passthrough to tout over PlayStation Nation, right?
- At least Xbox One has great games. Here are the best Xbox One games
